We have already noticed that the statutes of the Italian communes accord, as does also the Longobard law, a decided preference to _agnates_ over _cognates_, and that this circumstance has given rise to keen discussion. Many persons, indeed, insist on detecting in this preference an absolutely Germanic characteristic transfused into the statutes from the Longobard law. But we have seen that through the greater part of its history the Roman law also gave a preference to the agnates, and that it was only at a very late period that it lost this feature, which was still to some extent retained in Italy at the time of the barbarian invasions. That the preference of the agnates was not borrowed by the statutes from the Longobard law will be even more conclusively shown if we consider the manifest differences which prevail on this very point between the Germanic and the Italian laws; and bear in mind the important fact that the preference continued to increase in strength, at the very time when the action and influence of the Roman law are increasingly apparent in the statutes. In truth, the more closely we examine the matter, the more we are compelled to recognise that it was political reasons altogether peculiar to the Italian communes and to Italian society in the Middle Ages that led to this preference of the agnates. But even here the reciprocal action of the one law upon the other is clearly traceable, for we can perceive that the succession of the agnates, under the Longobard law, has itself been modified by the Roman, which has made it careless of the nature of the property of which the inheritance consists; whereas it is the peculiar and constant characteristic of the Germanic law that such succession should be ruled according both to the degree of kinship and the nature of the inheritance. In conclusion, it may be said generally that with the Longobards the ties of blood predominate; that in their family there is greater individual freedom, and the family itself is much less affected by the action of the State. With the Romans, on the contrary, the conception of the family is stronger than the ties of blood; the unity of the family depends at first on an absolute paternal despotism, afterwards destroyed by the authority of the State, which to a great extent assumes its place.