98/110 Municipal autonomy, implying the right of the municipality to rule its conquests for its own particular profit, was the dominant idea. To have advanced from this stage of thought to the highly developed conception of a national republic, centralizing the forces of Italy and at the same time giving free play to its local energies, would have been impossible. This kind of republican unity implies a previous unification of the people in some other form of government. It furthermore demands a system of representation extended to all sections of the nation. Their very nature, therefore, prevented the republican institutions won by the Italians in the early Middle Ages from sufficing for their independence in a national republic. |