It is an enlargement of some of the _obiter dicta_ of
the _Convito_. The earnestness with which peace is insisted on as a
necessary postulate of civic well-being shows what the experience had
been out of which Dante had constructed his theory. It is to be looked on
as a purely scholastic demonstration of a speculative thesis, in which
the manifold exceptions and modifications essential in practical
application are necessarily left aside. Dante almost forestalls the
famous proposition of Calvin, "that it is possible to conceive a people
without a prince, but not a prince without a people," when he says, _Non
enim gens propter regem, sed e converso rex propter gentem_.[58] And in
his letter to the princes and peoples of Italy on the coming of Henry
VII., he bids them "obey their prince, but so as freemen preserving their
own constitutional forms." He says also expressly: _Animadvertendum sane,
quod cum dicitur humanum genus potest regi per unum supremum principem,
non sic intelligendum est ut ab illo uno prodire possint municipia et
leges municipales. Habent namque nationes, regna, et civitates inter se
proprietates quas legibus differentibus regulari oportet_. Schlosser the
historian compares Dante's system with that of the United States.[59] It
in some respects resembled more the constitution of the Netherlands under
the supreme stadtholder, but parallels between ideal and actual
institutions are always unsatisfactory.
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