ABSTRACT
The Republic of Genoa has struggled as hard for an illustrious origin, as any monarchical state, for whom historiographers have lied, or chroniclers invented. She has seized on Janus for her founder, Abraham for the contemporary of her highest prosperity, and Rome as a foil to her glory. To a representative government, in which all the community co-operate in the election of their deputies, and in which those deputies are carefully restrained within the just limits of their mission, neither Genoa nor Venice had ever the slightest pretence. The dependence of Genoa upon Spain, under the influence of the monster Philip the Second, while it turned a rapid tide of wealth into her port, stifled the last breathings of freedom, and substituted a personal ambition for national independence; and cor-ruption had reached its maximum, when commerce was at its height.
