But these accusations cannot deprive Doria of the merit of having refrained from assuming the absolute sovereignty of his country; though we know that the love of liberty in his fellow citizens must have been, sooner or later, fatal to such an ambition. In such an open assault upon popular liberty, he would have found enemies in his own house, as he did, in fact, when he enlisted in the service of Spain. This is proved by the documents which Molini[18] found in the French Archives, and is a conspicuous proof of the profound antipathy of Liguria to Spain. Doria, knowing well the liberal tendencies of his fellow citizens, contrived to get princely authority and power without assuming the name. The laws of the _union_ shaped by him changed the face of the Republic. His chief reform consisted in removing the middle classes from the public offices by adding new families to the nobility. The gentlemen resented the elevation of plebeians to their side; the lower classes complained; for though the law left them free to ascribe themselves to the nobility, it was soon seen that this law was a new deception. The constitution of Doria was fashioned with aristocratic aims, and if it established equality, it was only among the nobles. The people had neither guaranty nor representation. Leo writes that however wisely the instrument was framed, it failed to establish the rights of the plebeians. This class had no more share in the state than the peasantry of the Riviera, and remained, with its precarious and humble title of citizenship, subject to the nobility. The law which changed a family into a collection of persons, or _Albergo_, was more than unjust, it was iniquitous. Those who entered these _Alberghi_ were forced to renounce their own names, however honourable they might be, to extinguish their own memory and that of their ancestors, in order to assume the name of the congregation; so that for example, a Biagio Asereto would be compelled to take the name of a Vivaldi for no other reason than that the latter name was borne by more persons. Many truly illustrious and most honourable houses preferred to remain in the number of the people; and it is related that of two brothers Castelli; one made himself a noble under the title of Grimaldi, while the other remained a man of the people under his christian name Giustiniano.