About this time a Soranzo
was hanged, though not in Venice itself, for sacrilege, and a Contarini
put in chains for burglary; another of the same family came in 1499
before the Signory, and complained that for many years he had been
without an office, that he had only sixteen ducats a year and nine
children, that his debts amounted to sixty ducats, that he knew no
trade and had lately been turned into the streets. We can understand
why some of the wealthier nobles built houses, sometimes whole rows of
them, to provide free lodging for their needy comrades. Such works
figure in wills among deeds of charity.
But if the enemies of Venice ever founded serious hopes upon abuses of
this kind, they were greatly in error. It might be thought that the
commercial activity of the city, which put within reach of the humblest
a rich reward for their labor, and the colonies on the eastern shores
of the Mediterranean would have diverted from political affairs the
dangerous elements of society. But had not the political history of
Genoa, notwithstanding similar advantages, been of the stormiest? The
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.
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