nd the Consiglio del Comune, about which see
Nardi, lib i. cap. 4.

[3] For the operation of the Parlamento and Balia, see Varchi, vol.
ii. p. 372; Segni, p. 199; Nardi, lib. vi. cap. 4. Segni says: 'The
Parlamento is a meeting of the Florentine people on the Piazza of
the Signory. When the Signory has taken its place to address the
meeting, the piazza is guarded by armed men, and then the people are
asked whether they wish to give absolute power (Balia) and authority
to the citizens named, for their good. When the answer, yes,
prompted partly by inclination and partly by compulsion, is
returned, the Signory immediately retires into the palace. This is
all that is meant by this parlamento, which thus gives away the full
power of effecting a change in the state.' The description given by
Marco Foscari, p. 44 (loc. cit. supr.) is to the same effect, but
the Venetian exposes more clearly the despotic nature of the
institution in the hands of the Medici. It is well known how hostile
Savonarola was to an institution which had lent itself so easily to
despotism. This couplet he inscribed on the walls of the Council
Chamber, in 1495:--

'E sappi che chi vuol parlamento
Vuol torti dalle mani il reggimento.'

Compare the proverb, 'Chi disse parlamento disse guastamento.'

This tyranny of a commercial family, swaying the republic without the
title and with but little of the pomp of princes, subsisted until the
hereditary presidency of the state was conferred upon Alessandro de'
Medici, Duke of Civita di Penna, in 1531. Cosimo his successor, obtained
the rank of Grand Duke from Pius V. in 1569, and his son received the
imperial sanction to the title in 1575. The re-establishment at two
different periods of a free commonwealth upon the sounder basis of the
Consiglio Grande (1494-1512 and 1527-30) formed but two episodes in the
history of this masked but tenacious despotism. Had Savonarola's
constitution been adopted in the thirteenth instead of at the end of the
fifteenth century, the stability of Florence might have been secured.
But at the latter date the roots of the Medicean influence were too
widely intertwined with private interests, the jealousies of classes and
of factions were too inveterate, for any large and wholesome form of
popular government to be universally acceptable. Besides, the burghers
had been reduced to a nerveless equa