n a national republic.

[1] _Op. Ined._ vol. i. p. 28.

[2] _Ib._ vol. iii. p. 8.

It may with more reason be asked in the next place why Italy did not
become a monarchy, and again why she never produced a confederation,
uniting the Communes as the Swiss Cantons were combined for mutual
support and self-defense. When we attack the first of these two
questions, our immediate answer must be that the Italians had a rooted
disinclination for monarchical union.[1] Their most strenuous efforts
were directed against it when it seemed to threaten them. It may be
remembered that they were not a new people, needing concentration to
secure their bare existence. Even during the great days of ancient Rome
they had not been what we are wont to call a nation, but a confederacy
of municipalities governed and directed by the mistress of the globe.
When Rome passed away, the fragments of the body politic in Italy,
though rudely shaken, retained some portion of the old vitality that
joined them to the past. It was to the past rather than the future that
the new Italians looked; and even as they lacked initiative forces in
their literature, so in their political systems they ventured on no
fresh beginning. Though Rome herself was ruined, the shadow of the name
of Rome, the mighty memory of Roman greatness, still abode with them.
Instead of a modern capital and a modern king, they had an idea for
their rallying-point, a spiritual city for their metropolis. Nor was
there any immediate reason why they should have sacrificed their local
independence in order to obtain the security afforded by a sovereign. It
was not till a later epoch that Italy learned by bitter experience that
unity at any cost would be acceptable, face to face with the organized
armies of modern Europe. But when the chance of securing that safeguard
was offered in the Middle Ages, it must have been bought by subjection
to foreigners, by toleration of feudalism, by the extinction of Roman
culture in the laws and customs of barbarians. Thus it is not too much
to say that the Italians themselves rejected it. Moreover, the problem
of unifying Italy in a monarchy was never so practically simple as that
of forming nations out of the Teutonic tribes. Not only was the instinct
of clanship absent, but before the year 800 all attempts to establish a
monarchical state were thwarted by the still formidable proximity of
the Greek Empire and by the growing power of ecclesiastic