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From the author's PREFACE. If there is a science of politics, it must be developed as other sciences have been, by an examination and comparison of historical data with a view to the discovery of the causes which underlie important political phenomena, -and not, as is too often done, by judging of such phenomena according to purely empirical rules. It is equally fallacious to justify political action by its results, or to condemn it on a priori grounds; and it is only by the application of the inductive method that revolutionary periods, like those of Machiavelli and Napoleon, can be properly understood.