I.
ABOUT the middle of the eighteenth century, Venetian society was divided into two main parties, representing what we should now call Liberal and Conservative principles in politics and thought. The Liberals were imbued with French philosophical ideas, French fashions, and French phrases. The boldest of them, men like Angelo Querini, Carlo Contarini, Giorgio Pisani, openly aimed at remodelling the constitution. They aired new-fangled theories of government, based upon the Social Contract and the Rights of Man, within ear-shot of the terrible Inquisition of State. Some of them went in consequence to end their days in the dungeons of Cattaro or Verona. These patricians created a body of restless opposition in the Grand Council, agitated the bourgeoisie and proletariate with the expectation of impending changes, and succeeded in effecting some salutary but superficial reforms. Outside the sphere of politics, that spirit of innovation which in France was silently but surely working toward the Revolution, made itself felt among the educated classes. The University of Padua, while preserving external forms of mediævalism in its discipline and teaching, fermented with the physical hypotheses of modern science. The deism of the Encyclopædists and Voltaire came into vogue. Sentimentalism, thinly cloaking a desire for liberty and license, ruled in morals. Rousseau's speculations and the humanitarian utopias of the philosophes disturbed the old foundations on which social institutions rested. The word prejudice was upon the lips of everybody, to indicate the restraining influences of public order in the state and of ethics in the family. These new ideas permeated society and saturated literature. In the drawing-rooms of great ladies, the clubs and coffee-houses of the gentry, the theatres, concert-rooms, and little houses, where men and women congregated, French books were discussed, French fashions were affected, the French language was engrafted on the old Venetian dialect. Frivolous butterflies of pleasure in that great mart of the world's amusement assumed fine airs of philosophy and science. Wide-sweeping and far-reaching theories, which called in question the whole groundwork of man's previous beliefs, were freely ventilated by chatterers, who caught their jargon from flippant manuals of science and popular essays, poured forth by thousands from the press of Paris. Unhealthy novels spread subversive moral doctrines flavoured with a spice of philanthropic sentiment. It was considered rococo to admire the old Italian classics. Staunch Liberals paraded their independence of precedent and prejudice by adopting a masquerade style which set the traditions of the language at defiance.
All this indicated a deep and irresistible fermentation in society. The great catastrophe of the eighteenth century was preparing. The stage of Europe was being made ready for that transformation-scene which opened a new era. But few could foresee the inevitable future; few could distinguish what was wholesome progress from the delirious or somnambulistic ravings of the moment. Therefore the Conservatives clung fast to their prejudices and precedents; to established forms of government, the national religion, the traditional customs of civil and domestic life. To superficial observers it appeared that these men held the strongest cards. Yet even rigid Conservatives were bound to admit that there was something ominously rotten in the state of Venice. Her commerce dwindled year by year. Her provinces were ill-administered, and yielded less and less to the exchequer. Social demarcations disappeared in the luxury and corruption which invaded all classes. Pauperism assumed appalling dimensions. In the decay of industries and manufactures thousands of workpeople were thrown famished upon public charity. The ranks of the Barnabotti, or impoverished nobles, who claimed state support, swelled, grew clamorous in the Grand Council, gave signs of insubordination, and contaminated the fountain-head of government by their venality. Meanwhile, the old machinery of the constitution had fallen into the hands of a close oligarchy or commission of a few powerful patricians. These corruptors of the State pulled wires, bought votes, and manipulated the College and the Senate to secure their own ends in the Consiglio Grande. The more far-sighted among the Conservatives felt the necessity of temporising. Influenced by the all-pervasive spirit of the age, but not prepared to join the Liberal forces, they compromised, tampered with institutions, and tried by stopping leaks to keep the deep sea out. This was the attitude of men like Marco Foscarini, Alvise Emo, and Paolo Renier.
Apart from politics, the Conservatives stood on firmer ground. There is no doubt that the so-called philosophy of the eighteenth century, both in its principles and in its consequences, offered points of patent weakness to hostile criticism. It was subversive without being reconstructive. Its foundations were sentimental and fanciful rather than logical and reasoned. Hazy in the minds of its projectors, it was almost universally misunderstood by the multitude which it illuded. Immorality was encouraged; not that any speculative system is inherently immoral, but that the confused postulates regarding personal liberty, the right of private judgment in matters of conduct, the light of Nature, and the tyranny of custom and prejudice, from which this philosophy started, enabled foolish or ill-minded people to hide their vices and caprices beneath the specious mask of systematic thinking. Again, the literature which sprang into existence under the predominance of such theories, was in some respects pernicious, and in many points of view ridiculous. The Conservatives had a definite course before them when they determined to vindicate the purity of Italian diction, to maintain the traditions of a glorious past in art, and to expose the foibles of the Liberal school of thinkers and of writers.