ing sumptuous
edifices, protecting the arts, and acting in general like a powerful
and irresponsible prince.

In spite of public prosperity there were signs, however, that this
rule of a few families could not last. Their government was only
maintained by continual revision of the lists of burghers, by
elimination of the disaffected, and by unremitting personal industry.
They introduced no new machinery into the Constitution whereby the
people might be deprived of its titular sovereignty, or their own
dictatorship might be continued with a semblance of legality. Again,
they neglected to win over the new nobles (_nobili popolani_) in a
body to their cause; and thus they were surrounded by rivals ready to
spring upon them when a false step should be made. The Albizzi
oligarchy was a masterpiece of art, without any force to sustain it
but the craft and energy of its constructors. It had not grown up,
like the Venetian oligarchy, by the gradual assimilation to itself of
all the vigour in the State. It was bound, sooner or later, to yield
to the renascent impulse of democracy inherent in Florentine
institutions.

VII

Maso degli Albizzi died in 1417. He was succeeded in the government by
his old friend, Niccolo da Uzzano, a man of great eloquence and
wisdom, whose single word swayed the councils of the people as he
listed. Together with him acted Maso's son, Rinaldo, a youth of even
more brilliant talents than his father, frank, noble, and
high-spirited, but far less cautious.

The oligarchy, which these two men undertook to manage, had
accumulated against itself the discontent of overtaxed, disfranchised,
jealous burghers. The times, too, were bad. Pursuing the policy of
Maso, the Albizzi engaged the city in a tedious and unsuccessful war
with Filippo Maria Visconti, which cost 350,000 golden florins, and
brought no credit. In order to meet extraordinary expenses they raised
new public loans, thereby depreciating the value of the old Florentine
funds. "What was worse, they imposed forced subsidies with grievous
inequality upon the burghers, passing over their friends and
adherents, and burdening their opponents with more than could be
borne. This imprudent financial policy began the ruin of the Albizzi.
It caused a clamour in the city for a new system of more just
taxation, which was too powerful to be resisted. The voice of the
people made itself loudly heard; and with the people on this occasion
sided Giovanni