In 1296 he brought forward a measure which, it must be admitted, would have been an act of vengeance upon the people for attempting to proclaim Jacopo Tiepolo as Doge, and for receiving the announcement of Gradenigo’s regular election in silence and ill-concealed discontent. The Doge now proposed to reform the process of election, as had been contemplated by the bill of 1286, but at the first attempt the measure failed, owing to the determined opposition of the Tiepolo family and their friends, who formed themselves into a party, which they called conservative. It was brought forward again in the following year, however, and passed by a majority of votes. It restricted the right of eligibility at each annual election to those who had sat in the Great Council during one of the four preceding years, and it required that they should receive at least twelve votes from the Council of Forty which elected them. This was a successful stroke, for the Council of Forty consisted wholly of nobles, who would use their elective power altogether in accordance with Gradenigo’s intention. In order not to rouse the opposition of the people by giving the law an absolute form, it was declared to be only provisional, and to be in force from one Saint Michael’s Day to the next, that being the date of the election. A year passed. So great was the prestige of the aristocracy and its power, and so completely accustomed were the people to be guided by it and to be despoiled by it of their rights, that the resentment aroused by this so-called provisional law was not enough to prevent its becoming a lasting one, though its general form was still subject to possible variations. [Sidenote: _Galliccioli, i. 330._] Grave dissensions, however, appeared in the caste of patricians. Gradenigo found himself opposed on the one hand by the Tiepolo faction, on the other by certain families which, although descended from the ancient tribunes of the island, and consequently of most ancient and respected race, were excluded from the Great Council, merely because they had not been represented in it during the last four years. It became necessary, therefore, to modify the law in the following manner:-- It was decreed that all who had sat in the Council themselves, and all who, though they had not had a place there themselves, could prove at least one ancestor a member of the Council since 1172, should be eligible for the Council, by the vote of the Forty. It is a remarkable fact that the word ‘nobles’ is not to be found in any of these decrees; but it was clearly useless to insist upon a mere word when the whole aristocracy, which had proposed and passed the law, was to profit by it. The nobles never lost sight of a possible danger to themselves in the resentment of the people.