"And how should they attack her? Upon what side is the Church to be assailed?"
"Through the monks. 'The fat bellies of the monks' are become a proverb in Europe. Every people itch with the vermin. They have made the practice of poverty the most lucrative of trades. Their greed, their lewdness, and their obscenity, are the matter of every ballad, and the butt of every wit. And yet they are one of the chief supports of the Church, ever replenishing her treasuries with the offerings of the poor, and the fruit of their traffic in pardon and indulgences."
"I have observed," said Cromwell, "that, though kings have often despoiled the monasteries, such depredations have not increased their popularity; for, though the people do not defend the property of the monks when it is attacked, after a time the weight of their opinion is on the side of the Church, and they accuse the officers of the State of rapacity and harshness, and the King himself of greed."
"The people are too often ground between the upper and nether mill-stones of Church and State," said Machiavelli; "to them both tyrannies are equally hateful. And, also, Messer, the plundering of the monasteries hath nearly always been an act of kingly greed, to furnish the material for war and forge the instruments of a harsher tyranny. But let the King make his people his accomplices...."
He considered his soft, white hands, and pondered the matter as if it were an ordinary question of daily business. His fleshy face with a bright colour about the cheek-bones, the small, pointed nose, the watchful eyes, revealed nothing; but the mere quietness with which he considered the question was, in a sense, a revelation. Lifting his eyes again he spoke quietly.
"I see here," he said, turning the pages of the _De Monarchia_, "that Dante attributes the great power of the Roman Empire to the direct action of the divine providence. The Empire to him is a thing divinely ordained, and Augustus is the divine monarch."
"One must either attribute all things or nothing to providence," said Machiavelli. "It was the opinion of Plutarch that the Romans confessed their obligations to Fortune by consecrating a great number of temples and statues to that goddess. It was to the courage of her soldiers that Rome owed the Empire, and it was to the wisdom and conduct of her administrators and law-givers that she owed its preservation. If fortune or God rule the world, then man hath no remedy against the evils of his time, and his prudence avails him nothing. I am in part inclined to this opinion, since every day we see things happen contrary to all human expectation; yet, at the same time, man is in some measure free. What I say, then, is this: that fortune is mistress of little more than half of our actions, and man himself is master of all the rest. In all things we may observe the action of certain laws, to which man is subject, but within the limits of which he hath a certain freedom. So, as a sailor, knowing the changes of the tide and wind; how it bloweth from the shore at evening, and from the sea at dawn; and knowing also the mysterious currents in the sea, and the hidden shallows, and the free channels, and the stars by which he is to steer, may bring his venture into port, where one ignorant of these things would suffer shipwreck, the wise man judging of times and opportunities will use caution or courage, as best may serve the occasion. He will prosper most whose mode of acting is adapted to the change of times; but no man is found so prudent as to know how to adapt himself to all changes, both because he is naturally inclined to follow one course, and because having prospered in it hitherto he cannot be persuaded to change. Moreover, fortune is a blind and irresistible force, while the divine providence of Dante is mild and beneficent; and though we have instances of fortune we have none of providence; and to assert that fortune directed the growth of the Roman Empire is to say a childish thing, for fortune creates nothing, it rather destroys; but it is man, adapting himself to fortune, who is the creator. Though we may say that fortune doth in a large measure control the works of man, we cannot say that the divine providence hath inspired or maintained in power, by its singular favour, any people. But every people succeeds or fails according to its wisdom in dealing with events as they occur, and in guarding against all probabilities of mischance."