When Neri Capponi, who still acted as a counterbalance, though a very weak one, to the Medicean authority, died, November 22, 1457, at the age of sixty-nine, the prevailing party had already begun to divide. The old opponents were entirely annihilated, most of their chiefs dead and their families impoverished; the anxieties in which the long wars, first with the Visconti, then with Venice, had kept the government and the people, had been ended by the peace of 1454, which we shall mention later. Those who had held together in the face of danger, relaxed after safety had been gained. Cosimo’s supremacy was burdensome to the aristocratic partizans of the Medici. They demanded that the extraordinary powers with which he had governed since 1434 should be terminated. Cosimo consented. The Balia, renewed only two years ago, was declared extinct in the summer of 1455, and the members of the Signoria were again drawn by lot like other magistrates. Giovanni Rucellai, a deserving man, was the first who thus received the office of Gonfaloniere. The people, who hated every appearance of arbitrary power, desired a return to the old forms as much as those who had caused the changes, but the latter soon perceived that the greater freedom was more apparent than real; for when the ballot-boxes were filled with the names of such as held to Cosimo, the latter attained his ends without appearing on the stage. The revision of the registers revealed this. Then, according to the decree laid down when these were instituted, a revision ought to have been held every three years, but this had only happened in 1433. One of the restrictions put upon the extraordinary commission (Balia) of that year had been that it neither had power to change the ballot-boxes nor to abolish the registers, but at Cosimo’s return no such limits were put to the authority of his partisans, and they returned indeed to the ancient arbitrary system which the law of 1427 had been meant to do away with. Instead of a firm base of taxation, party spirit and party manœuvres prevailed. The measures resorted to had the double aim of ruining antagonists, or such as were suspected, and of gaining the lower classes. The most offensive of these measures, one which had been in contemplation during the mob-government of 1378, was the adoption of a progressive scale, which, by dividing the citizens into fourteen classes, ascended from a trifling imposition to fifty per cent of the supposed income, which was fixed by arbitration. Moreover, taxation was not limited as to time, but depended entirely on the want of means alleged by Government. The continuous wars which led the enemy at times into the interior of the country, caused a constant drain upon the revenue. One war-tax after another was proclaimed, and the results by no means corresponded always with the demand. In the summer of 1442 no less than 180,000 gold florins were paid as a reward to Francesco Sforza for his support