The position of Venice at this time may be not inaptly compared with that of Rome when, after the annexation of Sicily, she found herself obliged to inaugurate that system of provincial government which she ever afterwards followed. But Venice was not Rome, and even if the Venetians had possessed the qualities of the Romans in addition to their own, they could not have succeeded as the Romans did, since in Genoa and Pisa they had competitors as civilised and as wealthy as themselves and far more numerous. Rome went on and conquered the world; Venice drew back in the face of a manifest impossibility, retiring, with much common sense and not a little dignity, from a career of successful conquest to the less brilliant but more stable condition of a commercial people. The Venetian senate after due deliberation gave up all idea of retaining possession of the new conquests, and in the year 1207 issued an edict authorising all Venetian citizens to fit out at their own expense armed expeditions to seize anything they could in the Greek archipelago or on the Greek coast; the Republic bound itself to leave each individual adventurer the lands or cities he was able to take, as his property in perpetual fee, reserving itself only the right of sovereign protection. It is true that the coast and the islands named in this edict formed a part of Venice’s share in the division of the Eastern Empire, yet I doubt whether at any time in the history of nations any government has ventured to issue such a wholesale charter to piracy, and none was ever more literally interpreted. As for the short-lived Empire of the Latins in Constantinople, it was brought to an end by the family of the Paleologi with the assistance of the Genoese, whose principal object was to procure the expulsion of the Venetians from the East. But Michael Paleologos had the good sense to understand that the ruin of Venetian commerce would entail serious damage to his own, and he did his utmost to maintain good relations between the two Italian Republics. In this he did not altogether succeed, as he found himself under the necessity of irritating Genoa by confirming many of the ancient privileges of Venice. On these conditions the Venetians consented to turn a deaf ear to the complaints and entreaties of Baldwin II., the dethroned Latin emperor, who wandered about Europe in the vain hope of obtaining help. By the end of the thirteenth century the political influence of Venice in the Greek Empire had dwindled to insignificance compared with her great commercial importance. As the latter increased, the jealousy of Genoa grew more and more dangerous, and the colonies held by Venetian vassals were in constant peril. It was the misfortune of Venice that her last development had been too sudden. The slightest matter might compromise the safety of her colonies, and through them her own. [Sidenote: _Rom. ii. 186._]