The immediate changes in the life of the people consequent on the introduction of this system were not considerable, if we except a great improvement in public order and a marked advance in the equitable administration of justice; but it needs no great foresight to see that the ultimate effects on the position held by the municipal units in the community could not fail to be important and far-reaching. The new officer, the count, stripped of all the importance that his predecessor, the duke, had enjoyed as lord of the country over which he ruled, was placed in each city to govern, in the king's name, it and its _territorium_. As long as the empire of Charlemagne retained its integrity, and as long as the reins of central government were held by a strong hand and the control it exercised was felt to be positive and real, the change in the character of the local governor was of little moment; but as soon as the power of the central government weakened--during the inglorious reigns of the immediate successors of the great emperor--its hold on the administration of the local units slackened immediately; and in proportion as the vitality of the new central control diminishes, we see appearing the effects which must always result when the strong hand of an active central power is removed from a system of administration which had been based on the exercise of such a power. These effects are the increased importance--I may now say the increased independence--of the local units; of these local units themselves as distinguished from the heads who rule over them. The change had made these units more organic parts of the state than they had ever been before: we have seen them first made prominent by being the seats of the rulers of the _civitas_, and now we are to see them gain a more significant advance by coming into relation with the head of the state directly, instead of through the personal power of their lord. For the local ruler has yielded his individual pre-eminence to the central government; and when this fails to maintain its authority, in any community whose inhabitants are capable of fostering the seeds of independence once sown, it is difficult if not impossible for a successor to repossess himself of the privileges which have been forfeited. In any state where the seat of central authority is distant or its power only exercised feebly and at intervals, the local units secure much greater independence and importance, through the very necessity of performing many functions left unheeded by the ruler of all; and if the people are self-reliant in character, they will in time develop a sort of self-government which, although it would not at first think of questioning the theoretical right and overlordship of the central power, will eventually brook but little interference with its modes of procedure and with its exercise of functions, which the lapse of time has transformed from enforced duties into jealously guarded privileges.