and on the means which wise princes will take to secure a good choice of men well adapted at once to the profession of negotiation and to the different countries where they may be sent. But before I take my subject in detail it is perhaps well that I should explain the use and the necessity for princes to maintain continual negotiation in the form of permanent embassies to all great states, both in neighbouring countries and in those more distant, in war as well as in peace. [Sidenote: _The Usefulness of Negotiation._] To understand the permanent use of diplomacy and the necessity for continual negotiations, we must think of the states of which Europe is composed as being joined together by all kinds of necessary commerce, in such a way that they may be regarded as members of one Republic and that no considerable change can take place in any one of them without affecting the condition, or disturbing the peace, of all the others. The blunder of the smallest of sovereigns may indeed cast an apple of discord among all the greatest Powers, because there is no state so great which does not find it useful to have relations with the lesser states and to seek friends among the different parties of which even the smallest state is composed. History teems with the results of these conflicts which often have their beginnings in small events, easy to control or suppress at their birth, but which when grown in magnitude became the causes of long and bloody wars which have ravaged the principal states of Christendom. Now these actions and reactions between one state and another oblige the sagacious monarch and his ministers to maintain a continual process of diplomacy in all such states for the purpose of recording events as they occur and of reading their true meaning with diligence and exactitude. One may say that knowledge of this kind is one of the most important and necessary features of good government, because indeed the domestic peace of the state depends largely upon appropriate measures taken in its foreign service to make friends among well-disposed states, and by timely action to resist those who cherish hostile designs. There is indeed no prince so powerful that he can afford to neglect the assistance offered by a good alliance, in resisting the forces of hostile powers which are prompted by jealousy of his property to unite in a hostile coalition. [Sidenote: _The Diplomat: An Agent of High Policy._]