To succeed in such a plan, Rome must be free; this perhaps is the most important condition of any. It is very striking to observe the desolate state of many cities in Italy—once populous, powerful, and flourishing; now spiritless, and half-inhabited.[20] Their time of prosperity was one of wars without, and tumult within. Their decay has taken place under a government comparatively mild; they are neither attacked by external enemies, nor torn to pieces by internal dissensions. Added to this, the old governments were radically bad, they were alternately aristocratical and democratical; both forms, which when used unmixed, as was remarkably the case in Italy, are essentially vicious, because they seek the good of a part only. The true idea of a republic is that whose object is the whole, where every existing rank, from the prince to the artisan and peasant, has its due share of influence and equal protection; and the representative government of England is doubtless that which approaches nearest to this _beau ideal_. Yet bad as they were, there was freedom enough in these Italian cities to counterbalance, and more than counterbalance, the numerous evils to which they were exposed. He who reads Gibbon with attention may observe effects of arbitrary power, and bad institutions, in the decline, not of the Roman empire, but of Italy, under the reign of Constantine, while she was yet uninjured by barbarians; or if his curiosity, and his patience will support him through the pages of Denina, he may there find this idea more fully dwelt upon, though the author is a professed and decided advocate of arbitrary power, thinking, Che assoluto, dispotico governo `E buono per l’estate, e per l’inverno.