I trust, therefore, that these Venetian nobles of the
fifteenth century did, in the main, desire to do judgment and justice to
all men; but, as the whole system of morality had been by this time
undermined by the teaching of the Romish Church, the idea of justice had
become separated from that of truth, so that dissimulation in the
interest of the state assumed the aspect of duty. We had, perhaps,
better consider, with some carefulness, the mode in which our own
government is carried on, and the occasional difference between
parliamentary and private morality, before we judge mercilessly of the
Venetians in this respect. The secrecy with which their political and
criminal trials were conducted, appears to modern eyes like a confession
of sinister intentions; but may it not also be considered, and with more
probability, as the result of an endeavor to do justice in an age of
violence?--the only means by which Law could establish its footing in
the midst of feudalism. Might not Irish juries at this day justifiably
desire to conduct their proceedings with some greater approximation to
the judicial principles of the Council of Ten? Finally, if we examine,
with critical accuracy, the evidence on which our present impressions of
Venetian government are founded, we shall discover, in the first place,
that two-thirds of the traditions of its cruelties are romantic fables:
in the second, that the crimes of which it can be proved to have been
guilty, differ only from those committed by the other Italian powers in
being done less wantonly, and under profounder conviction of their
political expediency: and lastly, that the final degradation of the
Venetian power appears owing not so much to the principles of its
government, as to their being forgotten in the pursuit of pleasure.
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