come for the Albizzi to attempt an oligarchy, and for the Medici to
begin the enslavement of the State.

V

The Constitution of Florence offered many points of weakness to the
attacks of such intriguers. In the first place it was in its origin
not a political but an industrial organisation--a simple group of
guilds invested with the sovereign authority. Its two most powerful
engines, the Gonfalonier of Justice and the Guelf College, had been
formed, not with a view to the preservation of the government, but
with the purpose of quelling the nobles and excluding a detested
faction. It had no permanent head, like the Doge of Venice; no fixed
senate like the Venetian Grand Council; its chief magistrates, the
Signory, were elected for short periods of two months, and their mode
of election was open to the gravest criticism. Supposed to be chosen
by lot, they were really selected from lists drawn up by the factions
in power from time to time. These factions contrived to exclude the
names of all but their adherents from the bags, or _borse_, in which
the burghers eligible for election had to be inscribed. Furthermore,
it was not possible for this shifting Signory to conduct affairs
requiring sustained effort and secret deliberation; therefore recourse
was being continually had to dictatorial Commissions. The people,
summoned in parliament upon the Great Square, were asked to confer
plenipotentiary authority upon a committee called _Balia_, who
proceeded to do what they chose in the State, and who retained power
after the emergency for which they were created passed away. The same
instability in the supreme magistracy led to the appointment of
special commissioners for war, and special councils, or _Pratiche_,
for the management of each department. Such supplementary commissions
not only proved the weakness of the central authority, but they were
always liable to be made the instruments of party warfare. The Guelf
College was another and a different source of danger to the State. Not
acting under the control of the Signory, but using its own initiative,
this powerful body could proscribe and punish burghers on the mere
suspicion of Ghibellinism. Though the Ghibelline faction had become an
empty name, the Guelf College excluded from the franchise all and
every whom they chose on any pretext to admonish. Under this mild
phrase, _to admonish_, was concealed a cruel exercise of tyranny--it
meant to warn a man that he was susp