Page:Val d'Arno (Ruskin, 1890).djvu/134

112 134. 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.

135. We must not, therefore, without qualification blame, though we may profoundly