Lehal Library

A ruler’s ministers astute: having or showing an ability to accurately assess situations or people and turn this to one's advantage. A ruler’s choice of ministers is an important matter. The quality of the ministers will reflect his good sense or lack of it and give people their first impression of the way the ruler’s mind is working. If his ministers are capable and loyal, people will always reckon a ruler astute, because he was able to recognize their ability and command their loyalty. When they are not, people will always have reason to criticize, because the first mistake the ruler made was in his choice of ministers. Everyone who knew Antonio da Venafro, Pandolfo Petrucci’s minister in Siena, thought Pandolfo extremely smart for having chosen him. There are actually three kinds of mind: one kind grasps things unaided, the second sees what another has grasped, the third grasps nothing and sees nothing. The first kind is extremely valuable, the second valuable, the third useless. So although Pandolfo didn’t have the first kind of mind, he cer- tainly had the second; if someone is sharp enough to recognize what’s right and wrong in what another man says and does, then even if he doesn’t have the creativity to make policy himself, he can still see which of his minister’s policies are positive and negative, encourage the good ones and correct the bad. The minister, meanwhile, will realize that he can’t fool the ruler and so will have to behave. There is one infallible way of checking a minister’s creden- tials: when you see the man thinking more for himself than