The point he is seeking to establish--that political immorality in Italy was the national correlative to Northern brutality--leads him to idealize the polite refinement, the disciplined passions, the firm and astute policy, the power over men, and the excellent government which distinguished the noblest Italian princes.
When he says 'Wanton cruelty was not in his nature: on the contrary, where no political object was at stake, his disposition was soft and humane'; he seems to have forgotten Gian Maria Visconti, Corrado Trinci, Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta, and Cesare Borgia.

When he writes, 'His passions, like well-trained troops, are impetuous by rule, and in their most headstrong fury never forget the discipline to which they have been accustomed,' he leaves Francesco Maria della Rovere, Galeazzo Maria Sforza, Pier Luigi Farnese, Alexander VI., out of the reckoning.

If all the despots had been what Macaulay describes, the revolutions and conspiracies of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries would not have taken place.

It is, however, to be remarked that in the sixteenth century the conduct of the tyrant toward his subjects assumed an external form of mildness.

As Italy mixed with the European nations, and as tyranny came to be legalized in the Italian states, the despots developed a policy not of terrorism but of enervation (Lorenzo de' Medici is the great example), and aspired to be paternal governors.
What I have said about Italian despotism is no mere fancy picture.