Florence maintained a prolonged resistance, but finally shared the fate of her fellow republics. [Illustration] CHAPTER VII.[367] _THE FAMILY AND THE STATE IN ITALIAN COMMUNES._[368] I.[369] It is certain that no real national history of Italy can be written until the statutes and laws of our communes have been published, studied, and thoroughly investigated by the light not merely of historical but of legal research. The necessity for such investigation was first proclaimed by the learned Savigny, subsequently recognised by many Italian scholars, but has never yet been entirely satisfied. An accurate study of those old laws and statutes would make us acquainted with the public law of the communes, and place before our eyes a clear and exact picture of their political institutions which have been hitherto very imperfectly understood. Moreover, what is certainly of no less importance--it would enlarge our knowledge of our ancient private law, to which many learned authorities, among others Francesco Forti, attribute the origin of modern jurisprudence, and the germs of many jural provisions, afterwards accepted by us as novelties derived from the French Code. Public and private law have far more affinity than is generally supposed, and each conduces to the plainer and more exact comprehension of the other. Society and the State have both their birth in the family, reacting upon and modifying it in turn. No student therefore who seeks to discover the true key to political institutions developing themselves in a country spontaneously, should neglect the constitution of the family wherein are to be found the earliest beginnings of civil law, with which political law also is more or less connected. Cases, it is true, frequently occur of one people adopting the civil law of another, without altering its own political institutions; while in other instances both are imposed simultaneously by a superior foreign force. This has led many to question the reality of the connection which in fact subsists between them. But these cases have nothing to do with that natural and spontaneous development of law of which we are now speaking. In this development, politics and jurisprudence, the State and the family, are found to be closely interconnected.