for spontaneous free organisation and self-government--tells too of the survival of a majority of Roman-speaking people even in the upper and middle classes of the cities. We may readily grant, as against Savigny and his disciples, that the Roman institution of the _curia_ had not been preserved in the cities of Lombardy. There was no reason why it should have been, even if the Longobard kings had been inclined to use it as a means of extorting taxation; for in the last ages of the Empire it had become detestable to the upper citizens themselves. [Savigny's proposition seems to be sufficiently confuted in a page or two by Leo, _Geschichte von Italien_, 1829, i, 82, 83. Karl Hegel later wrote a whole treatise to the same effect, _Geschichte der Stadtverfassung von Italien_, Leipzig, 1847. See also F. Morin, _Origines de la démocratie_, 3e ed. 1865, pp. 34-35, 59, 94, 122, etc. Guizot uncritically followed Raynouard, who held with or anticipated Savigny. As to the general revolt against the _curia_, cp. Leo, i, 47, and Guizot, _Civilisation en France_, i, 52-63. As to the theory of a Roman basis for the early civic organisation of Saxon Britain, cp. Pearson, _History of England during the Early and Middle Ages_, 1867, i, 264; Scarth, _Roman Britain_, App. i; Stubbs, _Constitutional History of England_, 4th ed. i, 99; and Karl Hegel, _Städte und Gilden der germanischen Völker im Mittelalter_, 1891, Einleit. pp. 10, 33, 34.]