industrious people. Until then the richest stuffs had been imported from the East, but from this time forward Venice began to develop a new industry. The fugitive families were received not only with courtesy, but with something like enthusiasm. The Senate assigned them a quarter in the Calle della Bissa, between the square of the Rialto and the church of Saint John Chrysostom, allowing them to govern themselves with their own magistrates, on condition that they should teach their art to the Venetians. The same courtesies were extended in the case of German and Armenian colonies. The race of Venetian citizens in this way received a new element, with new prospects of life and industry, by the introduction of the best element that could possibly have come to Venice from without. The Jews, however, attempted in vain at the same time to obtain the same liberty of existence in Venice. After being barely tolerated during fifty years, and kept under the closest supervision, they were at the end of the fourteenth century ignominiously expelled from the city, and obliged to keep within the confines of Mestre. I have not been able to discover the date at which they were again allowed to reside within the city in the quarter which is still pointed out as theirs.
A singular circumstance, already noticed in passing, presents itself in connection with all the conspiracies of the fourteenth century. The people continually sided with the nobles who had deprived them of their power, and they outnumbered them and were superior to them in strength and moral force. They never lent any important help to any one who attempted to rouse rebellion against the existing civil order. It can hardly be supposed that this was the result of indolence, or of a lack of patriotism, since the Venetians were naturally very proud and extremely energetic. They seem to have considered themselves as bound to the aristocracy by the bond of gratitude, of common memories, and of common hopes; and while they led an existence of generous comfort and ease, it satisfied them to be joint possessors of a country which had grown glorious in Europe. They looked upon the Venetian nobility as the first in the world, and Molmenti says, with truth, that the surnames of certain great Venetian families not yet extinct existed before the names of even reigning families were known in the rest of Europe. Until quite modern times, the ‘people’ very rarely gave any trouble unless they were hungry.
Sagredo.
It has already been noticed here that in the other Italian republics the great houses had nothing in common with the people they ruled—neither their origin, nor their traditional points or view, nor even as a rule their interests; and more than once they showed themselves ready to sell their country to the highest bidder, regarding it as their adoptive rather than their real home, and the population as property that went with the fields.
But the nobles of Venice were true Venetians, and their ancestors had led those of their own people, by sheer superiority, before Venice had been founded; and the government of the islands had in reality been always aristocratic. The people had really never had much to say beyond confirming by a sort of acclamation the result of elections held by the nobles. The individual elected was sure to be one of the latter, chosen for his courage in war, or for his pious generosity in founding a church or a monastery in time of peace.
The Serrata only made a law of a practice which had existed a long time; and this sufficiently explains why the people did not rebel against it, accepting laws which only affected formalities, without in any way threatening the true sources of the Republic’s vitality. The nobles legally monopolised a power which they had always succeeded in reserving for themselves; but the State did not monopolise commerce, nor industry, except as regards the salt trade and shipbuilding, and in these occupations the workmen received such compensation that many of them grew rich.
Furthermore, the government supported all persons not able to work for themselves. Men and women who had reached an age at which heavy manual labour was no longer possible, but who were not helpless enough to do nothing, were licensed to sell vegetables and fruit in the public squares; but the State and the guilds supported regular asylums for the aged and infirm, for cripples, for widows, and for old sailors. Every one felt that the State could be relied upon, and no one feared to die of hunger.
The closing of the Great Council might affect the ambitious designs of a few men who had recently grown
