not the Venetians who invented strangulation, or the cutting off of the hand, or torture by red-hot iron, or the tearing out of the eyes and the tongue. The tribunals of all nations had long ago adopted these punishments, and it is certain that there was no country where fuller proofs were required than in Venice before any severe penalties could be inflicted on a citizen. One of the chief merits of the Venetian code of that period, as compared with the codes of other countries, is that it points out to the judge the causes of crime, and the small misdeeds which may lead to great ones, as distinguished from those which are not likely to leave any results. Thus, for instance, the smallest act of disrespect to a respectable woman was punished almost as severely as an assault upon her. [Sidenote: _Rom. ii. 137._] For a long time the only permanent tribunal in Venice had been the ‘Magistrato del Proprio,’ which dealt with civil questions. The quarrels of the common people were judged by five ‘wise men’--‘savii.’ Orio Mastropiero succeeded in passing a law for the institution of a court to deal with differences arising between Venetians and foreigners, or amongst the latter, and this was named ‘Magistrato del Forestiero,’ the ‘foreigners’ court,’ so to say. In addition to these courts, which were subject to the authority of the Great Council, there were the ‘Avogadori del Comun,’ the municipal advocates, as we should probably say, who had authority in fiscal questions, and the list is complete. The state of Venice was directed and judged by the bodies I have enumerated. In matters of commerce all Europe recognised the superiority of Venice at that time, and long afterwards. A single illustration of the practical sense of Venetian merchants will suffice: they invented percentage, and the word that expresses it. Before them, the world had always said, ‘so many pence in the pound,’ or ‘four-fifths,’ or ‘seven-eighths.’ The Venetians first conceived the idea, and introduced the practice, of reducing all commercial fractions to the common denominator, one hundred. Orio Mastropiero further enriched the state with a permanent source of income by giving it a regular monopoly of salt and the salt trade. Jacopo Tiepolo, elected Doge in 1229, was undoubtedly one of the most enlightened and intellectually well-balanced men of his age, and he seems to have embraced at a glance all those questions which his predecessors had examined one by one, and often only from a single side. He conceived the idea of compiling a complete code which should be a sort of permanent charter for the Republic, and he entrusted the execution of his plan to four ‘learned, noble, and discreet persons,’ for that is all that is to be learned of them, through the note that precedes the original text of their work. That text consisted of five books destined to become famous in the history of European legislation.