cause of the stability of Venice lies rather in a combination of
circumstances which were found in union nowhere else. Unassailable from
its position, it had been able from the beginning to treat of foreign
affairs with the fullest and calmest reflection, and ignore nearly
altogether the parties which divided the rest of Italy, to escape the
entanglement of permanent alliances, and to set the highest price on
those which it thought fit to make. The keynote of the Venetian
character was, consequently, a spirit of proud and contemptuous
isolation, which, joined to the hatred felt for the city by the other
States of Italy, gave rise to a strong sense of solidarity within The
inhabitants meanwhile were united by the most powerful ties of interest
in dealing both with the colonies and with the possessions on the
mainland, forcing the population of the latter, that is, of all the
towns up to Bergamo, to buy and sell in Venice alone. A power which
rested on means so artificial could only be maintained by internal
harmony and unity; and this conviction was so widely diffused among the
citizens that conspirators found few elements to work upon. And the
discontented, if there were such, were held so far apart by the
division between the noble and the burgher that a mutual understanding
was not easy. On the other hand, within the ranks of the nobility
itself, travel, commercial enterprise, and tb^ incessant wars with the
Turks saved the wealthy and dangerous from that fruitful source of
conspiracies idleness. In these wars they were spared, often to a
criminal extent, by the general in command, and the fall of the city
was predicted by a Venetian Cato, if this fear of the nobles 'to give o
ne another pain' should continue at the expense of justice.
Nevertheless this free movement in the open air gave the Venetian
aristocracy, as a whole, a healthy bias.

And when envy and ambition called for satisfaction, an official victim