50 ON THE PROBABLE ORIGIN 
Dubos in favour of the latter, and Boulainvilliers 
of the former, pushed their respective doctrines 
to an absurd extreme. It is observed by Mr. 
Cathcart, p. 308, that, although in the preface to 
the 11th volume of the Ordonnances des Rois 
de France, Vilevault and Brequigny maintain 
that the Communes depended entirely on a royal 
grant, and originated only in the 12th century, 
they have considerably modified this doctrine in 
the succeeding volume, and admit that communes 
arose in two ways, either from new grants, or 
from royal confirmations of the rights of already 
associated citizens. The latter occur most fre- 
quently in the south of France, where in many 
cases the royal charters only renewed ancient 
privileges. It is not unimportant, that in many 
of the cities of France a tradition prevailed, that 
their judicial institutions had continued without 
interruption from the times of the Romans. 
Thus the citizens of Rheims, in the 12th cen- 
tury, purchased from their bishop the permis- 
sion to live according to the laws “quibus civitas 
continue usa est, a tempore S. Remigii Franco- 
rum apostoli.” The same opinion of the high an- 
tiquity of their municipal institutions prevailed 
also in Toulouse, Lyons, Boulogne, Angouleme, 
&c. Among the Italian antiquaries, however, 
there is no such diversity of opinion as among 
