It is not safe for a noble Venetian to acquire, in a high degree, the love and confidence of the common people. This excites the jealousy of the Inquisitors, and proves a pretty certain means of excluding him from any of the high offices. A Government which displays so much distrust and suspicion where there is little or no ground, will not fail to shew marks of the same disposition where, in the general opinion, there is some reason to be circumspect. Ecclesiastics, of every denomination, are excluded, by the constitution of Venice, from a place in the Senate, or holding any civil office whatever; nor is it permitted them, directly or indirectly, to intermeddle in State affairs. In many instances, they are deprived of that kind of influence which, even in Protestant countries, is allowed to the clergy. The Patriarch of Venice has not the disposal of the offices belonging to St. Mark’s church: all the Deans are named by the Doge and Senate. Though it is forbid to the nobility, and to the clergy, to hold any conversation with strangers upon politics, or affairs of State; yet it is remarked, the gondoleers are exceeding ready to talk upon these, or any other subjects, with all who give them the smallest encouragement. Those who are not in the immediate service of any particular nobleman, are often retained by Government, like the Valets de place at Paris, as spies upon strangers. It is said, that while those fellows row their gondolas, in seeming inattention to the conversation, they are taking notice of every thing which is said, that they may report it to their employers, when they imagine it any way concerns the Government. If this is true, those are to be pitied who are obliged to listen to all the stuff that such politicians may be supposed to relate. As soon as a stranger arrives, the gondoleers who brought him to Venice immediately repair to a certain office, and give information where they took him up, to what house they conducted him, and of any other particulars they may have picked up. All those precautions recalled to my memory the garrison of Darmstadt, of which I gave you an account in a letter from that place, where the strictest duty is kept up by day and night, in winter as well as summer, and every precaution used, as if an enemy were at the gates; though no mortal has the smallest design against the place, and though it is perfectly understood by all the inhabitants, that if an army was in reality to come with hostile intentions, the town could not hold out a week. In the same manner, I cannot help thinking, that all this jealousy and distrust, those numerous engines set a going, and all this complicated system for the discovery of plots, and the defence of the constitution of this republic, serves only to harass their own subjects. Their constitution is certainly in no such danger as to require such an apparatus of machines to defend it, unless, indeed, the Emperor were to