3.
Short of such violent expedients as these, the whole history of towns like Florence reveals a succession of similar attempts.

When, for example, the Medici had been expelled in 1494, the Florentines found themselves without a working constitution, and proceeded to frame one.
The matter was at first referred to two eminent jurists, Guido Antonio Vespucci and Paolo Antonio Soderini, who argued for and against the establishment of a Grand Council on the Venetian model, before the Signory in the Palazzo.

At this juncture Savonarola in his sermon for the third Sunday in Advent[1] suggested that each of the sixteen Companies should form a plan, that these should be submitted to the Gonfaloniers, who should choose the four best, and that from these four the Signory should select the most perfect.

At the same time he pronounced himself in favor of an imitation of the Venetian Consiglio Grande.

His scheme, as is well known, was adopted.[2] Running through the whole political writings of the Florentine philosophers and historians, we find the same belief in artificial and arbitrary alterations of the state.