Venice

by Clara Erskine Clement Waters

Formerly the opinion which Cooper expresses in the "Bravo" found an almost universal echo. After giving an account of the establishment of the Council, he says:

"A political inquisition, which came in time to be one of the most fearful engines of police ever known, was the consequence. An authority as irresponsible as it was absolute was periodically confided to another and still smaller body, which met and exercised its despotic and secret functions under the name of the Council of Three. The choice of these temporary rulers was decided by lot, and in a manner that prevented the result from being known to any but to their own number, and to a few of the most confidential of the more permanent officers of the government. Thus there existed at all times in the heart of Venice a mysterious and despotic power that was wielded by men who moved in society unknown, and apparently surrounded by all the ordinary charities of life; but which, in truth, was influenced by a set of political maxims that were perhaps as ruthless, as tyrannic, and as selfish as ever was invented by the evil ingenuity of man. It was, in short, a power that could only be intrusted, without abuse, to infallible virtue and infinite intelligence, using the terms in a sense limited by human means; and and yet it was here confided to men whose title was founded on the double accident of birth and the colors of balls, and by whom it was wielded without even the check of publicity.

"The Council of Three met in secret, ordinarily issued its decrees without communicating with any other body, and had them enforced with a fearfulness of mystery and a suddenness of execution that resembled the blows of fate. The Doge himself was not superior to its authority, nor protected from its decisions, while it has been known that one of the privileged three has been denounced by his companions.... Thus Venice prided herself on the justice of St. Mark; and few States maintained a greater show, or put forth a more lofty claim to the possession of the sacred quality, than that whose real maxims of government were veiled in a mystery that even the loose morality of the age exacted."

Since this Council is one of the most interesting and characteristic peculiarities of the Venetian government, it is worth while to quote a few authoritative and judicial opinions regarding it, and all the more that we have already cited those most severely against it. Hazlitt,—the able English historian of the Venetian Republic, and a member of the Inner Temple,—in speaking of the time (1335), when the Council of Ten was made permanent, says:—

"The Republic had now enjoyed halcyon days of peace since the return of the Zaratines to their allegiance in 1313. Twenty years of foreign war and domestic convulsion (1293-1313) were thus followed by twenty years of external and internal repose (1313-1333). Dalmatia was tranquillized; Genoa was humiliated. The Lower Empire, though not without its alarming symptoms, was quiescent. The pressure of extraordinary taxes was no longer sensible. Prices were low. Provisions were abundant. Commerce had received an enormous impulse and expansion. The condition of trade was highly flourishing. The upper classes were elated by the development of fresh sources of wealth. The lower orders were exhilarated by the removal of their burdens. It was under these auspicious circumstances that the time was approaching for the dissolution of the Council of Ten.

"The original jurisdiction of this unique tribunal had been of a purely exclusive and strictly transient character. To devise measures for the safety of the State, to obtain by any expedients every new clew to the conspiracy of 1310, to unravel these clews to their source with untiring diligence, to bring to justice all who might have eluded detection, were the objects to which the labors of Decemvirs were directed, and the points to which their cognizance was confined. But the Council, even if its attributes had not been emphatically inquisitorial, showed no disposition to be perfunctory. The line of demarcation, if any such line had existed, was soon obliterated or ignored. Every branch of the Executive was submitted in its turn, under various pretexts, to the novel influence. Nor could it be denied that that influence was exercised, on the whole, to a highly beneficial end. It had been accounted a great revolution when, so recently as 1298, the Great Council succeeded in arrogating to itself the prerogatives which formerly belonged to the people. But the narrow jealousy and distrust, which were gradually growing up in the ranks of the nobility, had long made it palpably evident to the more discerning, that a still higher and still more concentric power must eventually arise to wrest these prerogatives from the hands of the Great Council itself. That power was already found to exist in the Decemvirs. Primarily elected, and constantly renewed by the legislative body on the clearest ground of expediency, the Ten had incessantly striven to popularize themselves, and to strengthen their position by propitiating the lower classes on the one hand, and by turning to account, on the other hand, with unequalled dexterity the disunion among the patricians, to rule that order with a hand of iron. By some the Dictatorship was viewed as an indispensable ingredient in the Constitution; by some it was tolerated as an odious necessity; but all accepted the silent innovation in a spirit of acquiescence. The Decemvirs knew their strength, and they quickly made that strength felt. It was on the 30th of January, 1336, that their commission was about to expire; on the 20th of July, 1335, they caused themselves to be declared a permanent Assembly....

"In the Middle Ages, when an almost total ignorance reigned of civil principles, it was not unnatural that a system pretending to rise above the common level of crude simplicity should be viewed as slightly cabalistic and inscrutable. The Venetian Executive, indeed, displayed the earliest attempt to organize a bureaucratic machinery and a plan for the distribution of public functions; and Venice also led the way in founding the practice of diplomatic etiquette and official routine. The Council of Ten was, perhaps, a constitutional evil; but it was certainly a constitutional necessity. The tribunal was more or less fatal to the political liberty of the Venetians; but it left untouched their civil privileges, and it was highly conducive to the preservation of the national independence. While it was inaccessible to the whispers of treason, it was not a stranger to the softer influences of humanity. Instances were known in which a female suppliant was permitted to penetrate into the Hall of the Decemvirs, and obtained that redress which had been denied to her elsewhere. An instance might be cited in which, when a foreign tyrant had tempted and overcome the virtue even of members of the College, the Ten, alone incorruptible and without a price, provided for the safety of the imperilled State! ... It was not very long after their original institution in 1310 that the Decemvirs resorted, in cases where peculiarly delicate investigation was requisite, to the practice of delegating their powers provisionally and specially to one, two, or three of their number, according to circumstances; and these extraordinary functionaries were known as the 'Inquisitori dei Dieci,' or the Inquisitors of the Ten.... The Capi submitted resolutions to their colleagues, and signed decrees in their name; and the letters purporting to be written by the Doge himself or his secretary were generally composed under their dictation, being forwarded to his Serenity only for subscription. The Inquisitors of the Ten, who were thus nearly coeval with the Ten themselves, may be recognized as the forerunners of the famous 'Inquisitors of State.' But no tribunal existed at Venice under the latter title prior to 1596, nor even then was it clothed with the revolting attributes which have been ascribed to it by ignorance or malignity."

M. Armand Baschet has written a book founded on the Archives of Venice, called "Histoire de la Chancellerie Secrète," which treats of the Senate, the Cabinet, the Council of Ten, and the Inquisitors of State, in their relations to France. It is an exhaustive and learned work; and having quoted an English authority, it is wise also to give a few sentences from this erudite French writer:—

"No institution has been more falsely represented and more misjudged than the Council of Ten. The profound secrecy of its deliberations, to secure which the extremest precautions were always permitted, offered so favorable a subject for invention and exaggeration that pamphleteers and romancers could but seize upon it without reserve. Doubtless this extraordinary tribunal had its dramas, since politics and reasons of State imposed on it the duty of scrutinizing the depths of the heart. Assuredly, also, it had its faults,—for although called supreme, it was not divine, and was therefore liable to err; but to believe that it was established for the calm commission of evil, rather than to prevent or correct it, is one of those extremely gross errors for which the active research into the truth of history—which in our day is zealously carried so far—endeavors to make reparation.

"Was its creation the arbitrary outcome of the heated imagination of a tyrant of the school of Nero? Was it an offensive or defensive weapon invented by this tyrant in order to torment his people? Good sense proves this to have been impossible. The Council of Ten was created by the votes, the discussions, and conclusions of a numerous and intelligent Assembly; strong in its united strength; full of political instincts, which did not ignore the truth that the power which by a vote it was about to establish was created to prevent the dangers which men of great ambitions on the exterior, or revolutionists in the interior, might bring to the Republic.