nment
cannot be considered as _absolute slavery_. It only implies a lower and
degraded state of citizenship: such is (with more or less strictness)
the condition of all countries in which an hereditary nobility possess
the exclusive rule. This may be no bad mode of government,--provided
that the personal authority of individual nobles be kept in due bounds,
that their cabals and factions are guarded against with a severe
vigilance, and that the people (who have no share in granting their own
money) are subjected to but light impositions, and are otherwise treated
with attention, and with indulgence to their humors and prejudices.

The republic of Venice is one of those which strictly confines all the
great functions and offices, such as are truly _stale_ functions and
_state_ offices, to those who by hereditary right or admission are noble
Venetians. But there are many offices, and some of them not mean nor
unprofitable, (that of Chancellor is one,) which are reserved for the
_cittadini_. Of these all citizens of Venice are capable. The
inhabitants of the _terra firma_, who are mere subjects of conquest,
that is, as you express it, under the state, but "not a part of it," are
not, however, subjects in so very rigorous a sense as not to be capable
of numberless subordinate employments. It is, indeed, one of the
advantages attending the narrow bottom of their aristocracy, (narrow as
compared with their acquired dominions, otherwise broad enough,) that an
exclusion from such employments cannot possibly be made amongst their
subjects. There are, besides, advantages in states so constituted, by
which those who are considered as of an inferior race are indemnified
for their exclusion from the government, and from nobler employments. In
all these countries, either by express law, or by usage more operative,
the noble castes are almost universally, in their turn, excluded from
commerce, manufacture, farming of land, and in general from all
lucrative civil professions. The nobles have the monopoly of honor; the
plebeians a monopoly of all the means of acquiring wealth. Thus some
sort of a balance is formed among conditions; a sort of compensation is
furnished to those who, in a _limited sense_, are excluded from the
government of the state.

Between the extreme of _a total exclusion_, to which your maxim goes,
and _an universal unmodified capacity_, to which the fanatics pretend,
there are many different degrees and stages, and