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Here follows, worked out in detail, the purely modern fiction of the
omnipotence of the State. The prince is to take everything into his
charge, to maintain and restore churches and public buildings, to keep
up the municipal police, to drain the marshes, to look after the supply
of wine and corn; so to distribute the taxes that the people can
recognize their necessity; he is to support the sick and the helpless,
and to give his protection and society to distinguished scholars, on
whom his fame in after ages will depend.
But whatever might be the brighter sides of the system, and the merits
of individual rulers, yet the men of the fourteenth century were not
without a more or less distinct consciousness of the brief and
uncertain tenure of most of these despotisms. Inasmuch as political
institutions like these are naturally secure in proportion to the size
of the territory in which they exist, the larger principalities were
constantly tempted to swallow up the smaller. Whole hecatombs of petty
rulers were sacrificed at this time to the Visconti alone. As a result
of this outward danger an inward ferment was in ceaseless activity; and
the effect of the situation on the character of the ruler was generally
of the most sinister kind. Absolute power, with its temptations to
luxury and unbridled selfishness, and the perils to which he was
exposed from enemies and conspirators, turned him almost inevitably
into a tyrant in the worst sense of the word.
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