COMPOUND POLITICAL HEADS. 211 



which we see in the assembly of the savage horde, or in the modern 

 public meeting. Whence there presently results the rule of a select 

 few subject to the approval of the many. 



In illustration may first be taken the rise of the Italian republics. 

 When, during the ninth and tenth centuries, the German emperors, 

 who had long been losing their power to restrain local antagonisms in 

 Italy and the outrages of wandering robber bands, failed more than 

 ever to protect their subject communities, and, as a simultaneous re- 

 sult, exercised diminished control over them, it became at once neces- 

 sary and practicable for the Italian towns to develop political organi- 

 zations of their own. Though in these towns there were remnants of 

 the old Roman organization, this had obviously become effete ; for, in 

 time of danger, there was an assembling of " citizens at the sound of a 

 great bell, to concert together the means for their common defense." 

 Doubtless on such occasions were marked out the rudiments of those 

 republican constitutions which afterward arose. Though it is alleged 

 that the German emperors allowed the towns to form these constitu- 

 tions, yet we may reasonably conclude, rather, that, having no care 

 further than to get their tribute, they made no efforts to prevent the 

 towns from forming them. And though Sismondi says of the towns- 

 people, "ils chercherent a se constituer sur le modele de la republique 

 roraaine," yet we may question whether, in those dark days, the people 

 knew enough of Roman institutions to be influenced by their knowl- 

 edge. With more probability may we infer that " this meeting of all 

 the men of the state capable of bearing arms ... in the great square," 

 originally called to take measures for repelling aggressors a meeting 

 which must, at the very beginning, have been swayed by a group of 

 dominant citizens, and must have chosen leaders was itself the repub- 

 lican government in its incipient form. Meetings of this kind, first 

 occurring on occasions of emergency, would gradually come into use 

 for deciding on all important public questions. Repetition would 

 bring greater regularity in the modes of procedure, and greater defi- 

 niteness in the divisions formed, ending in compound political heads, 

 presided over by elected chiefs. And that this was the case in those 

 early stages of which there remain but vague accounts, is shown by 

 the fact that a similar, though somewhat more definite, process after- 

 ward occurred at Florence, when the usurping nobles were overthrown. 

 Definite records tell us that in 1250 " the citizens assembled at the 

 same moment in the square of Santa Croce ; they divided themselves 

 into fifty groups, of which each group chose a captain, and thus formed 

 companies of militia ; a council of these officers was the first-born au- 

 thority of this newly revived republic." Clearly that sovereignty of 

 the people which, for a time, characterized these small governments, 

 would inevitably arise if the political form grew out of the original 

 public meeting ; while it would be unlikely to have arisen had the 

 political form been artificially devised by a limited class. 



