Read the excerpt from Chapter XV of Machiavelli's The Prince and answer the question.
It remains now to see what ought to be the rules of conduct for a prince towards subject and friends. And as I
know that many have written on this point, I expect I shall be considered presumptuous in mentioning it
again, especially as in discussing it I shall depart from the methods of other people. But, it being my intention
to write a thing which shall be useful to him who apprehends it, it appears to me more appropriate to follow
up the real truth of the matter than the imagination of it; for many have pictured republics and principalities
which in fact have never been known or seen, because how one lives is so far distant from how one ought to
live, that he who neglects what is done for what ought to be done, sooner effects his ruin than his
preservation; for a man who wishes to act entirely up to his professions of virtue soon meets with what
destroys him among so much that is evil.
Machiavelll states that he feels it his duty to write about a point that many others have written about because
others have not had the real-life experience to be experts
others have been deceitful in their explanations
he has studied the topic extensively
he can speak to the realistic points of the matter