POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY the assumption that all their subjects are gullible and guided solely by self-interest Some have been shocked by the book’s immorality; others have found its lack of humbug refreshing Few, however, have been persuaded to admire the models held up by Machiavelli, such as Pope Alexander VI and his son Cesare Borgia Alexander is praised as the arch dissembler: ‘No man was ever more eVective in making promises, or bound himself by more solemn oaths, or observed them less.’ Cesare, who worked by bribery and assassination to appropriate central Italy for the Borgias, and failed to so only through an unpredictable piece of ill-luck, is saluted as a paradigm of political skill: ‘Reviewing thus all the actions of the Duke, I Wnd nothing to blame; on the contrary it seems proper to hold him as an example to be imitated’ (P, ch 18) The history of the papal states under the Borgia pope, or under his enemy and successor the warrior Pope Julius II, is hard to reconcile with the brief chapter of The Prince devoted to ecclesiastical princedoms Princes who are churchmen, Machiavelli says, have states that they not defend and subjects that they not govern; yet their undefended states are not taken from them, and their ungoverned subjects not and cannot think of throwing oV their allegiance ‘Accordingly, only such princedoms are secure and happy’ (P, ch 11) More’s Utopia It is hard to know whether this remark was meant ironically, or was a shameless pitch to secure employment in Rome under the new Medici Pope Leo who had succeeded Julius The passage Wnds a parallel in More’s Utopia, where it is observed that treaties are always solemnly observed in Europe, partly out of reverence for the sovereign pontiVs: Which, like as they make no promises themselves, but they very religiously perform the same, so they exhort all princes in any wise to abide by their promises; and them that refuse or deny so to do, by their pontiWcal power and authority they compel thereto (U, 116) Here the intention must surely be ironical More was willing to die in defence of the papal oYce; but he was not willing to deceive himself about the perWdy of some of its sixteenth-century holders 275