386 POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS. 



forming them. And though Sismondi says of the towns 

 people &quot; ils chercherent a se constituer sur le modele de la 

 republique romaine ;&quot; yet we may question whether, in those 

 dark days, the people knew enough of Roman institutions to 

 be influenced by their knowledge. With more probability 

 may we infer that &quot;this meeting of all the men of the 

 state capable of bearing arms . *. . in the great square,&quot; 

 originally called to take measures for repelling aggressors a 

 meeting which must, at the very outset, have been swayed 

 by a group of dominant citizens and must have chosen 

 leaders, was itself the republican government in its incipient 

 state. Meetings of this kind, first held on occasions of 

 emergency, would gradually come into use for deciding all 

 important public questions. Repetition would bring greater 

 regularity in the modes of procedure, and greater definiteness 

 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 some 

 what more* definite, process afterwards occurred at Florence, 

 when the usurping nobles were overthrown. Records tell us 

 that in 1250 &quot; 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 authority of this newly revived republic.&quot; 

 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. 



That this interpretation harmonizes with the facts which 

 modern times have furnished, scarcely needs pointing out. 

 On an immensely larger scale and in ways variously modified, 

 here by the slow collapse of an old rfyimc and there by com 

 bination for war, the rise of the first French Republic and of 



