Lehal Library

the prince your mind so often listening to everyone’s opinions that people will lose their respect for you. Let me offer an example from modern times. Bishop Luca Rainaldi, a man close to the present Emperor Maximilian, said that the emperor never took advice from anyone and never got his own policies enacted; this is because he did the opposite of what I proposed above. Being secretive, the emperor tends not to explain his plans to anyone and doesn’t seek advice. But when he starts putting his policies into action and people see what he’s up to, his ministers tell him he’s got it wrong and all too readily he changes his mind. As a result, whatever he does one day he undoes the next and nobody understands what he wants or means to do and no one can make plans in response to his policies. So a ruler must always take advice, but only when he wants it, not when others want to give it to him. In fact he should discourage people from giving him advice unasked. On the other hand he should ask a great deal and listen patiently when an adviser responds truthfully. And if he realizes some- one is keeping quiet out of fear, he should show his irritation. Many people think that when a ruler has a reputation for being sensible it’s thanks to the good advice he’s getting from his ministers and not because he’s shrewd himself. But they’re wrong. There’s a general and infallible rule here: that a leader who isn’t sensible himself can never get good advice, unless he just happens to have put the government entirely in the hands of a single minister who turns out to be extremely shrewd. In this case he may well get good advice, but the situation won’t last long because the minister will soon grab the state for himself. If on the other hand he’s taking advice from more than one person, an ingenuous ruler will find himself listening to very different opinions and won’t know how to make sense of them. Each of his advisers will be thinking of his own interests and the ruler won’t be able to control them or even sense what’s going on. It’s not a case of