to neighboring States. All laws proposed by the
magistrates, or seigniory, had to be ratified by this higher and
selecter council. The higher council was a sort of Senate, the lower
council were more like Representatives. But there was no universal
suffrage. The clerical legislator knew well enough that only the better
and more intelligent part of the people were fit to vote, even in the
election of magistrates. He seems to have foreseen the fatal rock on
which all popular institutions are in danger of being wrecked,--that no
government is safe and respected when the people who make it are
ignorant and lawless. So the constitution which Savonarola gave was
neither aristocratic nor democratic. It resembled that of Venice more
than that of Athens, that of England more than that of the United
States. Strictly universal suffrage is a Utopian dream wherever a
majority of the people are wicked and degraded. Sooner or later it
threatens to plunge any nation, as nations now are, into a whirlpool of
dangers, even if Divine Providence may not permit a nation to be
stranded and wrecked altogether. In the politics of Savonarola we see
great wisdom, and yet great sympathy for freedom. He would give the
people all that they were fit for. He would make all offices elective,
but only by the suffrages of the better part of the people.

But the Prior of St. Mark did not confine himself to constitutional
questions and issues alone. He would remove all political abuses; he
would tax property, and put an end to forced loans and arbitrary
imposts; he would bring about a general pacification, and grant a
general amnesty for political offences; he would guard against the
extortions of the rich, and the usury of the Jews, who lent money at
thirty-three per cent, with compound interest; he secured the
establishment of a bank for charitable loans; he sought to make the
people good citizens, and to advance their temporal as well as spiritual
interests. All his reforms, political or social, were advocated,
however, from the pulpit; so that he was doubtless a political priest.
We, in this country and in these times, have no very great liking to
this union of spiritual and temporal authority: we would separate and
divide this authority. Protestants would make the functions of the ruler
and the priest forever distinct. But at that time the popes themselves
were secular rulers, as well as spiritual dignitaries. All bishops and
abbots had the charge of