38 ON THE PROBABLE ORIGIN 
Ages) which has been translated into English 
by Mr. Cathcart of Edinburgh; and it is the 
design of this paper to give some account of the 
evidence which he has produced in support of 
his opinions, and then to pursue the history of 
the municipal system on the continent, on which 
much light has lately been thrown by another 
German writer, Hiillmann, in his Stadtewesen 
des Mittelalters, (Condition of the Cities in the 
Middle Ages.) 
To enable us to judge how far Savigny has 
succeeded in establishing the descent of our 
modern corporations from Roman municipia, 
we must revert to the time immediately prece- 
ding the overthrow of the western empire. In 
Italy itself, after the Roman dominion had ex- 
tended over the whole of it, the municipia and 
colonie possessed the right of self-government, 
as far as their internal affairs were concerned, 
choosing their magistrates and making laws for 
their own regulation. The constitution was at 
first popular, but became by degrees more oli- 
garchical, and the cuwria or council, which had 
been only a branch of the executive, at length 
obtained the whole power for itself; as at Rome, 
the senate, from the time of Tiberius, made 
the elections and transacted the other business, 
