Having, with equal dexterity and success, fixed those restraints on the power of the people, the council of forty turned their attention, in the next place, towards limiting the authority of the Doge. This was considered as too exorbitant, even for good men; and, in the hands of wicked men, had always been perverted to the purposes of tyranny, and for which no remedy had hitherto been found, but what was almost as bad as the evils themselves; revolt on the part of the people, and all the horrors and excesses with which such an expedient is usually accompanied. The tribunal of forty therefore proposed, that the grand council should annually appoint six persons, one from each division of the city, who should form the privy council of the Doge, and, without their approbation, none of his orders should be valid; so that, instead of appointing his own privy-council, which had been the custom hitherto, the authority of the chief magistrate would, for the future, in a great measure, depend on six men, who, themselves, depended on the grand council. To be constantly surrounded by such a set of counsellors, instead of creatures of his own, however reasonable it may seem in the eyes of the impartial, would have been considered by one in possession of the dignity of Doge, as a most intolerable innovation, and probably would have been opposed by all his influence; but there was no Doge existing when the proposal was made, and consequently it passed into a law with universal approbation. Lastly, it was proposed to form a senate, consisting of sixty members, which were to be elected, annually, out of the grand council. This assembly was in the room of that which the Doge formerly had the power of convocating, on extraordinary occasions, by sending messages, praying certain citizens to come, and assist him with their advice. The members of the new senate, more fixed and more independent than those of the old, are still called the Pregadi. This also was agreed to without opposition; and immediately after the funeral of the late Doge, all those regulations took place. They began by choosing the grand council of four hundred and seventy, then the senate of sixty, then the six counsellors, and lastly, the eleven electors. These last were publicly sworn, that in the election now entrusted to them, rejecting every motive of private interest, they should give their voices for that person, whose elevation to the dignity of Doge they believed, in their consciences, would prove most for the advantage of the State.