Chapter 22

"A Clifford, a Clifford! we'll follow the king and Clifford."
HENRY VI.

The tranquillity of the best ordered society may be disturbed, at any
time, by a sudden outbreaking of the malcontents. Against such a
disaster there is no more guarding than against the commission of more
vulgar crimes; but when a government trembles for its existence, before
the turbulence of popular commotion, it is reasonable to infer some
radical defect in its organization. Men will rally around their
institutions, as freely as they rally around any other cherished
interest, when they merit their care, and there can be no surer sign of
their hollowness than when the rulers seriously apprehend the breath of
the mob. No nation ever exhibited more of this symptomatic terror, on
all occasions of internal disturbance, than the pretending Republic of
Venice. There was a never-ceasing and a natural tendency to dissolution,
in her factious system, which was only resisted by the alertness of her
aristocracy, and the political buttresses which their ingenuity had
reared. Much was said of the venerable character of her polity, and of
its consequent security, but it is in vain that selfishness contends
with truth. Of all the fallacies with which man has attempted to gloss
his expedients, there is none more evidently false than that which
infers the duration of a social system, from the length of time it has
already lasted. It would be quite as reasonable to affirm that the man
of seventy has the same chances for life as the youth of fifteen, or
that the inevitable fate of all things of mortal origin was not
destruction. There is a period in human existence when the principle of
vitality has to contend with the feebleness of infancy, but this
probationary state passed, the child attains the age when it has the
most reasonable prospect of living. Thus the social, like any other
machine, which has run just long enough to prove its fitness, is at the
precise period when it is least likely to fail, and although he that is
young may not live to become old, it is certain that he who is old was
once young. The empire of China was, in its time, as youthful as our own
republic, nor can we see any reason for believing that it is to outlast
us, from the decrepitude which is a natural companion of its years.

At the period of our tale, Venice boasted much of her antiquity, and
dreaded, in an equal degree, her end. She was still strong in her
combinations, but they were combinations that had the vicious error of
being formed for the benefit of the minority, and which, like the mimic
fortresses and moats of a scenic representation, needed only a strong
light to destroy the illusion. The alarm with which the patricians heard
the shouts of the