Civitas

“ These felt the fruits of their victory to lie in the rich arable lands of the surrounding plains, and here they settled down, each in his own holding, portioned out by lot to every soldier; the town being considered but as a part of the civitas or district, if I may use the term, of the dux or overlord, from whom the several milites, or landholders of the surrounding territory, had their tenure, and who himself held directly from the king. ”

“ The cities were not merely, in comparison with the clergy and the nobility, the "third estate"; but the citizen who himself managed his commonwealth, and defended its interests with arms, developed into the citizen of a state which absorbed the clergy and nobility, and the state-citizen found his ultimate ideal in pure Humanity as cognized through reason. ”

“ In this condition of the commonwealth, which I have often already stated not to be lasting, because it is not equable to all the orders of the state, the chief men had the whole government in their hands; the most noble decemvirs being always preferred. No tribunes of plebeians opposed to them, no other magistrates associated with them, and no appeal left to the people against death and stripes. Wherefore on account of the injustice of these men, a great disturbance suddenly arose, and a revolution took place in the whole commonwealth. ”

“ They inherited no machinery of self-government. Townships governed by close corporations, and all embedded in the despotic power of the crown, presented none of the elements out of which a commonwealth could be formed. It was inevitable that in the early stages of their history, the so-called Latin communities should fall under the control of “the single person,” and no less inevitable that he should be a soldier. ”

“ Examining the history of his native city with the eye of a statesman, and meditating upon the civic revolutions which he himself had witnessed, that sagacious politician had observed, that in the contentions for power which had frequently taken place between the aristocracy and the lower orders of the state, the plebeian faction had almost always failed, through want of a leader whose authority might restrain their irregularities, and whose judgment might give to their efforts the consistency and energy of system. ”

“ How often has the very city of cities, the great capital of the whole earth, been laid low by civil war and again, when it ceased, has risen as if from the ground! Would that you too, O kings, were engaged in battles like those in which your fathers struggled, that the heathen terrified by your union might be crushed by your strength! ”

“ How can an Empire be organised without the sacrifice of political liberty? In the absence of representative government, the sole forms of free State known to the ancients were the Confederation, an organisation which common-sense at once discarded as too loose and inefficient for the purpose, and the City-state, as it had been elaborated by Greek politicians and political philosophers. ”

“ Thus did that manifesto explain the equality of nobles. The king, the bishops, and the senators, who for a long time had carried in their hearts the thought of reforming the Commonwealth, convinced themselves with joyful wonder that the people had become ripe for that reform, that they were ready to enter upon now paths, rub the rust and mould from themselves, and begin a new, glorious life. ”

“ Every people, therefore, which consists of such an association of the entire multitude as I have described, every city which consists of an assemblage of the people, and every commonwealth which embraces every member of these associations, must be regulated by a certain authority, in order to be permanent. ”

“ Such a Civic Centre or nucleus for the co-operation of all societies and agencies, social, moral, intellectual and religious, would stand to the civic authorities much as the spiritual power stands to the State. A federation so constituted would be the Civic Church of the city; and the State without the Church, is the body without the soul. ”

“ The Capitol was tilled with crowds who favored or opposed the law; nor could the matrons be kept at home either by advice or shame, nor even by the commands of their husbands; but they beset every street and pass in the city, beseeching the men as they went down to the forum, that, in the present flourishing state of the commonwealth, when the private fortune of all was daily increasing, they would suffer the women to have their former ornaments restored. ”

“ In the case of city states the reasons why the governments113 were unmixed, absolute, and abnormal are best seen contrasting a city state with a larger political community: for example, England in the middle ages. In that large political community it was impossible, owing to the size of the territory, the importance of the country districts, and the diverse characters of different districts, for any single person or class to engross all power and become the sole ruler. ”

“ The tribunes' protective authority, the right of appeal to the people, the resolutions of the plebs made binding on the patricians, the suppression of our rights and privileges under the pretext of making the laws equal for all - these things we have submitted to, and do submit to. What term is there to be to our dissensions? When shall we ever be allowed to have a united City, when will this ever be our common fatherland? We who have lost, show more calmness and evenness of temper than you who have won. Is it not enough that you have made us fear you? ”

“ Are you not ashamed to see a greater number of lictors in the Forum than of all other citizens put together? What will you do if the enemy approach the City? What if the plebs, seeing that their secession has no effect, come shortly against us in arms? Do you want to end your power by the fall of the City? Either you will have to do without the plebeians or you will have to accept their tribunes; sooner than they will go without their magistrates, we shall have to go without ours. ”

“ As for the Spontaneous Commune, one may say that there never was on Earth a stranger Town-Council. Administration, not of a great City, but of a great Kingdom in a state of revolt and frenzy, this is the task that has fallen to it. ”

“ Convinced of the supreme importance of ridding the municipalities of the institutions of tyranny, the most strenuous advocates of independence, instead of spending their efforts mainly in the general Congress, devoted themselves to their home localities, endeavoring to work out of the minds of their neighbors and fellow-colonists the institutions of entailed property, of a State-Church, of a class-divided people, even the institution of African slavery itself. ”

“ In the beginning of political history, every city was a world unto itself, and labored at its own salvation behind fortified walls that shut out the rest of the world. Presently cities were merged into states, states united into confederacies, confederacies into empires. Peoples at first unknown to each other even by name came to pass in and out of each other’s territories, merging their interests, their cultures, their bloods. ”

“ The imperial metropolis,—the centre of Faith, the destination of the pilgrim, the home of art and poetry, the emporium of commerce,—stripped of her honors and her wealth, was degraded to the position of a provincial city. Every district had its sovereign, every town its court, every castle its lord. National unity, so difficult to establish and preserve among a people whose traditions were based upon tribal prejudice and individual independence, now became utterly impossible. ”

“ While townsmen were forced at every turn to discover and justify the limits of their privileges, or while controversies raged among them as to how the government of the community should be carried on, there was no lack of political teaching; and all questions “touching the great commonalty of the city” for whose liberties they had fought and whose constitution they had shaped, stirred loyal citizens to a genuine patriotism. ”

“ Now came pouring in at the city gates, and parading through the streets, the deputations from the various villages, destined to swell the grand procession. These village deputations were headed by their priests, bearing their respective crosses and banners, and images of the Blessed Virgin and of patron saints; all which were matters of great rivalship and jealousy among the peasantry. It was like the chivalrous gatherings of ancient days, when each town and village sent its chiefs, and warriors, and standards, to defend the capital or grace its festivities. ”

“ Fortunately for the progress of liberty, the civic bodies, as if they had been providentially warned of the future in store for them, never hesitated to accept from their lords, civil or ecclesiastical, conditions, onerous though they were, which enabled them to exist in the interior of the cities to which they belonged. ”

“ With the whole labouring population under control, these holy men soon waxed so strong as to awe into subjection the few white settlers whose estates dated from the conquest; and by degrees, extending their sway from the country into the towns, and even into the capital, Asuncion, they set themselves above all civil and ecclesiastical authority, snubbing the intendente of the province and worrying the bishop of the diocese. ”

“ The domestic, military, and censorial discipline, concurring with the general poverty and also with the agricultural pursuits of the people, had created the simplest and most austere habits, while the institutions of civic liberty provided ample spheres for honourable ambition. The nobles, being the highest body in a free State, and being at the same time continually confronted by a formidable opposition under the guidance of the tribunes, were ardently devoted to public life. ”

“ The only word by which I shall address you to-night is 'Citizens.' I don't even address you as 'Fellow-Citizens,' for I have learned by experience at home that there is not only a men's Citizens' Union, but a woman's Citizens' Union. The Sun calls us for short, sometimes, 'Cits.' But citizen isn't a term of reproach. Citizens mean inhabitants of a city, and to-day it means men who are banded together for just one purpose, to select men to govern us who shall be freemen. ”

“ Fair Sire, you are not the strongest; therefore, instead of ordering, request, pray, entreat, if necessary. To that end convoke a national assembly, States General, composed of prelates, seigneurs and bourgeois or townsmen, jointly deputed. In our days, fair Sire, we must reckon with the townsmen, that bourgeois class that has succeeded in emancipating itself. ”

“ They steadied the steps of advancing civilization, and helped to extend its blessings to all classes of this community. Nurseries of free and industrious men who prosecuted useful callings, the towns of modern Europe were the cradle of our civil liberty, and gradually diffusing this blessing beyond themselves, they were of the utmost service in lightening or in breaking the bondage of the feudal vassals, and in repressing the independence of the great barons, whose turbulence threatened to perpetuate the evils of anarchy or despotism. ”

“ For all towns alike, whatever were their chartered rights, had to reckon not only with their own lord of the manor, but with the great people, whether king or noble or bishop or abbot, or perhaps all of them together, who might own a part of the land within their walls, and might all assert their various and conflicting rights, and multiply officials of every kind with courts and prisons and gallows, to vindicate the lord’s authority. ”

“ For the system of auspices, and religious ceremonies, and courts of justice, and appeals to the people, the senate, the establishment of an army of cavalry and infantry, and the whole military discipline, were instituted as early as the foundation of the city by royal authority, partly too by laws, not without the assistance of the Gods. Then with what a surprising and incredible progress did our ancestors advance towards all kind of excellence, when once the republic was freed from the regal power! ”

“ If you dare touch the rights of the Commune, then you, the priests and the nobles will all be exterminated by the people in arms. Oh, may heaven's curse fall upon me before I shall by a single word help to unchain such a storm! ”

“ In fact, from the midst of this unbridled and capricious populace, they elect some one as a leader in opposition to their afflicted and expelled nobles: some new chief, forsooth, audacious and impure, often insolently persecuting those who have deserved well of the State, and ready to gratify the populace at his neighbor’s expense as well as his own. ”

“ Every city is divided into districts and wards, and on these, in representative governments, the representation is based: he who has his abode in a district is both an elector, and may also be elected in it. But the view which the ancients took was this, that the land was only the substratum of the state; that the state itself was formed of individuals ”

“ Firstly, all the tribes of which we have any good records have had governments not differing from one another in any important particular. Secondly, cities pure and simple or inexpansive cities have usually three kinds of government only, pure oligarchy, or pure despotism, or direct and almost unmixed democracy: and Republican Rome, the single example of an expanded city, had a government peculiar to itself. ”