more or less accuracy from the mazy writings of the early chroniclers;
we can get a fair idea of the judicial and the legislative acts of the
ruling powers by studying and comparing the different codes of laws
that have come down to us; but in a study of the internal municipal
life of these early ages, the student meets again and again with
increasing discouragement, and soon finds himself almost hopelessly
lost in a tangle of doubts and inferences.

In the almost total want of direct evidence, from casual mention
gleaned from the writings of the chroniclers, and from occasional
references in the law codes to municipal offices and regulations,
enough indirect evidence must be sought, to enable us, by the aid of
our powers of reasoning, if not of our imagination, to build up some
history, defective though it be, of municipal life, down to the time
when the internal growth and importance of the cities rendered them
sufficiently prominent political factors to have their deeds and their
progress chronicled. Besides, if we consider the modes by which the
communes slowly rose to independence, it will easily be seen that to
have every step of this slow and almost secret advance chronicled and
given to the world, would have been entirely contrary to the policy of
the cities. These hoped to gain by the neglect of their rulers, and
while clinging pertinaciously to every privilege ever legally granted,
to claim new ones constantly, putting forth as their sole legal title
that slippery claim of precedent and time-honored custom. In that age,
books of reference to prove such claims would have been found alike
inconvenient and unnecessary. All the city folks wished was to be
forgotten and ignored by their superiors, as any notice vouchsafed
them was sure to come only in the restraint of some assumed privilege
or the curtailing of some coveted right.