CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
ON HOW A RULER WHO WANTS TO REFORM AN OLD SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT IN A FREE STATE MUST KEEP AT LEAST A VENEER OF THE OLDER INSTITUTIONS

A ruler who desires to reform the government of a state and wants the government to be accepted and maintained to the satisfaction of everyone will have to keep at least a veneer of the old ways, so that it will not seem to the populace that the institutions have changed, even if the new institutions are completely different from the old ones. Men cherish something that seems like the real thing as much as they do the real thing itself: In fact, they are often more affected by that which seems than by that which is.⁸⁷ When they achieved liberty at the beginning of the republic, the Romans knew that in creating two consuls instead of one king, they would not want them to have more than twelve lictors,⁸⁸ so that they would not surpass the number that had ministered to the king. There was also an annual sacrifice in Rome that had been offered only by the king, and since the state did not want the people, for want of a king, to lack any of the old practices, they created a “king” of the sacrifice, and made him subordinate to the high priest.⁸⁹ In this way the populace was satisfied by the sacrifice, and never had a reason, through its absence, to desire the return of the kings. This path must be followed by all who wish to eliminate an old way of life in a state and introduce a new and free way of life: because as new things change men’s minds, one must do one’s utmost to keep as much of the old as possible. If new magistrates differ in number, authority, and duration of office from the old ones, they should at least retain the titles that they had. This, as I have said, must be done by a legislator who wishes to set up a vital civic system, either by way of a republic or kingdom. But he who wishes to create a despotism, which the ancient authors called “tyranny,” will have to make everything new, as I will discuss in the following chapter.

87. See also The Prince, chapter 18: “Though a prince need not have all the good qualities that I have mentioned, it is most necessary for him to appear to have them.”

88. Functionaries who walked before the consuls when they appeared in public, carrying the fasces, a bundle of rods bound together around an ax as an emblem of authority.

89. Livy writes in Book II, chapter 2: “Certain public rites had always been performed by the kings in person, and so that the lack of a king be nowhere regretted, a ‘King of Sacrifices’ was created. This office was made subordinate to the high priest, lest the combination of office and name threaten the people’s liberty, which at that time was a leading fear.”