are facts too evidently brought about by motives of convenience and expediency and by the force of old association, to lead to any confusion in appreciating the proper place of the city. Where there were to be found buildings suitable for the residence of the _dux_, and where was located the largest collection of individuals, was manifestly the most appropriate place for holding the courts and settling the disputes of the inhabitants of the whole _civitas_, and this formed a natural centre for the machinery of government. But every inhabitant of the _civitas_ had equal rights with the townsman proper, and, as in the old Greek [Greek: polis], the most remote countryman dwelling on the borders of the _civitas_, if he possessed the franchise, was as much a citizen of Padua, Siena or Milan, as if he dwelt within the walls of the city which gave its name to the whole _civitas_. A consideration of these facts brings out two important points, which I will briefly indicate before passing on to a little more detailed treatment of the powers and the duties of the _judex_. In the first place it has been made clear that at the time under discussion nothing that could correctly be called a "municipal system" existed in Lombardy, and the city, _as such_, had no independent existence or independent relations with the state. And secondly, it cannot but be manifest that the position that the city did occupy as actual, if not necessarily as legal, centre from which issued all the administrative functions of the district, the residence of the chief authority and the seat of his courts, would have a marked tendency to increase slowly, perhaps imperceptibly at first, the importance of its position at once in the _civitas_ and in the state, and at the same time to improve the character of its inhabitants and in time increase their wealth. That this ultimately came about the development of the later independent communal life is a proof, and the tardy steps by which this was attained but serve to show the difficulties consequent on so slight and so feeble a beginning.