Nevertheless, to obtain a still clearer idea of a government of this kind, it would be requisite to ascertain exactly who and what were the citizens entitled to a share in it, and this point is still somewhat doubtful. The outlying territory (_contado_) was entirely excluded from citizenship, nor was this privilege granted to all dwellers within the walls, the lower class of artisans and the populace being excluded from it.[142] Hence the government was concentrated in the hands of a few powerful families, the heads of the guilds, and their principal adherents. In fact, even down to the last days of the Republic real citizenship--the possessors of which alone were eligible to political posts--was a privilege conceded to few, and even in 1494 the number of citizens scarcely exceeded three thousand. For this reason, even at the present day, we may find a few humble families asserting their inheritance of old Florentine civic rights, as a rare privilege and almost as a title of nobility. At Venice, even in the eighteenth century, to the last days of the Republic there still existed different grades of citizenship, and the right of government was restricted to a small caste. This is one of the points in our history demanding closer investigation. It is true that the whole people met indistinctly in parliament; but such assemblies were mostly of a purely formal kind. For, seeing that the parliament was convoked either in some square, often of small extent, or inside a church, we are bound to infer that the privilege accorded to all the inhabitants of the city was nominal rather than real.