In most of the communities, self-government, or the sovereignty of the people, had scarcely a reality as regarded the masses. Under the seigneurs, when the hereditary principle was weak, it was oftener supplemented or infringed by the sword than by the popular will. In the few commonwealths which, during the fifteenth century, preserved their democratic institutions, such as Florence and Siena, the guilds and companies constituted indeed a quasi-representative system; but these had generally fallen into the hands of privileged classes, and even the shadow of power which clung to them was constantly torn away by some ambitious burgher, or misused for the extermination of a rival faction. Indeed, the most liberal of their constitutions corresponded in the main to our own municipal machinery, limiting the privileges of self-government to certain classes in the cities, and entirely excluding from them the rural population. The value at which these privileges were held may be estimated by the indifference of immediately adjacent despotic states, whether languishing under the savage tyranny of a Malatesta,[*15] or enjoying the beneficent sway of a Montefeltro. Even when, outraged beyond endurance, they rose against their oppressors, it was much more frequently to set up a new autocrat, than to seize for themselves power which the example of their democratic neighbours appears to have invested with no charm. We may therefore fairly conclude that the self-governed citizens of Ancona, Assisi, and San Marino, enjoyed no envied advantages over those of the surrounding principalities, which unquestionably outshone them in historical and literary illustration. [Footnote *15: The Malatesti were, without doubt, just as great and beloved as the Montefeltri. Sigismondo was as great and enthusiastic a patron of the arts, and in contemporary opinion a greater soldier than Federigo di Montefeltro. See EDWARD HUTTON, _op. cit._, p. 86 note 1.]