John Morley, 1st Viscount of Blackburn, (1838-1923), was a British Liberal statesman, writer and newspaper editor. Initially a journalist in the North of England and then editor of the Pall Mall Gazette from 1880 to 1883, he was elected a Member of Parliament for the Liberal Party in 1883. He was Chief Secretary for Ireland, Secretary of State for India and Lord President of the Council between 1910 and 1914. Morley was a Trustee of the British Museum, Honorary Professor of Ancient Literature at the Royal Academy of Arts, member of the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts and Chancellor of the Victoria University of Manchester. He was nominated for a Nobel Prize in Literature eleven times and received an honorary degree from the University of St. Andrews in 1902. Machiavelli, the Morley's essay which we propose to our readers today, dedicated to the life and personality of the great diplomat, philosopher, historian, writer of the Renaissance, internationally famous for his political work The Prince, is based on a Romanes Lecture delivered by the British writer and statesman in the Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford in 1897.