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The curials, who answered somewhat to our aldermen, and who were responsible for the payment of the public moneys, tried their best to escape the unpopular office, and, when compelled to serve, wrung the money in self-defence out of the poorer inhabitants by every kind of tyranny.
On the second of these classes, the Curials, fell all the grinding burdens of the state, the executing of municipal duties, and the exactions of the central government. It is not necessary for me to trace here the development of that financial policy which resulted in the ruin, I may say the annihilation of this order.
No democratic agitator could appeal from the present to the past, as Rienzi invoked the memories of the Tribunate against the feudal tyranny of the Colonnas. In Venice the past and present were one. The patrician of Venice simply governed the State as his fathers, the curials of Padua or Aquileia, had governed the State ten centuries before him.
And when Paphnutius questioned him more closely still, he said he recollected having done another deed. When he was a robber, he met once in the desert a beautiful woman; and she prayed him to do her no harm, but to take her away with him as a slave, whither he would; for, said she, "I am fleeing from the apparitors and the Governor's curials for the last two years.
The economic condition of the people amounted to little short of bankruptcy; the possession of wealth, in landed property especially, having become but a burden to be avoided, and a source of exaction rather than of satisfaction to the owner. The inequalities of burdens and of rank were great. The citizens were divided into three classes: the privileged classes, the Curials, the common people.
The curials, who were responsible for the payment of the public moneys, tried their best to escape the unpopular office, and when compelled to serve wrung the money in self-defence out of the poorer inhabitants by every kind of tyranny. Private profligacy among all ranks was such as cannot be described in any modern pages.
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