To Reprimand the Insolence of a Powerful One who Springs up in a Republic, There is No More Secure and Less Troublesome Way than to Forestall Him Those Ways by which he Comes to Power

It will be seen from the above written discourse, how much credit the Nobility had acquired with the Plebs because of the demonstrations made to their benefit, both by the stipends ordered, as well also as the method of imposing the tributes. If the Nobility had maintained themselves in this order they would have removed every cause for tumult in that City, and this would have taken away from the Tribunes that credit which they had with the Plebs, and consequently their authority. And, truly, there cannot exist in a Republic, and especially in those that are corrupt, a better method, less troublesome and more easily opposed to the ambitions of any Citizen, than to forestall him those ways by which he observes to be the paths to attain the rank he designates. Which method, if it had been employed against Cosimo De’Medici, would have been a much better procedure for his adversaries than to have driven him out of Florence: for if those Citizens who were competing against him had taken his style of favoring the People, they would have succeeded without tumult and without violence in drawing from his hands the arms which he availed himself of most.

Piero Soderini had made a reputation for himself in the City of Florence alone by favoring the General Public; this among the People gave him the reputation as a lover of liberty in the City. And certainly it would have been an easier and more honest thing for those Citizens who envied him for his greatness, [and] less dangerous and less harmful to the Republic, for them to have forestalled him in the ways by which he made himself great, than to want to oppose him in such a way that with his ruin, all the rest of the Republic should be ruined; for if they had taken away from his hands those arms which made him strong (which they could have done easily) they could have opposed him in all the councils and all the public deliberations boldly and without suspicion. And if anyone should reply that if those Citizens who hated Piero made an error in not forestalling him the ways with which he gained reputation for himself among the Peopl............