Meantime the trades, as against the Knights Castellans, have thrown
down the tops of all the towers above seventy-five feet high.
And we shall presently have a proposal, after the battle of the Arbia,
to throw down Florence altogether.
134. You think at first that this is remarkably like the course of
republican reformations in the present day? But there is a wide
difference. In the first place, the palaces and towers are not thrown
down in mere spite or desire of ruin, but after quite definite
experience of their danger to the State, and positive dejection of
boiling lead and wooden logs from their machicolations upon the heads
below. In the second place, nothing is thrown down without complete
certainty on the part of the overthrowers that they are able, and
willing, to build as good or better things instead; which, if any like
conviction exist in the minds of modern republicans, is a wofully ill-
founded one: and lastly, these abolitions of private wealth were
coincident with a widely spreading disposition to undertake, as I have
above noticed, works of public utility, _from which no dividends were
to be received by any of the shareholders_; and for the execution of
which the _builders received no commission on the cost_, but payment at
the rate of so much a day, carefully adjusted to the exertion of real
power and intelligence.
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