Those commercial casuists declared, that religion is one thing, and trade another; that, as children of the church, they were willing to believe all that their mother required; but, as merchants, they must carry their goods to the best market.
In my next, I shall proceed with my review of the Venetian government.
LETTER IX.
Venice.
The minds of the Venetians were not so totally engrossed by commercial ideas, as to make them neglect other means of aggrandizing their state. All Istria submitted itself to their government: many of the free towns of Dalmatia, harassed by the Narentines, a nation of robbers and pirates on that coast, did the same. Those towns which refused, were reduced to obedience, by Peter Urseolo, the Doge of Venice, who had been sent with a fleet against them, in the year 1000. He carried his arms also into the country of the Narentines, and destroyed many of their towns.
On his return it was determined, in a general assembly of the people, that the conquered towns and provinces should be governed by magistrates sent from Venice. Those magistrates called Podestas, were appointed by the Doge. The inhabitants of those new-acquired towns were not admitted to the privileges of citizens of Venice, nor allowed to vote at the general assembly: the same rule was observed with regard to the inhabitants of all the dominions afterwards acquired by the republic. It will readily occur, that this accession of dominions to the state greatly augmented the influence and power of the chief magistrate: this, and the practice of associating the son of the Doge with his father, raised jealousies among the people, and a law was made, abolishing such associations for the future.
In the year 1173, after the assassination of the Doge Michieli, a far more important alteration took place in the government. At this time there was no other tribunal at Venice than that of forty judges. This court had been established many years before: it took cognizance of all causes, civil as well as criminal, and was called the council of forty. This body of men, in the midst of the disorder and confusion which followed the murder of the Doge, formed a plan of new-modelling the government.
Hitherto the people had retained great privileges. They had votes in the assemblies; and, although the descendants of the ancient tribunes, and of the Doges, formed a kind of nobility, yet they had no legal privileges, or exclusive jurisdiction; nothing to distinguish them from their fellow-citizens, but what their riches, or the spontaneous respect paid to the antiquity of their families, gave them. Any citizen, as well as they, might be elected to a public office. To acquire the honours of the state, it was absolutely necessary for the greatest and proudest Venetian, to cultivate the good-will of the multitude, whose voice alone could raise him to the rank of Doge, and whose rage had thrown so many from that envied situation. The inconveniences, the discord, and confusion, of such a mixed multitude, had been long felt, but nobody had hitherto had the boldness to strike at this established right of the people.