rary
victory, they would be unable to hold their own permanently against
the superior discipline, wealth, and constructive genius of their
subjects; whereas if it was the champions of the people who had
expelled their rivals and seized the plunder, they would be in no
hurry to give up to the merchants the power they had won in their
name. They would regard themselves as entitled to a gratitude not
distinguishable from submission, and would have their own definition
of the degree of influence and power which was now their due. Thus
what had been the people's party among the magnates would aspire, when
victorious, to be the masters of the people, and gradually another
people's party would form itself within their ranks. The wonder is not
that no reconciliations were permanent, but that Cardinal Latino's
reconciliation of 1279 lasted, at least ostensibly, so long as till
1300.

Obviously, if no new forces came upon the field, the only issue from
this general situation must be in the conclusive triumph, not of the
people's faction amongst the magnates, but of the attempt to break
down the opposition of all the magnates to the citizen law, and the
successful absorption of them into the commercial community. In the
"Ordinances of Justice" and the further measures contemplated by
Giano della Bella the requirements of this solution were formulated.
Had they been successfully carried out, the magnates as an independent
order would have been extinguished. Accordingly from 1293 onwards the
fight raged round the Ordinances of Justice. No party, even among the
magnates, dared openly to seek their repeal; but while some supported
them in their integrity with more or less loyalty, others desired to
modify them, or attempted to disembowel them by manipulating the
elections and securing magistrates who would not carry them out. This
was the origin of the Black and White factions. The Blacks were for
circumventing the Ordinances, while the Whites were for carrying them
out and extending their principles.

It will be seen at once how false an impression is given when it is
said that the Whites were moderate Guelfs, inclining to Ghibellinism,
and the Blacks extreme Guelfs. The truth is that the terms of
Ghibelline and Guelf had by this time lost all real political meaning,
but in so far as Guelfism in Florence had ever represented a principle
it was the Whites and not the Blacks that were its heirs. But the
magnates of Florence at the b