ABSTRACT
Burke selects The Prince as an example of what he calls “Administrative Rhetoric.” Machiavelli’s The Prince can be treated as rhetoric in so far as it deals with the producing of effects upon an audience. Sometimes the prince’s subjects are his audience, sometimes the ruler or inhabitants of foreign states, sometimes particular factions within the state. If you have a political public in mind, Machiavelli says in effect, here is the sort of thing you must do. The Prince’s dealings with his people, short of force, 1 is a communication whose forms must be determined by what purpose the communicative means selected are supposed to serve. Political rhetoric is grounded in exhorting men to ways of acting together for a desired end in the State. It must reduce utopias to practice and show how the bestial—as well as the godly—characteristics of men can be used to motivate men to purposes held desirable by the ruler.
