We have already mentioned to what a degree of
barbarism the peasants elsewhere could sink in times of political
confusion.
A worse symptom than brigandage of the morality of that time was the
frequency of paid assassination. In that respect Naples was admitted to
stand at the head of all the cities of Italy. 'Nothing,' says Pontano,
'is cheaper here than human life.' But other districts could also show
a terrible list of these crimes. It is hard, of course, to classify
them according to the motives by which they were prompted, since
political expediency, personal hatred, party hostility, fear, and
revenge, all play into one another. It is no small honour to the
Florentines, the most highly developed people of Italy, that offenses
of this kind occurred more rarely among them than anywhere else,
perhaps because there was a justice at hand for legitimate grievances
which was recognized by all, or because the higher culture of the
individual gave him different views as to the right of men to interfere
with the decrees of fate. In Florence, if anywhere, men were able to
feel the incalculable consequences of a deed of blood, and to
understand how uncertain the author of a so-called profitable crime is
of any true and lasting gain. After the fall of Florentine liberty,
assassination, especially by hired agents, seems to have rapidly
increased, and continued till the government of Grand Duke Cosimo I de'
Medici had attained such strength that the police were at last able to
repress it.
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