feat_summary_path: finished_summaries/sparknotes/The Prince/section_1_part_2.txt
feat_book_id: The Prince.chapter ii
feat_summary_id: chapter ii
feat_summary: {"name": "Chapter II", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210303115306/https://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/prince/section2/", "summary": "Hereditary Principalities Chapter II is the first of three chapters focusing on methods to govern and maintain principalities. Machiavelli dismisses any discussion of republics, explaining that he has \"discussed them at length on another occasion\"--a reference to Book 1 of his Discourses. Machiavelli notes that it is easier to govern a hereditary state than a new principality for two main reasons. First, those under the rule of such states are familiar with the prince's family and are therefore accustomed to their rule. The natural prince only has to keep past institutions intact, while adapting these institutions to current events. Second, the natural disposition of subjects in a hereditary state is to love the ruling family, unless the prince commits some horrible act against his people. Even if a strong outsider succeeds in conquering a prince's hereditary state, any setback the outsider encounters will allow the prince to reconquer the state", "analysis": ""}
text: 
  I will leave out all discussion on republics, inasmuch as in another
  place I have written of them at length, and will address myself only to
  principalities. In doing so I will keep to the order indicated above,
  and discuss how such principalities are to be ruled and preserved.
  
  I say at once there are fewer difficulties in holding hereditary states,
  and those long accustomed to the family of their prince, than new
  ones; for it is sufficient only not to transgress the customs of his
  ancestors, and to deal prudently with circumstances as they arise, for a
  prince of average powers to maintain himself in his state, unless he
  be deprived of it by some extraordinary and excessive force; and if he
  should be so deprived of it, whenever anything sinister happens to the
  usurper, he will regain it.
  
  We have in Italy, for example, the Duke of Ferrara, who could not have
  withstood the attacks of the Venetians in '84, nor those of Pope Julius
  in '10, unless he had been long established in his dominions. For the
  hereditary prince has less cause and less necessity to offend; hence it
  happens that he will be more loved; and unless extraordinary vices cause
  him to be hated, it is reasonable to expect that his subjects will be
  naturally well disposed towards him; and in the antiquity and duration
  of his rule the memories and motives that make for change are lost, for
  one change always leaves the toothing for another.
  
  
  
  
feat_summary_name: Chapter II
target: Hereditary Principalities Chapter II is the first of three chapters focusing on methods to govern and maintain principalities. Machiavelli dismisses any discussion of republics, explaining that he has "discussed them at length on another occasion"--a reference to Book 1 of his Discourses. Machiavelli notes that it is easier to govern a hereditary state than a new principality for two main reasons. First, those under the rule of such states are familiar with the prince's family and are therefore accustomed to their rule. The natural prince only has to keep past institutions intact, while adapting these institutions to current events. Second, the natural disposition of subjects in a hereditary state is to love the ruling family, unless the prince commits some horrible act against his people. Even if a strong outsider succeeds in conquering a prince's hereditary state, any setback the outsider encounters will allow the prince to reconquer the state