Originally, entrance into the Guilds, or _Zünfte_, was the only road to citizenship in the Commune. These corporations or guilds had certain monopolies and political privileges. It was a prominent feature of the time that every mass of men, in any way whatever associated, was also incorporated. They were necessary for the protection of the humble burgher and infant industry against an unruly aristocracy, as well as, in some cases, for the transmission of knowledge and skill. Without them the cities would never have performed their high service in the promotion of civilization, and the acknowledgment of the burgher’s rights. The various trades were separated by these guilds, but within them the employer and the employed had a common interest. Their effect was to strengthen the rights of their members and to raise the dignity of their masters. Under the reign of Henry I., surnamed the Fowler, when that awful catastrophe came over all the central part of Europe, the irruption of the terrible and ferocious Magyars, who swarmed westward from Hungary, spreading horror and desolation wherever they went, and Helvetia, being exactly in their course and unfortified against such an invasion, suffered fearfully, he compassionated its helpless condition and took pains to fortify the cities and towns. The peasantry, however, were so attached to their free mountain lives that often, in spite of all danger, they could not be persuaded to come into the towns. So, in order to induce them to do so, Henry conferred very many privileges on the citizens of the towns, and in this way laid the foundation of the guild and burgher class. All the members of the guilds had to be burghers of the particular Commune. The systematic education and gradual development of the artisan class, their progress in technical skill and in wealth, their privilege of carrying arms under the banner of their corporation or guild, their permanent connection with the interests and prosperity of the town, all tended to awaken in the artisans a sense of their importance. As the administration of justice became general, government became national, and skill and knowledge were so diffused that no special protection, by way of monopolizing guilds, was any longer deemed necessary. In order to check the tendency of members of poor Communes to establish themselves in more prosperous ones, a practice prevalent when the property was held in common by all the inhabitants, there was a close corporation constituted, called the Burgher Commune, to the members of which the communal property was limited; the remaining inhabitants being excluded from participation in it, as well as in the local administration. It soon came to pass, with increased facility of communications, that in most Communes the majority of the inhabitants were not burghers. It was necessary to raise taxes to meet the public expenditure, and it was not admissible that the burghers alone should