20-24 septembrie 2009 - Biblioteca Metropolitana Bucuresti

170 Radu Raisa“the road of clemency is the safest one. Even in rebellions, kindness mustcome before cruelty”. 15 He also comments the historical examples used byMachiavelli. According the way they had used cruelty, some leaders keptpower, and some didn’t. Acting brutally by and by, Oliveretto has beenbrought to justice one year after killing his father, whereas Agatocle, actingwith cruelty only once, at the beginning, kept power a long period of time.Mavrocordat tags both of them. For Oliveretto, the remark is: “the hand ofheaven”. About Agatocle, he states that “he is despicable and infamous”and he has “qualms of conscience”.While Machiavelli states that the very important people do not forgetthe past insults for the present profits, Mavrocordat said that the good deedis always a good medicine. This conviction came to life in the attitudes andactions of the prince. In his “Recommendations…” to his son, he statesthat a prince must be magnanimous, kind, lawful, calm, peaceful, nonoppressive.Mavrocordat’s attention is incited by Machiavelli’s statement that“there is nothing more difficult, more uncertain and more dangerousthan promoting a reform. And that because the reformer will have asenemies all the persons who took profit from the former establishmentand only soft supporters in the people that might take profit from the newestablishment.” 16 Mavrocordat further on affirms: “the reformation isdangerous”. He acted very cautiously in all his social and political actions.He didn’t like innovation in governing and administration, telling his sonto follow the beaten path, to avoid new ways, because all these could givehim a bad name 17 .The speeches of a worker who rebelled against the rich, saying that allhumans are the same and urging the people to plunder the town and takeover the government, because only the great felonies shall be forgiven areseen, by Mavrocordat, as ”words of vulgar plebs” or the words of a ”thief,a wrongdoer”.The narration, by hard words, of barbarian actions during the reign of theGhibellines in Florence, makes Mavrocordat to note that “these attributesare well deserved by general Steinville and by baron Tige, who ransackedWallachia and Moldavia, and, although not punished by the Emperor, werehit by God”. 18 These affirmations refer to some unpleasant situations of the15Grigoraş, Em., Machiavel şi Mavrocordat.16Machiavelli, N. 1960, 24.17Mavrocordat, N. 1890, Sfătuirile domnului Neculai Mavrocordat cătră fiul săuConstantin, Arhiva ştiinţifică şi literară, II, Iaşi, 275.18Grigoraş, Em., Machiavel şi Mavrocordat.