It is always a fault in a government to make laws unchangeable like those of the Medes and Persians, and some authors have said that the Venetian Republic never looked upon any of its decrees as immutable. This is true as regards the form, for no government ever remodelled its laws more often in their text. Sometimes the same decree appears in more than one hundred shapes, but neither the spirit nor the point of view is modified. A law passed against the freemasons in the eighteenth century is conceived in precisely the same spirit as the decrees against the conspirators in the days of Baiamonte Tiepolo and Marin Faliero; the last Missier Grande of the police was very like the sbirri of the Middle Ages in character and in methods. The Republic was growing old; the tree might still bear fruit, but the fruit it bore had no longer within it the seeds of future life. It cannot be denied that Venetian diplomacy was better of its kind than Venetian magistracies. During the thirty years’ war, for instance, [Sidenote: _Rom. vii. 275._] Venice never once lost sight of the great object it had in view, which was to abase the closely related powers of Spain and Austria, while skilfully avoiding any action which might bring about reprisals. On the other hand, it was impossible to remain neutral in the war of succession to the Duchy of Mantua, in which Carlo Gonzaga, Duke [Sidenote: _Rom. vii. 276._] of Nevers, was supported by France, and Ferrante Gonzaga by the Emperor. As Austria’s [Illustration: STEPS OF THE REDENTORE] enemy, Venice naturally backed the former. Venice furnished him abundantly with money and soldiers, and between the month of November 1629 and the month of March following, spent six hundred and thirty-eight thousand ducats to support the party which was defending the cause of Italian independence against the Empire. Austria nevertheless succeeded, and got the better of the formidable coalition; but though the Imperials took possession of Mantua at the time, they were obliged to give it up to Carlo Gonzaga soon afterwards, in April 1631, by the treaty of Cherasco. About the same time Venice suffered another terrible visitation of the plague, and more than thirty-six thousand persons perished in the city [Sidenote: _Rom. vii. 302._] alone. On a similar occasion in 1575 the Venetians had vowed a church to the Redeemer if the plague was stayed, and the church they built is that of the Redentore; in 1630 a church was vowed to the Blessed Virgin, under the name of the Madonna della Salute. This was at first only a wooden [Sidenote: _Rom. vii. 306._] building, in which a great thanksgiving took place on the first of November. The present church was not finished until 1687. Amongst the many circumstances which hastened the decadence of the Republic during the seventeenth century was the terrible war in Crete. In [Illustration: _Quadri, 275._]