The growing power of the Council of Ten.

With over a thousand hereditary memberships, the Great Council of Venice is perhaps not always the quickest and most efficient governing body. It is therefore not surprising that the much greater flexibility of the small Council of Ten, originally intended to safeguard the republic from plots and conspiracies, has led to them assuming more and more power.\nBy increasing its own power, however, the Council of Ten decreases the influence of the more representative Great Council. Many of the families on the Great Council feel things have gone too far as while new members of the Ten are elected each year the positions are often monopolized by a small clique of old Aristocrat families. Reforms have been proposed to curtail the power of the Ten by limiting their influence to emergencies as was originally intended.