They had innovated on a generally received principle, and they cannot claim the distinction of being either the first or the last who have imagined that to take the incipient steps in political improvement is at once to reach the goal of perfection.

Venice had no doctrine of divine right, and as her prince was little more than a pageant, she boldly laid claim to be called a Republic.

She believed that a representation of the most prominent and brilliant interests in society was the paramount object of government, and faithful to the seductive but dangerous error, she mistook to the last, collective power for social happiness.
It may be taken as a governing principle, in all civil relations, that the strong will grow stronger and the feeble more weak, until the first become unfit to rule or the last unable to endure.

In this important truth is contained the secret of the downfall of all those states which have crumbled beneath the weight of their own abuses.

It teaches the necessity of widening the foundations of society until the base shall have a breadth capable of securing the just representation of every interest, without which the social machine is liable to interruption from its own movement, and eventually to destruction from its own excesses.
Venice, though ambitious and tenacious of the name of a republic, was, in truth, a narrow, a vulgar, and an exceedingly heartless oligarchy.