KRO·POTKIN neighbourship guild, in every sworn fraternity. In every village commune, such was the custom before bishop or kinglet succeeded in introducing-and later in enforcing-his judge. Now the hamlets and the parishes which constituted the borough, as well as all the guilds and fraternities that had developed there, considered themselves a single amitas. They named their judges and swore permanent union between all these groups. A charter was drawn up and accepted. In case of need they sent for the copy of a charte_rto some neighbouring commune, (we know hundreds of these charters to-day,) and the commune was constituted. The bishop or prince, who had up till then been judge of the commune and had often become more or less its master, had only to recognize the accomplished fact-or else to fight the young "con-juration" by force of arms. Often the king-that is to say the prince who tried to gain superiority over other princes and whose coffers were always .empty-"granted" the charter for ready money. He thus renounced imposing his judge on the commune, while giving himself importance before other feudal lords. But it was by no means the rule: hundreds of communes lived without any other sanction than their good pleasure, their ramparts and their lances. In a hundred years this movement spread by imitation to the whole of Europe, including Scotland, France, the Netherlands, Scan- .dinavia, Germany, Italy, Spain, Poland and Russia. And to-day, when we compare the charters and internal organisation of French, English, Scottish, Irish, Scandinavian, German, Bohemian, Russian, Swiss, Italian and Spanish communes, we are struck by the almost complete similarity of these charters and of the organisation which grew up under the shelter of these "social contracts". What a striking lesson for Romanists and Hegelists who know no other means to obtain similarity of institutions than servitude before the law! From the Atlantic to the middle course of the Volga, and from Norway to Italy, Europe was covered with similar communes-some becoming populous cities like Florence, Venice, Nuremberg or Novgorod, others remaining boroughs of a hundred or even twenty families, and nevertheless treated as equals by their more or less prosperous sisters. Organisms full of vigour, the communes grew dissimilar in their evolution. Geographical position, the character of external commerce, the obstacles to be vanquished outside, gave every commune its own history. But for all that, the principle was the same. Pskov in Russia and Bruges in Flanders, a Scottish borough of three hundred inhabitants and rich Venice with its islands, a borough in the North of France or in Poland, and Florence the Beautiful represent the same amitas. The same fellowship of village communes and of associated jllilds; the same constitution in its general outline. Generally the town, whose enclosure grows with the population 20 Biblioteca G.no Bianco
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