During his administration, the Venetian code was, in some degree, reformed and abridged. One of the greatest inconveniences of freedom, is the number of laws necessary to protect the life and property of each citizen; the natural consequences of which are, a multitude of lawyers, with all the suits and vexations which they create; “les peines, les déspenses, les longueurs, les dangers mêmes de la justice,” says Montesquieu, “sont le prix que chaque citoyen donne pour sa liberté.” The more freedom remains in a State, of the higher importance will the life and property of each citizen be considered. A despotic government counts the life of a citizen as of no importance at all. The Doge Theipolo, who had himself been a lawyer, as many of the Venetian nobles at that time were, bestowed infinite labour in arranging and illuminating the vast chaos of laws and regulations in which the jurisprudence of a republic, so jealous of her liberty, had been involved. After a long reign, he abdicated the government; and, to prevent the inconveniency which had happened at his election, the number of electors, by a new decree of the senate, was augmented to forty-one. In the reign of his successor, Marino Marsini, two judges, called Criminal Judges of the Night, were appointed. Their function is to judge of what are called nocturnal crimes, under which denomination are reckoned robberies, wilful fire, rapes, and bigamy. We find also, that Jews lying with Christian women, is enumerated among nocturnal crimes; though, by an unjustifiable partiality, a Christian man lying with a Jewish woman, whether by night or day, is not mentioned as any crime at all. A few years after, in the reign of the Doge Rainier Zeno, four more judges were added to this tribunal; and, during the interregnum which took place at his death, in the year 1268, a new form of electing the Doge was fixed, which, though somewhat complicated, has been observed ever since. All the members of the grand council, who are past thirty years of age, being assembled in the hall of the palace, as many balls are put into an urn as there are members present; thirty of these balls are gilt, and the rest white. Each counsellor draws one; and those who get the gilt balls, go into another room, where there is an urn, containing thirty balls, nine of which are gilt. The thirty members draw again; and those who, by a second piece of good fortune, get the gilt balls, are the _first electors_, and have a right to choose forty, among whom they comprehend themselves.