statecraftn.

1642 T. Fuller Holy State iv. v. 263 Some plead that dissembling is Lawfull in the State-craft, upon the presupposition that men must meet with others which dissemble.

1687 W. Penn Good Advice to Church of Eng. 10 This has been her State Craft, to coin Guilt, and make men dangerous, to have her ends upon them.

1745 H. Fielding True Patriot 31 Dec. 1/3 Nor can I help observing..another Piece of State Craft..: For while we sent for this Troop of Singers into England, we left several Troops of our Soldiers abroad.

1798 W. Taylor in Monthly Mag. 5 352 To avoid a civil, wage a foreign war, is an old adage of profligate state-craft.

1855 T. B. Macaulay Hist. Eng. IV. xviii. 163 A double treason, such as would have been thought a masterpiece of statecraft by the great Italian politicians of the fifteenth century.

1873 J. A. Symonds Stud. Greek Poets i. 16 The men who rose to the greatest eminence in statecraft are to be reckoned among the primitive philosophers of Greece.

1886 Manch. Examiner 18 Jan. 5/5 It savours more of statecraft than of statesmanship.

1917 H. N. Brailsford League of Nations 324 The settlement..must draw its principle from the older statecraft of anarchy and force.

1949 Jrnl. Southern Hist. 15 486 The Civil War and Commonwealth were prelusions to the attacks of progressive political and economic ideas upon a system that was representative of atrophied statecraft.

2008 New Yorker 13 Oct. 112/2 The report barely mentions great-power diplomacy, the traditional core concept of statecraft.

1726 J. Hinter Let. in Craftsman 26 Dec. (single sheet) There is hardly any thing..more proper to be recommended to the serious consideration of all State-Craftsmen.

1818 S. T. Coleridge Friend (new ed.) II. x. 185 Whatever study or doctrine bears upon..a certain Phantom of a State in toto,..this shall be deemed most useful and wise; and all else is the state-craftsman's scorn.

1914 Eng. Rev. Jan. 202 State-craftsmen sat with their historical candles burning.

1994 T. C. Brickhouse & N. C. Smith Plato's Socrates 166 Plato seems to have come to believe that master statecraftsmen could come into existence..who could then rule the state in the way Plato's Socrates..said they should.