In 1427 Giovanni de' Medici imposed on Florence a tax called the _catasto_--apparently not, like earlier taxes of the same name, based on a survey of land, but on disposable or movable capital--and also one of 1/2 per cent. on income over what was necessary to support life. Further, he levied a super-tax, which was paid by 1,400 citizens out of the 10,000 who came under the _catasto_. At a pinch, the _catasto_ was levied several times in the year. Yet further, a regularly graduated income-tax was imposed by Cosimo de' Medici, in 1441, and raised in 1443; but, in this case, the salutary principle of sparing the amount of income necessary to sustain life seems to have been departed from, since incomes of from one to fifty florins paid 4 per cent., the rate gradually rising thereafter to 33-1/3 per cent. for incomes over 1,500 florins. By reason of bad finance, further, taxes had now to be levied even ten and fifteen times a year. Cp. Perrens, as last cited. It is yet further noteworthy that, from 1431 to 1458, traders were required to show their books to the revenue officers for the purpose of fair assessment. The abandonment of this provision seems to have been partly due to the evasions practised by the traders, partly to the irritation and the abuses set up by it.] At Cosimo's death there was dynastic strife of capital, as elsewhere of blood; but the blundering financier Pitti went to the wall, and the invalid Piero de' Medici kept his father's power. At his death the group of his henchmen kept their hold on it; and in time his son Lorenzo ousted them and engrossed all, escaping the plot which was fatal to his brother. The failure of that and other plots, in Florence and elsewhere, sufficed to prove that the artisans, well employed and protected by the laws, had no concern to upset the orderly and business-like "tyranny" either of one great capitalist or of a prince, in the interest of an oligarchy which would rule no better, which gave them no more of political privilege than did he, and which was less ready than he with public gifts. Thus he had little difficulty in cutting down every institution that restricted his power, whether popular or oligarchic.[619] Italian republicanism had always been a matter of either upper-class or middle-class rule; and when the old upper class of feudal descent was superseded by one of commercial descent, the populace had nothing to gain by supporting the bourgeoisie. A capitalistic "lord," most of whose wealth was in its nature unseizable, was thus a more stable power than any mere swordsman among swordsmen; and Lorenzo de' Medici not only crushed all the conspiracies against him, but held his own against the dangerous alliance of the republican Pope Sixtus IV and the King of Naples--the menace of Turkish invasion helping him. When, early in his reign, he joined in and carried through the plot for