The communal programme was not realised in a day; the
struggle for free governments, which began in the eleventh century, was
continued into the thirteenth and fourteenth; and the forces of the movement
were already exhausted in North France and Italy before it reached a head in
South France or in Germany. Naturally, in a conflict waged over so wide an area
for several hundred years, the watchwords were often modified, and many
different patterns of town government were devised. In its later stages the
movement was more peaceful, and the purse was often found a better argument
than the sword; the communal parties ceased to be democratic, though they never
ceased to be republican; and power was practically if not formally monopolised
by a municipal patriciate.
The mass-meeting of the burgesses, all-powerful in
the days when the commune was an organised rebellion, gradually became
insignificant in the older communes, and in many of the late foundations was
never recognised at all, its powers being distributed among the craft-gilds
meeting in their separate assemblies. Concurrent with this diminution in the
importance of the ordinary burgess, there is a tendency to restrict the
franchise by demanding higher and higher qualifications from the candidates.
The commune, in fact, sinks almost to the level of a trades union or a benefit
society, and membership is valued chiefly as a title to exclusive rights of
trade and poor-relief. The political aspect of the institution is almost
forgotten in countries where the power of the state gains ground upon the
centrifugal forces of society; and, in those communes which preserve the
dignity of states, an internecine conflict between the rich and poor, the
rulers and the ruled, usually becomes the main feature of domestic politics.
