During several days the Corregitori received all the complaints that were handed in, and examined the archives of the two tribunals. Those of the Ten were found to be in perfect order, but those of the Inquisitors were in the utmost confusion. [Sidenote: _Rom. viii. 114._] The whole city discussed the affair excitedly, and nothing else was spoken of in the streets, in the cafés, and in drawing-rooms. It was the first time in history that the tribunal of the Inquisitors of State had been put under an inquiry, and this tremendous result had been produced because a little milliner had made a cap that did not fit. Endless discussions followed. A number of patricians declared that if the Council of Ten and the Inquisitors of State were abolished, they themselves would not stay another day in Venice, as there would no longer be any check on the violence and the intrigues of men of their own class: a confession which suddenly exhibits the whole aristocracy in its true light. Others proved beyond all question that a tribunal which was particularly charged with the preservation of the State from danger could not always [Sidenote: _1762._] do its work with the miserable tardiness of the other magistracies, and they recalled the many cases in which the Ten had saved Venice. [Sidenote: _Rom. viii. 136-137._] One of the debates was prolonged for five consecutive hours. At last the Conservative party carried the day. The wild enthusiasm of the population, on learning that the Ten and the Inquisitors were to remain in existence, shows well enough what the people thought; their only protection against the nobles lay in the two tribunals. Six thousand persons waited in the Square of Saint Mark’s to learn the result of the contest, and when it was known proceeded to burn fireworks before the palaces of the nobles who had been the chief speakers in defence of the Ten--Foscarini, Marcello, and Grimani. The populace then declared that it would set fire to the houses of the nobles who had tried to do away with the only institution they still feared, and the palaces of the Zen and the Renier were only saved from fire and pillage by the energetic intervention of the Inquisitors of State, whose office those aristocrats had attempted to abolish. I know of no more convincing answer to the numerous dilettante historians who have accused the Council of Ten of oppressing the people. If the Council and the Inquisitors were in need of an excuse for occasionally overstepping their powers in order to act quickly, they had a good one in the absurdly cumbrous system of the magistracies, as they existed in the eighteenth century. As a curiosity, [Sidenote: _Rom. viii. 399._] I give a list or the principal magistracies, taken by Romanin from an almanack of 1796, the last year of the Republic:--