THE STATE and surrounds itself with higher and higher towers, each erected by a parish or guild and having its own individual character, is divided into four, five or six districts or sectionswhich radiate from the citadel to the ramparts. In preference each district is inhabited by one "art" or craft, whereas new trades--the "young arts"--occupy the suburbs, which will soon be enclosed in a new fortified circle. The street or parish, represents a territorial unit, corresponding to the ancient village community. Each street or parish has its popular assembly, its forum, its popular tribunal, its elected priest, militia, banner, and often its seal as a symbol of sovereignty. It is federated with other streets, but nevertheless keeps its independence. The professional unit, which often corresponds, or nearly so, ·with the district, is the guild-the trade union. This union also retains its saints, its assembly, its forum, its judges. It has its treasury, its )anded property, its militia and banner. It also has its seal and remains sovereign. In case of war, should it think right, its militia will march with those of other guilds, and it will plant its banner beside the great banner or carosse ( cart) of the city. And lastly the city is the union of districts, streets, parishes and guilds, and it has its plenary assembly of all inhabitants in the large forum, its great belfry, its elected judges, its banner for rallying the militia of the guilds and districts. It negotiates as a sovereign with other cities, federates with whom it likes, concludes national and foreign alliances. Thus the English "Cinque Ports" round Dover are federated with French and Netherland ports on the other side of the Channel; the Russian Novgorod is the ally of Scandinavian, Germanic Hansa, and so on. In its external relations, every city possessesall the prerogative!.of the modem State, and from that time is constituted, by free contract, that body of agreements which later became known as International Jaw and was placed under the sanction of public opinion of all cities, while later on it was more often violated than respected by the States. Often a city, not being able to decide a dispute in a complicated case, sends for "finding the sentence" to a neighbouring city, and equally often the ruling spirit of the· time-arbitration, rather than the iudge's authority-is manifested in the fact of two communes taking a third as arbitrator. Trade unions behave in the same way. They carry their commercial and trade affairs beyond the cities and make treaties, without taking their nationalities into account. And when, in our ignorance, -we talk boastingly of our international workers' congresses,we forget that international trade congressesand even apprentice congresseswere already held in the fifteenth century. Lastly, the city either defends itself against aggressors and wages -its own stubborn wars against neighbouring feudal lords, nominating .each year one of two military commanders of its militias, or it accepts 21 I Biblioteca Gino Bianco
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