Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 8.djvu/198

 1 86 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

ment used this means most effectively by offering extraordinary inducements to the people to denounce any sort of suspicious character. No one knew whether his nearest acquaintance was not in the service of the civic inquisition, and consequently revo- lutionary plans, which presupposed the reciprocal confidence of a great collection of persons, were cut off from the root; so that in the later history of Venice public revolts practically did not occur.

The baldest form of divide et impera, the instigation of posi- tive struggle between two elements, may have its purpose in the relation of the third party either to these two, or to an object existing outside of them. The latter occurs in case one of three candidates for an office understands how to instigate the two others against each other, in such a way that by gossip and slander, which each of them sets in motion against the other, they spoil each other's chances. In all cases of this type the art of the third shows itself in the degree of the distance at which he is wise enough to place himself from the action which he instigates. The more he guides the conflict by merely invi- sible threads, the more he understands how to tend the fire so that it continues to burn without his further assistance and observation, the sharper and directer will be the struggle between the other two, until their reciprocal ruin is accom- plished ; but, more than that, the prize of the struggle at stake between them, or the objects otherwise of value to the third party, will seem to fall into his lap of themselves. In this tech- nique, too, the Venetians were masters. In order to get control of the estates of nobles upon the mainland, they had the means of conferring high titles upon young or inferior nobles. The indignation of the older and higher nobles, in consequence, always gave occasion for friction and disturbance of the peace between the two parties. Thereupon the Venetian government, with all formal legal observance, confiscated the estates of the delinquents. Precisely in such cases, where the co-operation of the disunited elements against the common oppressor would be of the most evident utility, it is, very evidently, a general con- dition of divide et impera that enmities should have their sufficient