or communal property of the old Roman _curia_, when these were
overthrown by the Lombard conquest.

In considering this phase of civil administration under the Lombard
system, we are again brought face to face with the old question of the
survival or non-survival of corporate existence among the cities. For
if it could be proved that the municipality in its corporate capacity
retained the communal property and administered it, there would appear
to be good grounds for the assertion of the continuance of some form
of quasi-independent municipal government; but if, on the other hand,
it were found that the property of the municipality passed to the new
head of local administration or to the central power, it would be
evident that the continuance of the municipal system as such was a
logical impossibility; for, deprived at once of its property and of
its revenues, it would have had no vitality to keep it from a speedy
end.

In investigating a question of this nature from the sources at our
disposal in a period of history so obscure, we cannot expect to find
any definite statements sufficiently precise to set at rest at once
all opposition and discussion; but after considering the character of
the people we are investigating and studying their institutions, and
after a careful examination of the laws and records which form the
sources of our information, we are, I think, in a position to be able
to give a sufficiently decided opinion as to whether a particular set
of facts or conditions could possibly have existed in a state of
development and in a society of a given character. Thus it is in
regard to the matter in hand. From the numberless cases in which the
_publicum_ is mentioned in the documents from which we draw our
materials, it seems to me possible for a critical examiner to come to