But if the enemies of Venice ever founded serious hopes upon abuses of this kind, they were greatly in error.It might be thought that the commercial activity of the city, which put within reach of the humblest a rich reward for their labor, and the colonies on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean would have diverted from political affairs the dangerous elements of society.But had not the political history of Genoa, notwithstanding similar advantages, been of the stormiest? The cause of the stability of Venice lies rather in a combination of circumstances which were found in union nowhere else.Unassailable from its position, it had been able from the beginning to treat of foreign affairs with the fullest and calmest reflection, and ignore nearly altogether the parties which divided the rest of Italy, to escape the entanglement of permanent alliances, and to set the highest price on those which it thought fit to make.The keynote of the Venetian character was, consequently, a spirit of proud and contemptuous isolation, which, joined to the hatred felt for the city by the other States of Italy, gave rise to a strong sense of solidarity within The inhabitants meanwhile were united by the most powerful ties of interest in dealing both with the colonies and with the possessions on the mainland, forcing the population of the latter, that is, of all the towns up to Bergamo, to buy and sell in Venice alone.A power which rested on means so artificial could only be maintained by internal harmony and unity; and this conviction was so widely diffused among the citizens that conspirators found few elements to work upon.And the discontented, if there were such, were held so far apart by the division between the noble and the burgher that a mutual understanding was not easy.On the other hand, within the ranks of the nobility itself, travel, commercial enterprise, and tb^ incessant wars with the Turks saved the wealthy and dangerous from that fruitful source of conspiracies idleness.In these wars they were spared, often to a criminal extent, by the general in command, and the fall of the city was predicted by a Venetian Cato, if this fear of the nobles 'to give o ne another pain' should continue at the expense of justice.
Nevertheless this free movement in the open air gave the Venetian aristocracy, as a whole, a healthy bias.
And when envy and ambition called for satisfaction, an official victim was forthcoming and legal means and authorities were ready.The moral torture which for years the Doge Francesco Foscari (d.1457) suffered before the eyes of all Venice is a frightful example of a vengeance possible only in an aristocracy.The Council of Ten, which had a hand in everything, which disposed without appeal of life and death, of Sfinancial affairs and military appointments, which included the Inquisitors among its number, and which overthrew Foscari, as it had overthrown so many powerful men before this Council was yearly chosen afresh from the whole governing body, the Gran Consiglio, and was consequently the most direct expression of its will.It is not probable that serious intrigues occurred at these elections, as the short duration of the office and the accountability which followed rendered it an object of no great desire.But violent and mysterious as the proceedings of this and other authorities might be, the genuine Venetian courted rather than fled their sentence, not only because the Republic had long arms, and if it could not catch him might punish his family, but because in most cases it acted from rational motives and not from a thirst for blood.No State, indeed, has ever exercised a greater moral influence over its subjects, whether abroad or at home.
If traitors were to be found among the Pregadi, there was ample compensation for this in the fact that every Venetian away from home was a born spy for his government.It was a matter of course that the Venetian cardinals at Rome sent home news of the transactions of the secret papal consistories.The Cardinal Domenico Grimani had the dispatches intercepted in the neighbourhood of Rome (1500) which Ascanio Sforza was sending to his brother Lodovico il Moro, and forwarded them to Venice; his father, then exposed to a serious accusation, claimed public credit for this service of his son before the Gran Consiglio, in other words, before all the world.
