Those two conspiracies having immediately followed one another, spread an universal diffidence and dread over the city, and gave rise to the court called the Council of Ten, which was erected about this time, merely as a temporary Tribunal, to examine into the causes, punish the accomplices, and destroy the seeds of the late conspiracy; but which, in the sequel, became permanent. I shall wave farther mention of this court, till we come to the period when the State Inquisitors were established; but it is proper to mention, that the Ecclesiastical Court of Inquisition was also erected at Venice, in the reign of the Doge Gradonico. The Popes had long endeavoured to introduce this court into every country in Europe; they succeeded too well in many; but though it was not entirely rejected by the State of Venice, yet it was accepted under such restrictions as have prevented the dismal cruelties which accompany it in other countries. This republic seems, at all times, to have a strong impression of the ambitious and encroaching spirit of the court of Rome; and has, on all occasions, shewn the greatest unwillingness to entrust power in the hands of ecclesiastics. Of this, the Venetians gave an undoubted proof at present; for while they established a new civil Court of Inquisition, with the most unlimited powers, they would not receive the ecclesiastical inquisitions, except on conditions to which it had not been subjected in any other country. The court of Rome never displayed more address than in its attempts to elude those limitations, and to prevail on the senate to admit the inquisition at Venice, on the same footing as it had been received elsewhere; but the senate was as firm as the Pope was artful, and the Court of Inquisition was at last established, under the following conditions: That three commissioners from the Senate should attend the deliberations of that court, none of whose decrees could be executed without the approbation of the commissioners. Those commissioners were to take no oath of fidelity, or engagement of any kind, to the Inquisition; but were bound by oath to conceal nothing from the senate which should pass in the Holy Office. That heresy should be the only crime cognisable by the Inquisition; and, in case of the conviction and condemnation of any criminal, his goods and money should not belong to the court, but to his natural heirs. That Jews and Greeks should be indulged in the exercise of their religion, without being disturbed by this court. The commissioners were to prevent the registration of any statute made at Rome; or any where out of the Venetian State. The Inquisitors were not permitted to condemn books as heretical, without the concurrence of the Senate; nor were they allowed to judge any to be so, but those already condemned by the edict of Clement VIII.