the countless rivals with whom each of them had to contend. Individual and general interests thus worked in concert, and the fragmentary power divided among so many hands, was nevertheless able to guard the liberty of all, at a time when no true conception of the State or of general equality had yet arisen. Still, it is easy to imagine how ill-arranged and inconclusive must have been the legislation of republics thus divided and subdivided, in which at every step some new special statute or tribunal was encountered. And this at a time when judicial and political power were so strangely intermixed, that whoever had a share in the one necessarily shared in the other. The dominant feature in all the civil enactments of the statutes seems to be a jealousy of neighbouring communes, and a fear lest, as a result of marriage, property should be withdrawn from the city, the society, or the family. To guard against this, both law and custom provided so efficaciously, that even in a Republic as democratic as that of Florence, wherein every vestige of aristocracy was destroyed, and the Ciompi obtained the upper hand, we find landed property so strictly tied up that there are families who, to this day, own the same estates which were held by their ancestors in the fourteenth century. The necessity for keeping families, associations, and party-circles intimately united, and making each member of them bound for the rest, is so strikingly apparent, that it is these political and social considerations which determine the tendency of the civil law, and often impede its natural development. So that even here, notwithstanding the weakness of the State, we again recognise the old Latin tradition, which always accords an excessive importance to political considerations, and consequently a preponderating influence to public over private law. The Italian statutes, therefore, can only be explained and understood in connection with the history of the communes, which they illustrate in their turn. And this is another reason why the professors of Bologna, accustomed to the philosophical character of Justinian's legislation, and unfamiliar with the methods of historical exposition, so long neglected the statutes.