Giuseppe Tartini - Lettere e documenti / Pisma in dokumenti / Letters and Documents - Volume / Knjiga / Volume II

422 art, and the income from the students is subject to tax, because in a meeting that took place in the presence of the Most Illustrious Signor Pase Mariani between the Most Illustrious Signor Girolamo Costantini, accountant to the magistrate of the deputies for the tax, and Tartini, this point was granted without difficulty, that the tax can indeed fall upon the performance of the art, and never upon the teaching of the art. In the same meeting (the above-mentioned Signor Pase Mariani bears witness) the accountant Costantini openly said to Tartini that the petition of the musicians would never be successful, but that the petition of the Presidency certainly would be. On receiving this information Tartini on the one hand has kept and continues to keep delayed the presentation in Venice of the obtained letter of response to the edict of His Excellency the Captain; and on the other, after appealing immediately once again to the Most Reverend Father Warden and to the noble Count Guglielmo Camposampiero, has entreated them that to persuade the Presidency to move to a favourable point in the appeal, which is already backed in Venice by most interested factions, including the whole of the Most Excellent house of Grimani of the Most Serene, and the Most Excellent household of Renier of Rio del Megio. The Most Illustrious Signor Pase Mariani, fully enlightened on the matter, and who intervened at the same meeting, was likewise asked to speak in the presidency on this subject. The presidency is most humbly entreated to reflect that if it does not wish to appeal at present, the musicians are obliged to continue the course taken. The decision will be (given the response of the accountant) that they will be taxed; and the consequence will be that they will be obliged to submit to the Presidency a supplication, supported by their reasons, to be reimbursed of their salary, on which the tax indisputably falls. If then the Presidency wishes to appeal to the Council of Ten, it will do so with the disadvantage of the sentence having already been carried out to the detriment of the musicians, and there will be much greater difficulties than those existing presently. If then it does not want to appeal to the Council of Ten, the need for legal order and the merit of the case with regard to the reasons of the musicians will make it necessary to appeal to another appropriate tribunal, so that the impediments to the exercise of their trade are removed from the musicians serving the Ark, so that it can be said with legal certainty that the tax does not fall on their salaries. This inevitable step to the Presidency brings with it such and so many difficulties, compared to what is easy and more founded, that is to say the appeal of the Presidency to the Council of Ten (which can rule on this matter independently of the Senate, and of any tribunal through definite instructions received) before the musicians have the reply to the edict of His Excellency the Captain submitted. If the appeal of the Presidency is conceived in the formula of an entreaty, you are begged to consider that the Presidency is protected in any case; because the formula says that a rule is prescribed for what has newly emerged, and nothing more. And to ensure that the Presidency is informed in this matter of all the details that have occurred, may you know that, having stably charged the musicians once, this charge can