The republic of Venice is somewhat more moderate; yet even here, so heavy is the _aristocratic_ yoke, that the nobles have been obliged to enervate the spirit of their subjects by every sort of debauchery; they have denied them the liberty of reason, and they have made them amends by what a base soul will think a more valuable liberty, by not only allowing, but encouraging them to corrupt themselves in the most scandalous manner.

They consider their subjects as the farmer does the hog he keeps to feast upon.

He holds him fast in his sty, but allows him to wallow as much as he pleases in his beloved filth and gluttony.
So scandalously debauched a people as that of Venice is to be met with nowhere else.

High, low, men, women, clergy, and laity, are all alike.
The ruling nobility are no less afraid of one another than they are of the people; and, for that reason, politically enervate their own body by the same effeminate luxury by which they corrupt their subjects.

They are impoverished by every means which can be invented; and they are kept in a perpetual terror by the horrors of a state inquisition.