80. In order to complete your broad view of the elements of social
power in the thirteenth century, you have now farther to understand the
position of the country people, who maintained by their labour these
three classes, whose action you can discern, and whose history you can
read; while, of those who maintained them, there is no history, except
of the annual ravage of their fields by contending cities or nobles;--
and, finally, that of the higher body of merchants, whose influence was
already beginning to counterpoise the prestige of noblesse in Florence,
and who themselves constituted no small portion of the noblesse of
Venice.

The food-producing country was for the most part still possessed by the
nobles; some by the ecclesiastics; but a portion, I do not know how
large, was in the hands of peasant proprietors, of whom Sismondi gives
this, to my mind, completely pleasant and satisfactory, though, to his,
very painful, account:--

"They took no interest in public affairs; they had assemblies of their
commune at the village in which the church of their parish was
situated, and to which they retreated to defend themselves in case of
war; they had also magistrates of their own choice; but all their
interests appeared to them enclosed in the circle of their own
commonality; they did not meddle with general politics, and held it for
their point of honour to remain faithful, through all revolutions, to
the State of which they formed a part, obeying, without hesitation, its
chiefs, whoever they were, and by whatever title they occupied their
places."

81. Of the inferior agricultural labourers, employed on the farms of