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They would have greeted with laughter the modern fable of the divine right of kings, if by that they were expected to understand that the will of the king was law, or that the eldest son of a certain family had any God-given ipso-facto right to succeed his father. Sixteen kings, says the preface, had reigned from Agilmund to Rothar; and seven times had the royal race been changed.
We have seen a hero arise among them of the true old Teuton stamp, bearing worthily the name which his forefathers brought over the Alps with Alboin Garibald, the 'bold in war. May they succeed in the same noble struggle as that in which we succeeded, and returning, not in letter, but in spirit, to the old laws of Rothar and their free forefathers, become the leading race of a free and united Italy!
Whether Rothar gave the garathinx to his barons, or his barons to him, I do not understand: but at least it is clear from the use of this one word that the publication of these laws was a 'social contract' a distinct compact between king and people. From all which you will perceive at once that these Lombards, like all Teutons, were a free people, under a rough kind of constitutional monarchy.
By studying them, moreover, you may gain some notion of that primaeval liberty and self- government, common at first to all the race, but preserved alone by England; to which the descendants of these very Lombards are at this very moment so manfully working their way back. These laws were collected and published in writing by king Rothar, A.D. 643, 76 years after Alboin came into Italy.
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