At the period of which
we write, Italy had several of these self-styled commonwealths, in not
one of which, however, was there ever a fair and just confiding of power
to the body of the people, though perhaps there is not one that has not
been cited sooner or later in proof of the inability of man to govern
himself! In order to demonstrate the fallacy of a reasoning which is so
fond of predicting the downfall of our own liberal system, supported by
examples drawn from transatlantic states of the middle ages, it is
necessary only to recount here a little in detail the forms in which
power was obtained and exercised in the most important of them all.
Distinctions in rank, as separated entirely from the will of the nation,
formed the basis of Venetian polity. Authority, though divided, was not
less a birthright than in those governments in which it was openly
avowed to be a dispensation of Providence. The patrician order had its
high and exclusive privileges, which were guarded and maintained with a
most selfish and engrossing spirit. He who was not born to govern, had
little hope of ever entering into the possession of his natural rights:
while he who was, by the intervention of chance, might wield a power of
the most fearful and despotic character. At a certain age all of
senatorial rank (for, by a specious fallacy, nobility did not take its
usual appellations) were admitted into the councils of the nation.
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