294.
In this sense and to this extent were the republics of Italy the products of constructive skill; and great was the political sagacity educed among the Italians by this state of things.

The citizens reflected on the past, compared their institutions with those of neighboring states, studied antiquity, and applied the whole of their intelligence to the one aim of giving a certain defined form to the commonwealth.

Prejudice and passion distorted their schemes, and each successive modification of the government was apt to have a merely temporary object.

Thus the republics, as I have already hinted, lacked that safeguard which the Greek states gained by clinging each to its own character.

The Greeks were no less self-conscious in their political practice and philosophy; but after the age of the Nomothetae, when they had experienced nearly every phase through which a commonwealth can pass, they recognized the importance of maintaining the traditional character of their constitutions inviolate.