and proposed
that twenty chief men of the city should have dictatorial authority
given them, by force of which they should for one year choose all
magistrates, and set the frame of government in order. And the people
shouted their assent, and felt themselves the electors of the Twenty.
This kind of "parliament" was a very old Florentine fashion, by which
the will of the few was made to seem the choice of the many.

The shouting in the Piazza was soon at an end, but not so the debating
inside the palace: was Florence to have a Great Council after the
Venetian mode, where all the officers of government might be elected,
and all laws voted by a wide number of citizens of a certain age and of
ascertained qualifications, without question of rank or party? or, was
it to be governed on a narrower and less popular scheme, in which the
hereditary influence of good families would be less adulterated with the
votes of shopkeepers. Doctors of law disputed day after day, and far on
into the night. Messer Pagolantonio Soderini alleged excellent reasons
on the side of the popular scheme; Messer Guidantonio Vespucci alleged
reasons equally excellent on the side, of a more aristocratic form. It
was a question of boiled or roast, which had been prejudged by the
palates of the disputants, and the excellent arguing might have been
protracted a long while without any other result than that of deferring
the cooking. The majority of the men inside the _palace_, having power
already in their hands, agreed with Vespucci, and thought change should
be moderate; the majority outside the palace, conscious of little power
and many grievances, were less afraid of change.

And there was a force outside the palace which was gradually tending to
give the vague desires of that majority the character of a determinate
will. That force was the preaching of Savonarola. Impelled partly by
the spiritual necessity that was laid upon him to guide the people, and
partly by the prompting of public-men who could get no measures carried
without his aid, he was rapidly passing in his daily sermons from the
general to the special--from telling his hearers that they must postpone
their private passions and interests to the public good, to telling them
precisely what sort of government they must have in order to promote
that good--from "Choose whatever is best for all" to "Choose the Great
Council," and "the Great Council is the will of God."

To Savonarola the