[p. 551]
|551| also belongs under the principle of limited monarchy, that is, one resting on laws, is here indifferent – and from this epoch of the development of the countries into a state dates the period of the power, of the wealth of the state and of the free, lawful prosperity of individuals.
With Germany, on the other hand, Italy has had the same course of fate in common, except that Italy, because greater culture already lay in it beforehand, brought its fate earlier to the development towards which Germany is going completely.
Over Italy the Roman-German emperors long maintained a supremacy which, as in Germany, usually had only so much force, and only then, when it was maintained by the emperor’s own power. The craving of the emperors to keep both countries under their dominion has annihilated their power in both.
In Italy every point of it acquired sovereignty; it ceased to be one state and became a turmoil of independent states, monarchies, aristocracies, democracies, as chance would have it; the degeneration of these constitutions into tyranny, oligarchy and ochlocracy also came to light for a short time. The condition of Italy cannot be called anarchy, for the multitude of opposed parties were organized states. Notwithstanding the lack of a proper bond of the state, a great part nevertheless always united for common resistance against the head of the Empire, as the other part did to make common cause with him. The Ghibelline and Guelph parties, which formerly embraced Germany as well as Italy, presented themselves – with modifications which arise from altered circumstances of the times – in Germany in the eighteenth century as the Austrian and Prussian parties.
Not long had the individual parts of Italy dissolved the previous state and swung themselves up to independence,
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