A profound stillness succeeded.  The halberdiers maintained their rigid attitudes within the shadow of the wall, looking like two insensible statues in the attire and armor of the age, while Jacopo and his companion occupied the centre of the room with scarcely more of the appearance of consciousness and animation.  It may be well to explain here to the reader some of the peculiar machinery of the State, in the country of which we write, and which is connected with the scene that is about to follow:  for the name of a Republic, a word which, if it mean anything, strictly implies the representation and supremacy of the general interests, but which has so frequently been prostituted to the protection and monopolies of privileged classes, may have induced him to believe that there was at least a resemblance between the outlines of that government, and the more just, because more popular, institutions of his own country.

In an age when rulers were profane enough to assert, and the ruled weak enough to allow, that the right of a man to govern his fellows was a direct gift from God, a departure from the bold and selfish principle, though it were only in profession, was thought sufficient to give a character of freedom and common sense to the polity of a nation.  This belief is not without some justification, since it establishes in theory, at least, the foundations of government on a base sufficiently different from that which supposes all power to be the property of one, and that one to be the representative of the faultless and omnipotent Ruler of the Universe.  With the first of these principles we have nothing to do, except it be to add that there are propositions so inherently false that they only require to be fairly stated to produce their own refutation; but our subject necessarily draws us into a short digression on the errors of the second as they existed in Venice.

It is probable that when the patricians of St. Mark created a community of political rights in their own body, they believed their State had done all that was necessary to merit the high and generous title it assumed.  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.