With Dante we are already in the fourteenth century, close upon Petrarch and Boccaccio; and already the whole course of political things is curving back to tyranny, for lack of faculty in the cities, placed as they were, to learn the lesson of politics. Their inhabitants could neither combine as federations to secure well-being for all of their own members, nor cease to combine as groups against each other. Always their one principle of union remained negative--animal hatred of city to city, of faction to faction. It is important then to seek for a clear notion of the forces which fostered mental life and popular prosperity alongside of influences which wrought for demoralisation and dissolution. Taking progress to consist on one hand in increase and diffusion of knowledge and art, and on the other in better distribution of wealth, we find that slavery, to begin with, was substantially extinguished in the time of conflict between cities, barons, and emperor. Already in the fifth century the process had begun in Gaul. Guizot treats the change from slave to free labour as a mystery. "Quand et comment il s'opéra au sein du monde romain, je ne le sais pas; et personne, je crois, ne l'a découvert; mais ... au commencement du Ve siècle, ce pas était fait; il y avait, dans toutes les grandes villes de la Gaule, une classe assez nombreuse d'artisans libres; déjà même ils étaient constitués en corporations.... La plupart des corporations, dont on a continué d'attribuer l'origine au moyen âge, remontent, dans le midi de la Gaule surtout et en Italie, au monde romain" (_Civilisation en France_, i, 57). But a few pages before (p. 51) we are told that at the _end_ of the _fourth_ century free men commenced in crowds to seek the protection of powerful persons. On this we have the testimony of Salvian (_De gubernatione Dei_, lib. v). The solution seems to be that the "freed" class in the rural districts were the serfs of the glebe, who, as we have seen, were rapidly substituted for slaves in Italy in the last age of the Empire; and that in the towns in the same way the crumbling upper class slackened its hold on its slaves. Both in town and country such detached poor folk would in time of trouble naturally seek the protection of powerful persons, thus preparing the way for feudalism.