That this system produced results which were, from a political point of view, eminently satisfactory cannot for a moment be doubted. Mr. Reid says--and it were well that those who are interested in the cause of British Imperial Federation should note the remark--"In history the lightest bonds have often proved to be the strongest." The loosely compacted alliance of the Italic states withstood all the efforts of Hannibal to rend it asunder. The Roman system, in fact, created a double patriotism, that which attached itself to the locality, and that which broadened out into devotion to the metropolis. Neither was the one allegiance destructive of the other. When Ennius made his famous boast he did not mean that he spurned Rudiae and that he would for the future look exclusively to Rome as his mother-country, but rather that both the smaller and the larger patriotism would continue to exist side by side. "English local life," it has been truly said, "was the source and safeguard of English liberty."[100] It may be said with equal truth that the notion of constituting self-governing town communities as the basis of Empire, which, Mr. Reid tells us, "was deeply ingrained in the Roman consciousness," stood Rome in good stead during some of the most stormy periods of her history. The process of voluntary Romanisation was so speedy that the natives of any province which, to use the Roman expression, had been but recently "pacated," became in a very short time loyal and zealous Roman subjects, and rarely if ever took advantage of distress elsewhere to vindicate their independence by seeking to cast off the light shackles which had been imposed on them.