In the new political organisation, the central power, soon to be changed every two months, occupies a very feeble position compared with the high importance, permanence, and strength now assigned to the Podestà and the Captain. These officers are at the head of the Commune and the people; each of them presides over two councils: they are, as it were, the chiefs of two armed and hostile republics. But in that of the people, hitherto the weaker, no patrician is admitted; while in that of the Commune, the people has assumed a very important position relatively to that of the nobles, and therefore has legally obtained the casting vote in all decisions, notwithstanding the supremacy virtually exercised by Charles of Anjou in moments of the gravest emergency. It is easy to foresee the bitterness of strife to be engendered by this state of things. If we likewise remember that this Republic, as though foredoomed to civil war, included so important a magistracy as the Captains of the party, apparently created for the sole purpose of perpetuating discord, as an engine of war, serving to keep all these heterogeneous forces in continual agitation and promote ceaseless bloodshed and destruction, we can understand the course of coming events in Florence. We must be prepared for continual struggles, restless changes of institutions and laws, prepared to behold webs carefully woven one month pulled to pieces before the next moon begins to wane. Nevertheless, the whole machinery of the government was singularly fitted to compass the end that the Republic from the first had constantly in view. IX.