He concluded his mission by strengthening the two harbours of Suda and Spinalonga, by increasing the numbers and pay of the garrison, by improving the Cretan fleet and the mercantile marine, and by restoring equilibrium to the budget. The Levantine possessions of Venice cost her at this period more than they brought in, and it was the desire of the Republic that Crete, should, at any rate, be made to pay expenses. With this object, Foscarini regulated the currency, raised the tariff in such a way that the increased duties fell on the foreign consumer, saw that they were honestly collected, and endeavoured to make the island more productive. But in all his reforms the commissioner met with stubborn resistance from the vested interests of the Venetian officials and the fanaticism of the Orthodox clergy, always the bitterest foes of Venice in the Levant. In dealing with the latter, Foscarini saw that strong measures were necessary; he persuaded his Government to banish the worst agitators, and to allow the others to remain only on condition that they behaved well. Then, after more than four years of labour, he returned to Venice, where he was thanked by the Doge for his eminent services. He had been, indeed, as his monument in the Carmelite church there says, “Dictator of the island of Candia”; but even his heroic policy did “but skin and film the ulcerous place.” Not ten years after his departure we find another Venetian authority, Giulio de Garzoni, writing of the tyranny of the knights and officials, the misery of the natives, the disorder of the administration, and the continued agitation of the Greek clergy among the peasantry. So desperate had the latter become that there were many who preferred even the yoke of the Sultan to that of the Catholic Republic[193]. The population of the island, which Foscarini had estimated at 219,000, had sunk in this short space of time to about 176,000. Numbers of Cretans had emigrated to Constantinople since Foscarini left, where they formed a large portion of the men employed in the Turkish arsenal, and where the information which they gave to the Turks about the weakness of the Cretan garrison and forts filled the Venetian representatives with alarm. Yet Venice seemed powerless to do more for the oppressed islanders; indeed, she inclined rather to the Machiavellian policy of Fra Paolo Sarpi, who advised her to treat the Cretans like wild beasts, upon whom humanity would be only thrown away, and to govern the island by maintaining constant enmity between the barbarised colonists and the native barbarians. “Bread and the stick, that is all that you ought to give them.” Such a policy could only prevail so long as Venice was strong enough to defend the colony, or wise enough to keep at peace with the Sultan.