Incredible as it seems, the people were prevailed upon to accept this proposal, not seeing that in so doing they were forfeiting their most valuable privilege. They even acclaimed with enthusiasm the first Doge who was elected under the new law in 1172. He was Sebastian Ziano. ‘Long life to the Doge,’ the people cried, ‘and may he bring us peace!’ [Sidenote: _Rom. ii. 123._] On this occasion, it is true, the popular enthusiasm was justified, for the rule of Ziano was just and honourable. But, in spite of the success of the experiment, the Great Council introduced a further change in the law, and at the next election the number of electors was increased to forty, and later still to forty-one, in order to prevent a tie. Looking back on the labours of the Great Council in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, one cannot help being struck by the unchangeable purpose which runs through all the laws it passed, from the time it came into existence till it shut its doors in the face of the people, never to open them during the five hundred years of history which then lay before the Republic. One cannot but acquire the conviction that the aristocracy set to work very early to get possession of the supreme power, to the exclusion even of the Doge himself, and that they worked out their plan in the course of a hundred and fifty years--say, five generations--without ever hesitating or turning aside after new ideas; and, moreover, that during that time the eyes of the people were never once really open to what was going on. As soon as the relations between the Doge and the government were established, the Great Council, always paternally ‘guiding’ the popular assembly, set to work upon laws affecting the administration, and the conditions and relations of commerce. And here it must be said that several of the doges who reigned in the thirteenth century exhibited remarkable talents for legislation; the names of Orio Mastropiero, Enrico Dandolo, and Jacopo Tiepolo mark so many stages in Venetian progress and civilisation. [Sidenote: _Rom. ii. 241._] The first of these, Orio Mastropiero, the successor of Sebastian Ziano, occupied himself actively in drawing up a criminal code, which should render less arbitrary the sentences of judges who were often incompetent and were always elected provisionally. This code received the name of ‘Promission del Maleficio,’ the ‘promise to, or with regard to, crime,’ and it was frequently improved upon during the years that followed its promulgation. It provided for almost all possible crimes, and established for each one a punishment which seemed just according to the spirit of the times. These penalties in many cases seem barbarous to us, though it was [Illustration: CAMPO, SANTA TERNITA]