In order that the reader may be enabled to understand the allusions,
which seem to be so plain to our lovers, it may be necessary to explain
another odious feature in the policy of the Republic of Venice.
Whatever may be the pretension of a state, in its acknowledged theories,
an unerring clue to its true character is ever to be found in the
machinery of its practice. In those governments which are created for
the good of the people, force is applied with caution and reluctance,
since the protection and not the injury of the weak is their object:
whereas the more selfish and exclusive the system becomes, the more
severe and ruthless are the coercive means employed by those in power.
Thus in Venice, whose whole political fabric reposed on the narrow
foundation of an oligarchy, the jealousy of the Senate brought the
engines of despotism in absolute contact with even the pageantry of
their titular prince, and the palace of the Doge himself was polluted by
the presence of the dungeons. The princely edifice had its summer and
winter cells. The reader may be ready to believe that mercy had dictated
some slight solace for the miserable in this arrangement. But this would
be ascribing pity to a body which, to its latest moment, had no tie to
subject it to the weakness of humanity. So far from consulting the
sufferings of the captive, his winter cell was below the level of the
canals, while his summers were to be passed beneath the leads exposed to
the action of the burning sun of that climate.
Pages:
322
323
324
325
326
327
328
329
330
331
332
333
334
335
336
337
338
339
340
341
342
343
344
345
346