hibelline
party; while Perugia at the distance of a few miles, equally debarred
from mercantile expansion, maintained the Guelf cause with pertinacity.
The annals of the one city record a long succession of complicated party
quarrels, throughout the course of which the State continued free; the
Guelf leanings of the other exposed it to the gradual encroachment of
the Popes, while its civic independence was imperiled and enfeebled by
the contests of a few noble families. Lucca and Pistoja in like manner
are strongly contrasted, the latter persisting in a state of feud and
faction which delivered it bound hand and foot to Florence, the former
after many vicissitudes attaining internal quiet under the dominion of a
narrow oligarchy.

But while recognizing these differences, which manifest themselves
partly in what may be described as national characteristics, and partly
in constitutional varieties, we may trace one course of historical
progression in all except Venice. This is what natural philosophers
might call the morphology of Italian commonwealths. To begin with, the
Italian republics were all municipalities. That is, like the Greek
states, they consisted of a small body of burghers, who alone had the
privileges of government, together with a larger population, who,
though they paid taxes and shared the commercial and social advantages
of the city had no voice in its administration. Citizenship was
hereditary in those families by whom it had been once acquired, each
republic having its own criterion of the right, and guarding it
jealously against the encroachments of non-qualified persons. In
Florence, for example, the burgher must belong to one of the Arts.[1]
In Venice his name must be inscribed upon the Golden Book. The
rivalries to which this system of municipal government gave rise were a
chief source of internal weakness to the commonwealths. Nor did the
burghers see far enough or philosophically enough to recruit their
numbers by a continuous admission of new members from the wealthy but
unfranchised citizens.[2] This alone could have saved them from the
death by dwindling and decay to which they were exposed. The Italian
conception of citizenship may be set forth in the words of one of their
acutest critics, Donato Giannotti, who writes concerning the electors
in a state:[3] 'Non dico tutti gli abitanti della terra, ma tutti
quelli che hanno grado; cioe che hanno acquistato, o eglino o gli
antichi loro, facul