Before the Fieschi insurrection extraordinary imposts and forced loans were unknown. The customs were collected on principles of equity. It was wonderful to see the finances in healthful equilibrium, while the strife of faction raged so fiercely. The city added a fleet and an army to its forces at the cost of only four hundred and seventeen thousand lire, and the entire income of the government was only four hundred and thirty-five thousand lire. Love of country and not private interest ruled the hearts of the citizens; public services were either gratuitous or very slightly paid. In 1461, the annual pay of the Doge was less than twelve thousand lire, with three thousand more for office and secret expenses; that of the commander of the city guards was only four thousand lire; and other salaries were in proportion.
But purity of manners disappeared when the foreign power was consolidated, and the mechanism of the State was altered to suit the character of our masters. To pervert the plebeians, the Senate established the lottery (the first in Italy) in 1550, under the name of Borse della Ventura and it was so profitable to the treasury that an impost of sixty-thousand lire was collected from it, and the sum was increased year by year until it reached three hundred and sixty thousand.
Genoa, like Venice, committed the great error of oppressing her dependencies with heavy imposts instead of treating them with generous liberality. As early as 1539, a tax of four denari was levied on every pint of wine and it soon after increased to eight soldi on each mezzarola. Later, that is in 1588, the duty on salt was raised to a crown per mina. Three per cent. was imposed on incomes, and a tax was levied on fruits, and also on paper of which a large amount was exported to foreign countries. These taxes were light in comparison with the murderous taxation of our times, but they were none the less annoying to citizens unused to the visits of tax-gatherers. It had not been customary to drain the money of the poor, but the rich paid in proportion to their splendid fortunes or new columns were opened in the bank of St. George.
The governors of this bank, seeing the Republic restricted to a few families and the Ottoman power becoming master of the seas, wisely returned to the state (1562) Corsica, the cities of Ventimiglia and Sarzana, with its strong castles, the burgh of Levanto and the populous valley of Teico.
Our rich citizens lent their fortunes at high interest to the government of Spain; but the industries which had been the life of the people gradually declined.
In the first years of the century, Liguria was in its most flourishing condition. The smallest hamlets had profitable industries and trade. On the Western Riviera, Taggia was famous for its Muscatelle wines which Alberti says were not inferior to those of Candia and Cyprus. The trade in them was very active. Oneglia was prosperous, and Diana sometimes produced twenty thousand barrels of oil in a single year. Albenga, though its air was unwholesome (whence the proverb of the time,) “Albenga piana, se fosse sana si domanderebbe stella Diana,” was rich in the produce of its fruitful soil. There was universal movement, industry, wealth. But it was of short duration; the new system of government dried up all the fountains of our riches. In 1597, Genoa was reduced to sixty-one thousand inhabitants; Savona which had once counted thirty-six thousand citizens, in 1560 numbered only fourteen thousand, and in 1625, the number had fallen to eight thousand. The decrease was in this proportion throughout the Republic. Campanella had good cause to say to Genoa:—“Leave your markets, your gains, your barren glories! Blush for the riches of your citizens which contrast so terribly with the misery of the Republic.”
The foreign influence slowly killed the manly virtues of the Genoese. Italy no longer existed. We had a corrupt people in a corrupt state. All care was given to externals; every free thought was a crime; we were vile and called our vileness love of peace, and our indolence, moderation; religion had become a superstition, and the rites of the church merely a ladder to worldly preferment. Luxury and parade were unparalleled; but poverty was seen through the pompous vestments. The first born was rich, but his brothers were usurers or celibates in the cloisters. In their vanity and degradation, the great forgot that they had a country. Trade seemed ignominious to our princes and nobles, and they believed that their names at the foot of a bill of exchange would make a bad figure in history. This beggared many families to whom false pride closed the paths by which their fathers had become great. Knightly virtues disappeared; noble blood alone opened the paths to eminence, and this was carried to such extremes that our patricians refused to have for archbishop Belmosto, only because his name was not in the book of gold. They were at once proud and ridiculous. In 1576, a Nicolò Doria became Doge and first took the title of Serenissimo and severe penalties forbade even the notaries to call other persons than nobles—however illustrious and wealthy they might be—by the title Magnifico. The notarial profession[54] itself was pronounced in certain cases ignoble and mechanical. In the smaller towns the same folly prevailed. In Ventimiglia and Finale, there were streets, porches and walks to which the plebeians were not admitted. Genoa was only a shadow, a pretence of a Republic.
Our wars and intestine struggles, our magnanimous enterprises abroad, were succeeded by a servile tranquility. Our masters preferred their gilded saloons to the dust of honourable fields; they lent their money at usurious interest, and got titles and degrading premiums for their baseness. There were, it is true, some naval engagements, but there were no real wars. And this was the supreme misfortune; for long peace wastes the strength of peoples and destroys both the habit and the courage of noble enterprises. There lingered among us arts, letters, wealth and trade; but the manly virtues were extinct.
The foreign leprosy gradually changed the character of our plebeians; they began to tremble before the powerful from whom they were separated by an immense interval. The two classes had nothing in common but vices and the habit of servility. Universal corruption produced great crimes and long catalogues of malefactors were often published. Nor was this in Liguria alone; all the provinces of the Peninsula were involved in a common demoralization. Assassins and robbers collected, not merely in bands, but in armies, and desolated the country and even the cities. They were led by trained warriors such as Alfonso Piccolomini, Corsietto del Sambuco—who ventured to the very gates of Rome—and Marco Sciarra who in Calabria took the title of king. Let no one suppose that the numerous altars, crucifixes and images of Mary prove the piety of our ancestors. They are witnesses for quite the contrary; in the midst of innumerable crimes perpetrated in open day, these religious emblems protected the citizen from the knife of the assassin who was too superstitious to smite him at the foot of the altar.
Religion was then only a superstition and a terror. A multitude of books appeared full of the wildest vagaries that fanaticism ever produced. For example, there were the prophecies of S. Brigida threatening the city with destruction! and through such follies the cunning generation of men, who live upon hypocrisy, mystery and the dead, amassed large fortunes. Their instructions were idle speculations and appeals to human fears. In those days, patrician and jesuit intrigues collected their followers in a little church situated in the Corsa del Diavolo and bound themselves by an oath to support for public offices only those of their own faction. An opposite faction organized, and from their standard—a black crucifix—were called Moro delle Fucine. This was the origin of those pagan saturnalia which survive in our times under the name of Casaccie.