conducted the meeting, just as much as it was in the ancient assembly held on the classic plains of Troy. In a capitulary[77] of Charlemagne of the year 809 it is decreed: "ut Scabini boni et veraces cum Comite et populo elegantur et constituantur": and more specific directions are given by Lothar I. in the year 873, in case of a _scabinus_ found to be an unjust judge. He says:[78] "ut Missi Nostri ubicumque malos scabinos invenerint ejiciant, et totius populi consensu in loco eorum bonos eligant." From this latter example we see that the _missi_ had the power of dismissal "for cause," as well as of nomination. In fact, the king and his ministers, in the interests of impartial justice, kept constant watch on the acts and judgments of the _scabini_, and a law of Lothar I. tells us that "quicumque de Scabinis deprehensus fuerit propter munera, aut propter amicitam injuste judicare" should be sent up to the king to render an account of the manner in which he had fulfilled the duties of his office. Such then were the duties, the privileges and the restrictions of the first magistrate to whom we could venture to ascribe any of the attributes of a popular judge: a representative of the people at the assembly of their ruler; a judge of their suits and of their misdoings at home, and a check on the arbitrary power of their lord and feudal superior,--we can readily appreciate that the existence of such an officer within the city must have exercised some influence in giving to its inhabitants a greater sense of security, and consequently of importance, even if we cannot claim that in the earliest stages of municipal development it gave birth to any definite ideas of personal freedom or of municipal independence. But it can easily be seen that it formed another and an important factor in that idea whose progress we wish to trace, of a slowly growing feeling of individuality in the city as such, the municipal unit as conceived apart from the still legally recognized unit, the entire _civitas_. We have seen the count the representative of this idea as far as its actual connection with the constitution of the state was concerned, but it was the _scabinus_ who was to represent it to the consciousness of the people, and to assist them in rediscovering the lost conception of a municipal unity.