REPUBLICS— THE LADDER TO LIBERTY 



241 



burg, Liibeck, Bremen, and Geneva- — ■ 

 only three or four little patches of color 

 to which the name "republics" could 

 properly be applied — the United Nether- 

 lands, the Swiss Confederation, the Re- 

 public of Venice, and the Republic of 

 Genoa. 



At an earlier time there would have 

 been found on the map of Europe a num- 

 ber of Italian city-states, like Florence, 

 Padua, and others, that were called "re- 

 publics," and one great area marked on 

 the map as Poland, which was also called 

 a republic; but in 1776 the Italian repub- 

 lics, with the exception of Venice, had 

 totally lost what liberties they had pre- 

 viously been able to maintain and had 

 become hereditary despotisms, while Po- 

 land, after having been partly partitioned 

 between Prussia, Russia, and Austria, 

 had sought refuge from utter dissolution 

 by becoming in effect a protectorate of 

 Russia. 



With these examples before us, it 

 would be extremely difficult to frame a 

 definition of the word "republic," ex- 

 pressed in positive terms, that would fit 

 all of them; for no two of them were in 

 all respects alike. Not one possessed a 

 written constitution in the modern sense. 

 Not one admitted universal suffrage. 

 The one common characteristic was the 

 negative quality of repudiating an over- 

 lord. 



They were not, as the national mon- 

 archies — with the exception of Britain — 

 at that time were, the private possessions 

 of dynastic rulers, who regarded the ter- 

 ritory over which they ruled as crown 

 estates and their inhabitants as subjects, 

 to be transmitted by heredity from gen- 

 eration to generation or acquired by mar- 

 riage, like ordinary private property. 



In the commonwealths called "repub- 

 lics" the res publico, was considered as 

 vested in the community as a whole, espe- 

 cially with regard to legislation and ad- 

 ministration ; and yet the relation of the 

 individual to the State was not very pre- 

 cisely defined in any one of them. 



The prominence of negative over posi- 

 tive attributes in these eighteenth-century 

 republics is explained by the fact that 

 they were all brought into being by revolt 

 against some form of arbitrary power. 



They were monuments of protest rather 

 than embodiments of a constructive idea. 



VENICE A REPUBLIC IN NAME ONLY 



Venice, the oldest of these four at- 

 tempts at self-government, was founded 

 by refugees from the Italian mainland, 

 who in the fifth century had sought ref- 

 uge from the power of Attila in the 

 islands of the lagoons at the head of 

 the Adriatic. For self-preservation the 

 islanders united, elected a leader, or doge, 

 and formed a new State. This com- 

 munity was long considered as a depend- 

 ency of the Eastern Empire, from which 

 it did not become wholly independent 

 until the tenth century. 



In perpetual conflict with the imperial 

 pretensions of the East or the West, Yen- 

 ice became through commerce and con- 

 quest a great maritime power, dominat- 

 ing not only the Adriatic and the lands 

 bordering upon it, but also many of the 

 ports of Greece, and possessing even a 

 portion of Constantinople, which it held 

 until the capture of that city by the 

 Turks, in 1453, to whom it continued to 

 offer a long and courageous resistance. 

 At the end of the fifteenth century it had 

 become the first maritime power of Eu- 

 rope, an ascendency which it did not en- 

 tirely lose until the discovery of the sea 

 route to India by the Cape dealt its com- 

 merce a death blow by making the Atlan- 

 tic the main highway for Eastern trade. 



Venice was never in reality a democ- 

 racy. The doge, elected for life, in con- 

 junction with the Senate, the Council of 

 Ten, and other aristocratic bodies, ruled 

 at times with almost absolute authority. 



Although the Venetian republic was in 

 no sense a democracy, it is interesting to 

 trace the development of its safeguards 

 of liberty. The perils to which the re- 

 public was exposed required both unity 

 and continuity in the dneetion of its af- 

 fairs. This use of centralized power was 

 confided to the doge, but it was intended 

 that he should never become a monarch. 



Living, he was subject to the advice of 

 the councils and the restraint of many 

 legal limitations ; and, even when dead, 

 his administration was open to review by 

 an examining body, and in case of con- 

 demnation reparation was exacted of his 



