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THE DEVELOPMENT 
 
 OF 
 
 EUROPEAN POLITY 
 
THE DEVELOPMENT 
 
 OF 
 
 EUEOPEAN POLITY 
 
 BY 
 
 HENRY SIDGWICK 
 
 I \ 
 
 AUTHOR OF 'the METHODS OF ETHICS,' 'THE PRINCIPLES OF POLITICAL ECONOMY, 
 AND 'the ELEMENTS OF POLITICS' 
 
 iLontron 
 MACMILLAN AND CO, Limited 
 
 NEW YORK : THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 1903 
 
 A II rights resented 
 
"T.' 
 
 -•:■« 
 
 £l^AL 
 
 
EDITOR'S PEEFACE 
 
 The book here offered to the public consists of lectures 
 delivered in the University of Cambridge to students of history 
 and of moral sciences. In arranging it for publication I have 
 retained the lecture form, so as to avoid unnecessary changes 
 of phraseology. 
 
 It had of late years been more and more decidedly the 
 author's view — as he has left on record — that a threefold 
 treatment of politics is desirable for completeness : — first, an 
 exposition analytical and deductive, such as he attempted 
 in his work on the Elements of Politics; secondly, an evolu- 
 tionary study of the development of polity within the 
 historic period in Europe, beginning with the earliest known 
 Grseco- Roman and Teutonic polity, and carried down to the 
 modern state of Europe and its colonies as the last result of 
 political evolution ; thirdly, a comparative study of the con- 
 stitutions of Europe and its colonies in connexion with the 
 history of what may be called the constitution-making century 
 which has just ended. The present book is an attempt at a 
 treatment of political science from the second point of view. A 
 description of its plan and scope will be found in the first 
 lecture. In reading the book it should be borne in mind that it 
 does not deal with theoretical politics as such. The theory of 
 politics is treated in Elements of Politics^ where the work and 
 structure of the modern state are examined, and though the 
 present book is complete in itself, it is intended that, for a full 
 view of the subject, both books should be read. As a matter 
 of fact, Mr. Sidgwick often gave a course of lectures on Political 
 Theory along with the lectures contained in this book — some 
 of his pupils attending both courses. 
 
 With regard to the third point of view, the comparative 
 study of present constitutions would, as Mr. Sidgwick himself 
 said, to some extent overlap with this book, but only in 
 its later part. It was a favourite idea of his, when he was 
 making plans for the future, that he might reside abroad 
 
VI DE VEL OPMENT OF E UROPEAN POLITY 
 
 for some time in different countries successively in order to 
 learn on the spot, not only what their constitutions were on 
 paper, but what they were in fact — how they actually worked, 
 and what tendencies to development were operating. The 
 scheme was perhaps too ambitious to have had, at Mr. Sidgwick's 
 age, much chance of being carried out by him, but it is a scheme 
 which, if adequately performed, ought to afford much interest 
 and instruction. 
 
 To return to the present work, it should be observed that in 
 lecturing it was Mr. Sidgwick's practice to write his lectures 
 pretty completely — though occasionally parts were at first only 
 in the form of full notes — and generally to discuss the subject 
 of them afterwards with the members of his class by means 
 of papers and essays and conversation classes. When the next 
 occasion arrived for lecturing on the same subject, he went 
 through the lectures again before delivering them, added the 
 results of further study, endeavoured to remove difficulties or 
 obscurities, and made any other improvements that occurred to 
 him — often changing somewhat the order of treatment. To 
 facilitate this process, he used during the latter part of his life 
 to write, as a rule, on loose sheets of paper, which could be 
 shuffled about, and when too much obscured by erasures and 
 marginal additions, be rewritten — a plan which also made it 
 easy to interpolate additional sheets. When he felt that the 
 matter had become sufficiently mature to be worked up into a 
 book, he would determine its general arrangement and adapt 
 the lectures to it. Finally, in preparing the work for publica- 
 tion he would revise what was written, add new matter, and fill 
 up gaps. It is thus that his Elements of Politics and, I believe, 
 his Methods of Ethics were composed. The present work has 
 not, of course, undergone the later finishing process, and indeed 
 the author was himself doubtful whether it was sufficiently 
 finished for publication. He had been led to give up the idea 
 of publishing so long as he held his professorship, feeling that 
 the time and labour required to make it what he considered 
 an adequately scholarly book could not — owing to arrange- 
 ments in connexion with the teaching and examinations at 
 Cambridge — be given consistently with his duty as Professor 
 of Moral Philosophy. He intended to resign his chair in a 
 year or two, and hoped then to return to this work ; but his 
 illness and death in 1900 cut short his plans. With regard 
 to the publication of the book, he directed me to seek advice 
 from friends competent to judge. I have received much kind 
 advice and assistance from Mr. James Bryce, Mr. A. Y. Dicey, 
 
EDITOR'S PREFACE Vli 
 
 Mr. O. Browning, Mr. T. Thornely, and others, and all whom 
 I have consulted, including my brother, Mr. A. J. Balfour, who 
 read the first half of the book, have recommended publica- 
 tion. The reader will doubtless notice, however, that the 
 treatment is unequal — that some points are more fully dealt 
 with, and in a more finished manner than others. In particular, 
 I have little doubt that the last three lectures would have 
 received further development in the hands of the author had he 
 lived. It is perhaps fortunate, however, that in Elements of 
 Politics there is a good deal said incidentally about present 
 polities, which may be regarded as supplementary to Lectures 
 XXVIII. and XXIX. This is, partly at least, referred to in foot- 
 notes in the appropriate places. 
 
 With regard to my responsibility as editor, I have through- 
 out, in accordance with the author's expressed desire con- 
 cerning any work of his to be published after his death, made 
 such verbal alterations and corrections of inadvertencies as 
 seemed to be needed, and I have of course added connecting 
 words when the sentences were not fully written out in the 
 manuscript. But in every case where the slightest doubt 
 seemed possible as to what was the sense of the words 
 intended to be read in, I have enclosed those I have added in 
 square brackets. I think it has only happened two or three 
 times in the course of the book. The substance and expres- 
 sion are therefore entirely the author's. 
 
 As regards arrangement my responsibility is greater, owing 
 partly to the way in which the lectures had been given. Mr. 
 Sidgwick first lectured on the subject, I think, in 1885-86, 
 and from that date he seems to have lectured on it in every 
 year till 1898-99. But the last course — given in the Easter 
 term of 1899 — was a short one of eight lectures, and the 
 previous course had also not been a full course. To adapt the 
 lectures to these short courses the manuscript had been much 
 disarranged, and it was not put into order afterwards ; and the 
 author's habit of altering the sequence of the sheets and con- 
 stantly renumbering them renders the numbering practically 
 useless in most cases. I have therefore had to use my own 
 judgment as to order, and in this part of the work I have re- 
 ceived very material assistance from students' note-books. I had 
 note-books of diff'erent years, and was thus able not only to 
 s6e approximately what the order of treatment had been, but 
 also that in different years it was not the same. Under these 
 circumstances a certain amount of patching together was 
 needed. In doing this I have used entirely the author's manu- 
 
Viu DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY 
 
 script ; but in order to make transitions as smooth as possible 
 I have sometimes allowed myself, when there were different 
 versions of the same thing, to choose one sentence from one 
 and another from another version. I have also occasionally- 
 interpolated passages from portions of the author's manuscript 
 other than what was tied together as the material for this book. 
 In such rearrangement there was, of course, a certain danger 
 of misrepresenting the author's meaning, and of using material 
 intended to be superseded, but I have endeavoured to avoid 
 both dangers. 
 
 It will be seen from what I have said that I am to a con- 
 siderable extent responsible for the details of arrangement ; and 
 I hope that if the reader should think there are defects of order, 
 or too much iteration of particular points, or other similar defects, 
 he will attribute the fault to the editor, and not to the author. 
 It should be mentioned that the first three lectures and Lecture X. 
 (on Kome) had been put into print by the author for the use of 
 his class. These are arranged as he left them, except that I 
 have interpolated § 6 in Lecture I., this appearing to be the 
 most appropriate place for it. 
 
 As regards footnotes and Appendix, I am largely responsible 
 for the selection. A good many of the footnotes were, it is 
 true, indicated as such by the author, and some parts of the 
 manuscript tied together as the material of the book, which did 
 not seem to fit in well into the text, have also been introduced 
 as notes ; but other footnotes and most of the notes in the 
 Appendix have been introduced by me from other portions of 
 the manuscript left by the author, because they seemed to me 
 useful in throwing light on the text, or to be in themselves 
 interesting. The distinction between footnotes and Appendix 
 is only that the notes in the latter are either too long to be 
 conveniently introduced as footnotes, or their connexion with 
 the text is somewhat indirect. I have in the course of the book 
 inserted one or two editorial footnotes, but these are, I think, 
 clearly indicated as such, and explain themselves. 
 
 I should like to be able to give, as the author would have 
 done, a list of the books to which he was most indebted in the 
 composition of this work. But this is unfortunately impossible. 
 I could give a long list of books used and annotated in the 
 course of preparing it, but it would probably be incomplete, 
 and in any case would not represent the degree in which he had 
 made use of them respectively. All I have been able to do is 
 to give, so far as possible, the references to actual quotations or 
 what are very nearly quotations. 
 
EDITORS PREFACE ix 
 
 It remains to thank those who have helped in various ways 
 in the course of the work. I have first to thank Mr. Bryce, 
 Mr. Dicey, Mr. Browning, and Mr. Thornely, and Miss Alice 
 Gardner, Lecturer on History at Newnham College — not only, 
 as already mentioned, for advice, but also for reading the 
 proofs and making criticisms, which, though they could not — as 
 they might in the author's lifetime — modify the substance of 
 what was said, have yet enabled me to remove clerical errors, 
 and, with the help of other parts of the manuscript, to improve 
 some passages and to make some points clearer. And here I 
 should like to mention that the author had shown some of the 
 lectures, in an earlier form, to the late Sir John Seeley, to 
 Mr. P. F. Willert, and to Mr. Stanley Leathes — perhaps to 
 others — and had received criticisms and suggestions from them 
 which he doubtless made use of. Mr. H. G. Dakyns, who 
 had also read some of the lectures before, has greatly helped 
 me, not only by reading the proofs, but by going through 
 some of the manuscript with me. I have to thank Miss E. M. 
 Colman and Mrs. Percy Godber for lending me their notes of 
 the lectures which they attended in 1894-95 and 1895-96 
 respectively. Miss Gardner, already mentioned, and Miss E. 
 M. Sharpley, Lecturer in Classics at Newnham College, have, 
 besides helping me to correct the proofs, taken much trouble in 
 looking out and verifying references ; and in this Mr. Thornely 
 and Mr. Dakyns have also helped. To Miss Gardner I am 
 further indebted for the Index, and for help with the Table of 
 Contents. 
 
 Eleanor Mildred Sidgwick. 
 
 Newnham College, Cambridge, 
 August 1903. - 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 LECTURE I 
 
 Introductory Survey op the Subject 
 
 PAGES 
 
 § 1. The purpose of this book is to treat the history of Political 
 Societies or States from the point of view of inductive 
 Political Science. . . . . . .1-3 
 
 § 2. It is concerned with the development as well as the classifica- 
 tion of forms of polity. ..... 3-6 
 
 § 3. Analogies between past history and present politics must be 
 used with caution, but the development of the "modem 
 state " of Western Europe and its colonies is connected with 
 ancient Greece and Rome, not only in the way of resem- 
 blance and analogy, but by direct influence ; and to the 
 study of this group, which has developed not only political 
 institutions but constitutions, this book is limited ; though 
 not of course to the exclusion of absolute monarchy. . 6-12 
 
 § 4. Differences of race and effects of climate and geographical con- 
 ditions on political development are important. . . 12-15 
 
 §5. Outline of the plan of the book. .... 15-20 
 
 § 6.., Imitation must be noted as a disturbing cause in the develop- 
 ment of polity, but it only operates where there is a previous 
 tendency towards the form of polity imitated. . . 20-25 
 
 § 7. Meaning of " Political Society, " "State" and "Nation." . 25-28 
 
 LECTUEE II 
 
 The Beginnings op Historic Polity 
 
 § 1. The earliest known polities in Greece, Rome, and Germany 
 have important resemblances, but of the three the stage of 
 the Germans when we first hear of them is earliest and 
 of the Romans latest. ..... 29-32 
 
 xi h 
 
xii DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY 
 
 § 2. In the primitive German polity we find an assembly of free- 
 men in arms, a council of chiefs, and sometimes a king ; 
 and a movement is traceable towards kingship. . . 32-34 
 
 § 3. The polity of Homeric Greece is more monarchical, though 
 both here and in Rome we find the three elements — king, 
 council, and assembly. ..... 34-42 
 
 LECTUKE III 
 
 The Patriarchal Theory 
 
 § 1. In this lecture we look backward from the primitive polity 
 to guess how political society originated. This question, so 
 much debated in earlier stages of modern political thought 
 as of practical importance, has now only historic interest. . 43-44 
 
 § 2. In historic times new states have been formed by aggrega- 
 tion and by division. But political societies cannot have 
 been formed by division out of non-political. They may 
 have been formed by aggregation — especially voluntary 
 coalescence. ...... 44-46 
 
 § 3. Were they then formed by voluntary aggregation of heads of 
 natural families, or by the extension of single families into 
 larger bodies of kindred ? Maine, arguing from ancient law 
 and what is known of primitive societies, holds the latter 
 view, conjecturing that the independent group thus formed 
 out of the partriarchal family was normally governed by the 
 eldest male ascendant representing the common ancestor. . 46-50 
 
 § 4. In considering this we answer three questions as follows : — 
 (1) kinship real or supposed may be assumed to have been 
 the bond in the primitive gi-oup ; . . • . ■ 50-51 
 
 § 5. but (2) this kinship was not necessarily of the patriarchal 
 
 type ;....... 51-54 
 
 § 6. and (3) even when the patriarchal family was established 
 within the clan, there is no reason to regard the father's 
 power as the original type of political power. Hereditary 
 kingship may, however, have arisen through a combina- 
 tion of the principle of choosing the strongest and wisest, 
 with a tendency to regard a son as the natural successor 
 to the father. ...... 54-56 
 
 LECTUEE IV 
 
 Summary of the Theory of Origin — Transition from 
 Primitive Kingship 
 
 § 1. The theory of origin arrived at in the last lecture is summed 
 
 up and further explained. ..... 57-60 
 
CONTENTS xm 
 
 2. Before tracing tlie development from the primitive polity in 
 
 Greece, we may note that we have here many instances to 
 generalise from, but the advantage of this is neutralised by 
 our fragmentary knowledge of most of the Greek states and 
 colonies. In early history, however, Athens and Sparta 
 may be taken as types of states formed by integration and 
 conquest respectively. ..... 60-62 
 
 3. Unlike Rome, in Greece the transition from kingship to early 
 
 oligarchy seems generally to have been peaceful. Monarchical 
 despotism — " tyrannis " — comes in Greece after oligarchy. 62-66 
 
 4. The difference between the movement towards kingship in 
 
 early German history and from it in Greece, is connected 
 with the tendency towards the formation of country- states 
 in the former and city-states in the latter. Concentration 
 in towns arises from (1), economic causes ; (2), the more 
 rapid development of civilisation in towns ; (3) and in 
 Greece from the geographical conditions leading to small 
 independent states, and the protection against aggression 
 afforded in small states by the walled town. The con- 
 centration of life in the town develops the sentiment of 
 the state, while the development of this sentiment fixes 
 the notion of a city community as the highest political 
 development. ...... 66-70 
 
 5. The transition from villages to towns was often semi -com- 
 
 pulsory, and may have been promoted by the ambition 
 of primitive kings. But the development of civilised 
 life in small separate communities deprives kingship of its 
 value as a bond of national unity, and, speaking broadly, 
 political society in Greece passed from primitive kingship 
 to primitive oligarchy, the council becoming the ruling 
 organ. ....... 71-74 
 
 LECTURE V 
 
 Early Oligarchy in the Greek City-State 
 
 1. The assembly of the freemen in arms also tends to acquire an 
 
 oligarchical character from various causes. There are two 
 kinds of oligarchy — that where a minority of rich govern a 
 majority of poor citizens, and that where the whole body of 
 citizens is a minority compared with free non-citizens. It is 
 in this latter sense that Sparta is an oligarchy. . . 75-80 
 
 2. This kind of oligarchy resulting, as in Sparta, from conquest 
 
 is found elsewhere in Greece ; but it may also arise from the 
 citizens by inheritance becoming a minority compared with 
 free immigrants. On the other hand, "integration" — 
 coalescence of small towns as in Athens — would tend to 
 throw power into the hands of a minority inhabiting the 
 central town and able to attend the assembly. . . 80-82 
 
XIV DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY 
 
 PAGES 
 
 § 3. Growing inequality of property is an important cause of 
 oligarchy. The landless freeman relieved from fighting at 
 his own charge would lose his place in the assembly. 
 The importance of cavalry in war would also throw power 
 into the hands of the rich. Early oligarchies of this sort 
 were probably "natural oligarchies." . . . 82-85 
 
 LECTUEE VI 
 Tyrannis 
 
 § 1. "Tyrannis" — unlawful despotism — tends to prevail in Greece 
 at two periods. In the first the tyrannus is usually a 
 demagogue who profits by the movement against early 
 oligarchy. In the second he is more often a leader of 
 mercenaries. ...... 86-89 
 
 § 2. The movement against early oligarchy is due to oppression by 
 the rich ; to the growth of new wealth outside old families ; 
 to growing luxury and insolence ; to distrust of unwritten 
 law. The codifier and the " aesymnete," or lawful dictator, 
 sometimes avert the crisis. .... 89-90 
 
 § 3. There is great inequality of development in Greece, and the 
 early democratic movement occurs in the more advanced 
 parts. ....... 90-93 
 
 § 4. Accordingly we find the earlier Tyrannis in commercial and 
 maritime states and in colonies. It is sometimes averted 
 by broadening the basis of oligarchy. . . . 93-95 
 
 § 5. Tyrannis pressed more hardly on the rich than the poor, and 
 it often raised the power and prestige of the State, but being 
 always irregular and lawless it was generally condemned. . 95-99 
 
 LECTUEE VII 
 Greek Democracy 
 
 § 1. After the period of the earlier Tyrannis we have a very general 
 
 drift towards democracy, with lapses to oligarchy. . 100-101 
 
 § 2. "We know little of the oligarchies of this period. . . 102-103 
 
 § 3. Of democracy we know more from Athens, where the general 
 assembly of the people governed ; the magistrates and council 
 were subordinate and were appointed by lot ; attendance 
 at the assembly was paid ; administration of justice was 
 popular ; the assembly did not itself legislate. . . 103-107 
 
 § 4. Aristotle's classification of governments implies a general 
 
 condemnation of the actual governments in Greek States. . 107-111 
 
 § 5. And his condemnation of fully developed democracy is con- 
 firmed by Plato and Isocrates, but they all agree that a 
 bad oligarchy is worse. . . . . .111-113 
 
CONTENTS XV 
 
 Democracy seems to have tended to personal liberty ; and the 
 corrupt administration of justice at Athens, and the over- 
 burdening of the rich by taxation, is perhaps exaggerated. 
 Democracy was often violent, but some forms of oppression 
 were probably more often talked of than realised. . . 113-119 
 
 LECTUEE VIII 
 
 Ideal States op Aristotle and Plato 
 
 The Athens of Plato and Aristotle — the fully developed 
 "" democracy of t he fourth c&nturyj^not the developing demo- 
 cracy of the fifth — must be taken as typical. . .120-121 
 
 Regarding this as bad, and the ordinary oligarchy as worse, 
 Plato and Aristotle design ideal states not larger than a 
 single city in which the citizens are to be landowners living 
 at leisure, carefully educated and trained for war — husband- 
 men, artisans, and retail traders to be excluded from citizen- 
 ship. Plato would have an elected magistracy and council 
 — Aristotle would give deliberative and judicial functions to 
 the landowning class after they have passed the military 
 age. ....... 121-126 
 
 Sparta has evidently served as model for this aristocratic ideal ; 
 but as a practical policy Aristotle recommends a fusion 
 between aristocracy and democracy — constitutional demo- 
 cracy — "politeia." . • . . . 126-129 
 
 He does not introduce monarchy of any kind into his balanced 
 
 constitution. ...... 129-130 
 
 LECTUEE IX 
 
 Greek Federalism 
 
 Recapitulation of Greek political development. The transitions 
 are largely due to economic and other internal causes, but 
 also to war ; and the need of resisting larger states produces 
 federalism. ...... 131-134 
 
 In fact, the time has come for the transition to country-states 
 — by federation as in the Achaean League, or by expansion 
 and absorption as in Rome. It is marked by the word 
 "ethnos" taking the place of "polls." . . . 134-135 
 
 There had been federation earlier, but as the importance of 
 
 cities grew it became more difficult. . . . 135-137 
 
 In the revived Achaean League the isolation of the city-state 
 is overcome. The national government is democratic and 
 non-representative, but inevitably tends to a practically 
 representative and aristocratic character. , . . 137-140 
 
XVI DE VELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY 
 
 LECTUEE X 
 
 Rome 
 
 PAGES 
 
 § 1. Aristotle would have classed republican Rome as a ** politeia," 
 though a strange one with its duality of governing assemblies, 
 its tribunes, and the legislative power of the plebeian 
 assembly — results of the struggle between patricians and 
 plebeians. ...... 141-145 
 
 § 2. Though the plebeians triumph the administration remains 
 aristocratic. This is due to the pressure of external 
 struggles ; and to the preponderantly rural character of the 
 assembly ; the plebs want to be secured from misgovern- 
 ment, not to govern. ..... 145-148 
 
 § 3. The struggle had been between rich and poor, and between 
 old families and new ; when the leading plebeians are 
 admitted to office they coalesce with patricians into a 
 new nobility ; it is this which governs while Rome is 
 conquering. ...... 148-151 
 
 § 4. The conflict between rich and poor is kept in abeyance by 
 distribution of conquered land and establishment of colonice; 
 these form centres from which the language and civilisation 
 spread ; thus by expansion and absorption the city-state 
 grows. But there is no more public land to divide when 
 the century of revolution begins. .... 151-154 
 
 § 5. In this revolution what is breaking down is the government 
 of an aristocracy that has always recognised the sovereignty 
 of a popular assembly ; we see not only the degeneration 
 of an oligarchy, but the demoralisation of an undeveloped 
 democracy. ...... 154-156 
 
 LECTUEE XI 
 
 Rome (continued) 
 
 § 1. Polybius finds in the Roman constitution monarchical besides 
 aristocratic and democratic elements. But the powers of 
 the consuls were far from what Aristotle means by mon- 
 archical, though the proconsuls in the provinces ruled 
 monarchically. ...... 157-159 
 
 § 2. The early consuls after the transition from monarchy to 
 republic were more like kings, possessing the judicial func- 
 tions of the praetors and the functions of the censors, and 
 not being limited by the tribunate. The splitting up of 
 executive authority increased the power of the senate. . 159-163 
 
 § 3. The transition from republic back to monarchy follows from 
 the unwieldy size of the city-state rendering the form of 
 government inadequate, while yet this size was necessary 
 
CONTENTS xvn 
 
 PAQB3 
 
 for physical strength ; and the corresponding change of the - 
 army from a citizen -militia to the legions of particular 
 generals. Order could only be maintained by concentrating 
 the command of the legions in one hand. The primary 
 element of the Imperial authority is proconsular, and 
 republican forms are at first maintained. . . . 163-167 
 
 LECTUEE XII 
 
 Functions of Government and Kelation op Law to 
 Government in Greece and Rome 
 
 1. The ancient governments have been said to regulate the lives 
 
 of individuals more than modern ones ; but apart from 
 Sparta the evidence is against this in Greece, except inter- 
 ference due to the fusion of Church and State and the 
 predominance of war. ..... 168-171 
 
 2. Legislation is, on the other hand, more important in the 
 
 modern view of the functions of government than in the 
 ancient. In the Greek view law was not simply a product 
 of the popular will. ..... 171-176 
 
 3. In Rome we can trace the process by which the idea of govern- 
 
 ment as normally legislative was reached. There was some 
 
 new legislation in the XII. Tables, . . . 176-178 
 
 4. but for several centuries after this, legislation was not the 
 
 chief means of altering the law. It was modified by inter- 
 pretation in ' ' answers of the learned " and by the over- 
 riding of law by equity through the praetors' edict. By 
 this yt*s gen^mw was reached .... 178-179 
 
 5. through the practical needs arising from dealings with 
 
 foreigners. The more universal character of jus gentium 
 led to its ultimate fusion with the philosophical idea of jus 
 naturale, but they were not completely convertible, par- 
 ticularly as to slavery. ..... 179-183 
 
 LECTUEE XIII 
 
 Transition to Medieval History 
 
 § 1. Legislation increases under the Empire, and becomes more and 
 more Imperial. Justinian's work symbolises the concentra- 
 tion of legislative power in the emperor. . . . 184-186 
 
 § 2. In the slow development of the country-state, to which we 
 now turn, a vague analogy can be traced to the more rapid 
 development of the Greek city-state. . . . 186-190 
 
 § 3. But this comparison brings out the much stronger tendency 
 to monarchy in the former. The main cause is the need of 
 a bond of unity ; but the pre-existence of the Roman Empire 
 
xvill DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY 
 
 is another cause, acting by example and tradition and 
 through the lawyers and the Church. . . . 190-194 
 
 4. The country-state is complex compared with the city-state. 
 
 We have to consider in its development the relation between 
 political power and landownership, the growth of towns 
 within the state, the separate organisation of the clergy. . 194-196 
 
 5. Another element of complexity is the Holy Roman Empire. . 196-198 
 
 6. Broadly speaking, the diverse courses of development come to 
 
 absolute monarchy in the seventeenth century, and begin 
 from the old Teutonic community. Though as the barbarians 
 gradually prevail over the Roman Empire, the Teutonic 
 kingship grows to meet its task, it does not become strong 
 enough ; in the struggles against disorder and chaos society 
 knits itself together by the feudal system. . . 198-201 
 
 LECTUEE XIV 
 
 Feudal and Semi-Feudal Polity 
 
 § 1. The tendencies for the relation of lordship and service to 
 prevail over that of citizen to citizen, and for the relation of 
 the individual to land to determine his political position, 
 coalesce into the fusion of personal service and land tenure 
 characteristic of feudalism. But it is the fusion of land- 
 holdership with governmental power that constitutes its 
 prominent political character. .... 202-204 
 
 § 2. The result is a scale of ranks in relation to land. The allegi- 
 ance of the vassal to his immediate superior not directly to 
 the king, and the possibility of having feudal relations in 
 two countries, were disruptive forces. At the bottom of 
 the scale the serf had mostly no legal appeal against the 
 justice of his lord. Though feudalism provided a temporary 
 framework for national life, kingship, outside it, represented 
 the undivided power of the state and the source of more 
 equal justice. ...... 204-209 
 
 § 3. The Frankish monarchy was the home of feudalism proper, . 209-211 
 
 § 4. but its main tendencies are found elsewhere, as may be illus- 
 trated by the case of England. .... 212-214 
 
 LECTUEE XV 
 Medieval Theocracy 
 
 § 1. Re-capitulation. In feudal society, King, Church, and Towns 
 in a sense represented civilisation, but did not always hold 
 together. ....... 215-217 
 
 § 2. Theocracy defined. In ancient historic Greece and Rome it 
 did not exist. A separate organisation of the Church is 
 favourable to it. . . . . . . 217-221 
 
CONTENTS XIX 
 
 3. Its inheritance of the Jewish law kept the early Christian 
 
 Church separate from the State ; an attitu4e only partially 
 
 changed when Christianity became the established religion ^ 
 
 of the Empire. . . . . . . 221-223 
 
 4. The seed of Theocracy thus sown is developed when, in the 
 
 chaos following thfe fall of the Western Empire, the Church 
 holds together and becomes the one intellectual influence, s 
 Ecclesiastics take part in secular administration and later 
 hold important positions in the feudal hierarchy. When 
 Hildebrand by the celibacy of the clergy has secured their 
 separation from the laity, both political facts and the state ' 
 of thought and feeling tended to the realisation of his 
 dream of a pope forming, instead of king or emperor, the 
 coping-stone of the feudal organisation. . . . 223-227 
 
 5. The main movement to theocracy begun by Hildebrand cul- 
 
 minates under Innocent III. and ends with Boniface VIII. 227-229 
 
 6. The quasi-legal arguments urged in support of theocratic 
 
 claims are not the real grounds on which their force rests. . 229-231 
 
 LECTUKE XVI 
 
 Medieval Cities — General Type 
 
 1. Medieval cities are both parts of the nation and partially 
 
 independent communities. Their organisation and develop- 
 ment is similar throughout Western Europe. They differ 
 from the ancient city-state in the freedom and ultimate 
 power and dignity of mechanic labour, and in the governing 
 class of the nation remaining outside them. They acquire 
 most power where the central government is weakest. . 232-237 
 
 2. But England with its strong central government exhibits 
 
 equally the general type — ultimately a kind of federation 
 of crafts. The town works itself free from the political 
 system of the surrounding country ; the merchants take the 
 lead ; then the crafts rise to equality ; as a last stage an 
 oligarchy of master artisans develops within the crafts. . 237-241 
 
 3. Towns obtained independence at different times and in varying 
 
 degrees in Spain, France, etc. ..... 241-243 
 
 LECTUKE XVII 
 
 Medieval Cities — German 
 
 1. Germany having no old Roman civilisation is civilised entirely 
 under early medieval conditions. The Church and the 
 towns are instruments of this, and the towns are a 
 colonising type. ...... 244-247 
 
XX DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY 
 
 § 2. In development, towns under bishops lead. The towns 
 gradually acquire self-government under councils — at first 
 a " natural oligarchy," but increasingly exclusive. The 
 mercantile oligarchy when developed is confronted by a 
 demos of artisans organised in "crafts." . . . 247-251 
 
 § 3. The medieval "crafts" must be directly or indirectly derived 
 
 from the later Roman artisan corporations. . . 251-253 
 
 § 4. The long struggle of the crafts with the mercantile oligarchy 
 is like the Roman struggle between patricians and plebeians. 
 The cities with extensive foreign trade form the bulwark 
 of oligarchy. We have in German as in Greek towns a 
 movement from natural to more exclusive oligarchy through 
 inequality of wealth and then to a more popular constitu- 
 tion ; but the German towns do not fall under Tyrannis. . 253-256 
 
 § 6. Many cities remain "Free Imperial Cities" till the end of 
 the eighteenth century, but the democratic movement 
 practically ceases after the fifteenth, and the drift is 
 towards narrowing oligarchy — partly owing to the contagion 
 of monarchical ideas, partly to oligarchic tendencies within 
 the crafts, as in England. .... 256-258 
 
 LECTUEE XVIII 
 
 Medieval Cities — Italian : Lombardt 
 
 § 1. The industrial character of the cities is less pure in Italy than 
 
 elsewhere owing to their predominance over feudality. . 259-261 
 
 § 2. The peculiar history of Italy leading to its division into two 
 parts separated by the Papal States, accounts for the diverse 
 conditions of different cities and groups of cities. The 
 cities of Southern Italy and Venice develop early — 
 nominally under the Eastern Empire. . . . 261-264 
 
 § 3. Venice would probably in any case have developed early like 
 the other maritime cities — Genoa and Pisa. The inland 
 towns of Tuscany develop late, probably owing to its out- 
 lying position. ...... 264-266 
 
 § 4. The Lombard cities are first organised to protect them- 
 selves against Huns and Saracens. The industrial element 
 grows, as in Gennany, under the shield of the Church, but 
 gradually shakes itself free and in the twelfth century the 
 towns are governed by "consuls." . . . 266-268 
 
 § 5. The independence of the towns is shown by their wars with 
 each other and confirmed by their successful struggle 
 with Frederick Barbarossa. . . . .268-270 
 
 § 6. In the meanwhile they struggle with the neighbouring feudal 
 nobles, compel them to submit to their jurisdiction and 
 partly reside in the towns. .... 270-273 
 
 § 7. The resulting disorderliness leads to the institution of 
 "Podestas" and ultimately to Tyrannis. The full indus- 
 trial development is thus cut short in the thirteenth century. 273-276 
 
CONTENTS XXI 
 
 LECTUEE XIX 
 
 Medieval Cities — Comparison op Italian City-Communities 
 WITH Ancient Greece 
 
 1. In North Italy, where the greater part of a continuous 
 
 territory is divided among cities, these show striking 
 resemblances to Greek city-states. . . . 277-280 
 
 2. But the resemblances are qualified by important dissimilarities ; 
 
 the independence differs in degree ; the factions — Guelf 
 
 and Ghibelin — in kind ; . . . . . 280-283 
 
 3. in Greece we have not the double antithesis between nobles 
 
 and ^opoZam g'mssi and between the latter and artisans ; . 283-284 
 
 4. and the Tyrannis of Greece and Italy differ. . . 284-285 
 
 LECTUEE XX 
 
 Medieval Cities — Florence 
 
 § 1. The independence of Florence develops late — after the death 
 of the Countess Matilda in 1015, and we soon find it under 
 consuls. ....... 286-287 
 
 § 2. To give strength in the struggle with nobles the consuls are 
 superseded — as in Lombardy — by a Podestk, with later a 
 CapitaTU) del Popolo, each having special and general 
 councils. ....... 287-290 
 
 § 3. The constitution is further complicated by the organisation of 
 
 the Guelf party with a share in the government. . .290 
 
 § 4. And similarly of the greater Arti (crafts). . . . 290-293 
 
 § 5. The preponderance of the Arti is increased in 1282, and again 
 in 1293, when the "ordinances of justice" are instituted 
 against the nobles with a "gonfalonier of justice" to carry 
 them out. ...... 293-295 
 
 § 6. The lot is partially introduced into the election to ofiices. . 295-298 
 
 § 7. Constitutional struggles lead to the lesser Arti obtaining a 
 
 share in the government. ..... 298-300 
 
 § 8. But oligarchy is renewed by means of the Guelf organisa- 
 tion and the persecution of real or pretended Ghibelins. 
 Hence discontent leading to the revolution of the Ciompi — 
 workers below the organised arti — the high-water mark of 
 the democratic movement. Oligarchy regains power and 
 ultimately the transition to practical monarchy under the 
 Medici has popular support. .... 300-301 
 
xxil DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY 
 
 LECTUEE XXI 
 
 Medieval Kepresentative Institutions 
 
 PAGES 
 
 § 1. The difference between ancient and modern ideas on taxation 
 may be traced to the way modern polity grew out of feudal 
 conditions. From the monarch's point of view Assemblies 
 of Estates were a means of overcoming difficulties in raising 
 money. ....... 302-303 
 
 § 2. The democratic element in the assemblies is due to the 
 development of the towns. The impulse to the formation 
 of assemblies is sometimes from above, sometimes from 
 below — as in Germany, where we see a strong tendency 
 to spontaneous association, which does not however lead 
 to permanent constitutional government. . . . 303-307 
 
 § 3. In France the movement is from above, — in its antifeudal 
 policy it is an advantage to the crown to have direct 
 relations with the cities. The want of union between the 
 estates, chiefly concerning taxation, prevented permanent 
 results from efforts at popular control. And the effect is 
 similar in Spain and Scandinavia. . . . 307-310 
 
 § 4. In England the effects of insularity, of strong central govern- 
 ment, of nobility not descending to younger sons, produce 
 greater union of classes and exceptional strength of parlia- 
 mentary government. ..... 310-315 
 
 LECTUEE XXII 
 
 Movement to Absolute Monarchy 
 
 § 1. In the eighteenth century, absolute monarchy might well 
 have been regarded as the final outcome of the long develop- 
 ment of country states. The movements first to and then 
 from it, are from one point of view two stages in one process 
 towards the modern conception of political society. . 316-320 
 
 § 2. Modern history may be said to begin in the middle of the 
 seventeenth century, when monarchy finally predominates 
 over other elements in the state, and the coherence of the 
 modern state is substituted for the imperfect order of 
 medieval institutions. ..... 320-323 
 
 § 3. In the medieval state every one has rights, but there is no 
 central power strong enough to secure them to him. The 
 triumph of monarchy represents the first approximation to 
 it ; hence patriotic sentiment supports the monarch against 
 anarchical forces. ...... 324-326 
 
 § 4. The failure of the medieval assemblies is another aspect of 
 the same thing ; the representatives of classes could not 
 unite to represent the nation. But apart from this the 
 rule of one seemed, both in fact and theory, the simplest 
 mode of attaining unity. ..... 326-329 
 
CONTENTS xxiil 
 
 LECTUKE XXIII 
 
 Movement to Absolute Monarchy {corUimoed) 
 
 PAGBS 
 
 1. To influences on the side of monarchy we must add Theology 
 
 and Roman Law ; though the former was mixed and vary- 
 ing. The ideal of medieval theology was a monarchical 
 organisation under one universal headship, but when this 
 broke down conflicts with secular powers led ecclesiastical 
 writers to lay stress on the doctrine that secular govern- 
 ment rests on consent of the people. Both Catholic 
 and Protestant influences vary with circumstances during 
 the Reformation ; but its consequences, on the whole, 
 favour monarchy, as is seen in Spain and France. . . 330-335 
 
 2. Roman law, framed in the Imperial period, is more steadily on 
 
 the side of monarchy. ..... 335-336 
 
 3. There are qualifications to monarchical absoluteness in survivals 
 
 of abortive medieval parliaments, and in privileges of nobles 
 
 and lawyers. ...... 336-339 
 
 4. Also exceptions due to geographical and other causes. . 339-341 
 
 5. In the most important exception — England — Parliament 
 
 finally triumphs in 1688. .... 341-344 
 
 LECTUEE XXIV 
 
 Political Thought — Hobbes and Locke 
 
 1. Political ideas, ideas of government as it ought to be, are 
 
 largely derived from experience of governments as they are 
 and have been. They are also causes of political change ; 
 and more markedly as civilisation advances. Thus political 
 theories are partly fashioned as instruments for attaining 
 immediate practical results : and this affects their develop- 
 ment. ....... 345-349 
 
 2. The establishment, in fact, of political order on a monarchical 
 
 basis has for its counterpart in thought the doctrines of 
 Hobbes : — that absolute governmental power is necessary 
 for orderly political society. He thinks it had better be 
 monarchical, but this is not necessary to his theory. . 349-352 
 
 3. Hobbes assumes an original compact by which individuals in 
 
 a *' state of nature " bind themselves to obey a government. 
 This they do because the state of nature is miserable through 
 anarchy. Only a compact binding all to unquestioning 
 obedience to a sovereign with unlimited power can be 
 effective. ...... 352-356 
 
 4. Locke's theory justifies the act which sealed the failm-e of 
 
 monarchical absolutism in England. He held that by the 
 original compact power is entrusted to government for 
 certain ends : if the trust is violated the duty of obedience 
 ceases. . . . . , . . . 356-359 
 
XXIV DE VELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY 
 
 § 5. He diverged from the traditional view in holding that no man 
 has a right to consent to be a slave ; a legitimate govern- 
 ment must be such as men living in natural freedom would 
 reasonably combine to form. If government has recourse 
 to illegal coercion and taxation unconsented to, it violates 
 the ends for which government was instituted. . . 359-363 
 
 LECTURE XXV 
 
 Political Thought : Locke to Montesquieu 
 
 § 1. Locke's theory, like Hobbes', admits all forms of government. 
 But as Hobbes prefers monarchy, so Locke prefers a govern- 
 ment in which the legislative power is separated from the 
 executive. . . . . . .364-367 
 
 § 2. The political thought of the eighteenth century has its focus 
 in France. English thought is languid in the first half of 
 the century ; there is some disappointment at the results of 
 the Glorious Revolution, till Montesquieu sets the English 
 Constitution on a pedestal for the admiration of Europe. . 367-371 
 
 § 3. Montesquieu and Rousseau prepared the way for the French 
 Revolution : Montesquieu through the admiration he inspired 
 for the ancient republics as examples of a form of govern- 
 ment demanding a high strain of political virtue. . .371-376 
 
 § 4. Also through his admiration for the English constitution as 
 maintaining political liberty — especially by separation of 
 powers legislative, executive and judicial, preventing tyrannic 
 preponderance of any. ..... 375-377 
 
 LECTUEE XXVI 
 
 Political Thought : The Influence op Rousseau 
 
 § 1. To turn admiration of the Law of Nature as an ideal into a 
 practical ardour for its realisation and to extend it from 
 civil to constitutional relations was in France the work of 
 Rousseau. ...... 378-380 
 
 § 2. The manner in which absolute monarchy had grown out of 
 feudalism, and the resulting abuses and inequalities, pre- 
 pared the way for his doctrine. .... 380-384 
 
 § 3. He preached nature in contrast with the artificiality and 
 frivolity of society, and he preached the inalienable 
 sovereignty of the people ; but he did not dream of 
 restoring the state of nature in reconstructing society in 
 accordance with the law of nature. . . . 384-390 
 
CONTENTS XXV 
 
 Of Rousseau's three main points — that (1) men are by nature 
 free and equal, (2) the rights of government depend on a 
 compact, (3) which must be one in which each gives up his 
 will to the will of the whole — (1) belongs to the law of 
 nature of Roman jurists ; (2), connected with this, was 
 generally accepted, (3) is Rousseau's, arrived at by com- 
 bining the lines of thought of Hobbes and Locke. . . 390-392 
 
 Rousseau's view is contrasted with that of the Physiocrates, 
 who desired not to reconstruct government but to limit its 
 functions. ...... 392-394 
 
 LECTUEE XXVII 
 
 Development of English Polity since 1688 
 
 1. Though French thought had an important share in bringing 
 
 about the change to constitutional monarchy — or republic, 
 which is not essentially different — in West European 
 polity, the influence of the English constitution is more 
 indisputable. ...... 395-397 
 
 2. But its imitators have not always known how different it has 
 
 been at different stages. ..... 397-402 
 
 3. Cabinet government, in which the prime minister is the leader 
 
 of the party that has the majority in the House of Commons 
 — existed only in germ in the eighteenth century, when the 
 established view was that the ministers were chosen by the 
 monarch. ....... 402-407 
 
 4. After the Reform Bill his power of appointing the minister is 
 
 found to have gone. The eighteenth-century constitution 
 
 is very like the German constitution. . . . 407-410 
 
 LECTURE XXVIII 
 
 Constitution-making of the Nineteenth Century 
 
 1. In Montesquieu's ideal — a representative assembly controlling 
 
 legislation and taxation and exercising a check on the execu- 
 tive by the necessity of their obtaining supplies, with the 
 reign of law secured by the independence of the judicature 
 and the strict limitation of the power to imprison before 
 trial — we have, summarily stated, the last result of political 
 development in Western Europe ; the type varying between 
 the new English and the German or old English. . . 411-415 
 
 2. The English constitution as conceived by Montesquieu, which 
 
 the founders of the American constitution had before them, 
 differs in important respects from the new English — cabinet 
 government — which has in most cases been adopted in West 
 European states. ...... 415-419 
 
XXVI DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY 
 
 § 3. In saying the English type has been adopted, minor diflferences 
 are ignored — e.g. in the construction of the second chamber 
 and in the extent of the franchise. . . . 420-422 
 
 § 4. But the English judicial system has been largely imitated — 
 notwithstanding differences as to the relation of the execu- 
 tive to the ordinary tribunals. .... 422-425 
 
 LECTUKE XXIX 
 
 Modern Federalism 
 
 § 1. Recapitulation. Federality of Germany, Austria and Hungary, 
 
 Sweden and Norway. ..... 426-428 
 
 § 2. The development of Swiss polity. .... 428-430 
 
 § 3. This was uniquely continuous among other less enduring 
 
 confederations. ...... 430-432 
 
 § 4. A federal state — a whole made up of parts politically 
 approximately equal, with a constitutional division of 
 functions between the governments of the whole and of 
 the parts — ordinarily requires an "extraordinary legisla- 
 ture " for any alteration of the constitution. Hence, though 
 it breaks up more easily than a unitary state, its constitu- 
 tion tends to be unusually stable — as is illustrated by the 
 United States. . . . . . .432-436 
 
 § 5. The most important cause of federalism is need of strength in 
 external relations. Commercial considerations are another 
 cause. ....... 436-437 
 
 § 6. It may also arise by the establishment of secured local liberties 
 
 in states previously unitary. .... 437-438 
 
 § 7. Partly from this democratic tendency, partly fi'om the tend- 
 ency to "integration" seen throughout history, the 
 extension of federalism seems the most probable of the 
 political prophecies relating to the form of government. . 439 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF EUEOPEAN POLITY 
 
 LECTUKE I 
 
 INTRODUCTORY SURVEY OF THE SUBJECT 
 
 § 1. I PURPOSE, in the Lectures that follow, to treat sum- 
 marily an important part of the history of Political Societies, 
 from the point of view of Inductive Political Science, as I 
 conceive it. The full meaning of the term "Political 
 Society " will be unfolded as we proceed : provisionally I 
 mean by it a group of human beings united among them- 
 selves, and separated from other human beings, by the fact 
 that they habitually obey the same government, and thus 
 form a corporate whole, whose life may be distinguished 
 from that of the individuals composing it. Such a society, 
 when it has reached a certain stage of civilisation, is also 
 called a " State," and I shall use this as an alternative term. 
 I regard Government as the essential characteristic of States 
 or Political Societies as such ; and it is as possessing Govern- 
 ment that I shall be concerned with these bodies from first 
 to last. With other characteristics of social man, as we 
 find him in different ages and countries, his languages, his 
 customs, his religions, his science and art, even his economic 
 condition, I shall only be concerned indirectly ; i.e. so far as 
 these other characteristics have an important connection in 
 the way of cause and effect, with what I shall call, for 
 brevity, his "poKty" — meaning by "polity" the structure 
 of the government under which he lives, and its relations to 
 the governed. 
 
 In saying that I treat of Political Societies from the 
 
 B 
 
2 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 point of view of " Political Science/' I mean, on the one 
 hand, that I am concerned primarily with polities as they 
 are and have been, and not with polity as it ought to be ; and, 
 on the other hand, that I study them primarily with the 
 view of ascertaining (1) the classes to which they belong, 
 or the general t}^es which they exemplify, and (2) the 
 causes which have led to the prevalence of this or that 
 general type in different regions at different times. I thus 
 distinguish the point of view of Political Science on the one 
 hand from that of the wider and more comprehensive 
 subject which we call Political Philosophy, and on the other 
 hand from that of ordinary political history. On the one 
 hand. Political Science (so treated) does not — as Political 
 Philosophy does — concern itself directly with the right or 
 best form of government, or the form which we should aim 
 at introducing at the particular stage which we have reached 
 in the development of society. We may, indeed, hope to 
 derive from Political Science results of practical utility — 
 I shall presently consider in what way and to what extent — 
 but still its primary business is not political construction, 
 but generalisation from political facts, whether furnished by 
 history or by contemporary observation. So far as our 
 study deals with types of polity, they are types obtained by 
 mere abstraction from the world of reality, not ideal types 
 which it sets before us as models to be aimed at. 
 
 On the other hand, the distinction between Political 
 Science and ordinary political history lies in the generality 
 of the object of science. What as students of Political 
 Science we are primarily concerned to ascertain, is not the 
 structure or functions of government in any particular 
 historical community, --but the distinctive characteristics of 
 different forms of government in respect of their structure or 
 their functions ; not the particular process of political change 
 in (e.^.) Athens or England, but the general laws or tend- 
 encies of change exemplified by such particular processes. 
 
 Hence it often happens that the same political facts are 
 studied in very different relations by the historian and by 
 the student of Political Science respectively. The historian 
 
I INTRODUCTORY SURVEY OF THE SUBJECT 3 
 
 aims primarily at presenting facts in their chronological v/ 
 order ; but in comparing the political development of \ 
 different parts of the human race, we find — throughout the 
 past as well as at the present time — that they are contem- 
 poraneously at very different stages of development, and 
 may consequently be approximately in the same stage at 
 very wide intervals of time. Political Science, accordingly, 
 aims at bringing together for comparison societies similar 
 in their political characteristics, however widely separated in 
 time. Thus, when, at the outset of our study, we endeavour 
 to form a general conception of the " primitive Indo- 
 Germanic polity," ^ we have to compare what Tacitus tells 
 us of the Germans of his time, not with the contem- 
 poraneous political organisation of Eome, but with the very 
 earliest form of Eoman polity that antiquarian study enables 
 us to discern. 
 
 § 2. Political Science, then, aims like other sciences at 
 ascertaining relations of resemblance among the objects that 
 it studies ; it seeks to arrange them in classes, or to exhibit 
 them as examples of types. But though classification is an 
 important part of its task, it is not the whole of it ; nor is 
 it, I may say, the most interesting part. What specially 
 interests us in comparing different forms of polity is to 
 ascertain their causes and effects, and especially the order 
 of development according to which one form tends to 
 succeed another. This is, no doubt, a difficult under- 
 taking ; and I could not attempt to perform it, even in a 
 summary and tentative way, in regard to the whole range of 
 political societies historically known to us. But in fact I 
 shall confine myself in the main to a limited portion of 
 the subject, which I select as having a special interest 
 for my readers, both on scientific and on political grounds. 
 What I shall mainly attempt is to exhibit with their dis- 
 tinctive characteristics, to classify according to their most 
 important resemblances, and to link together by the con- 
 ception of continuous development, the principal forms of 
 political society which the history of European civilisation 
 
 ^ The phrase is Freeman's. 
 
4 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 manifests ; regarding them as stages in the historic process 
 through which political society has passed, and of which the 
 modern state, as we know it, is the outcome. 
 
 European History, thus treated, acquires what may be 
 called a morphological unity. This is not, of course, the 
 only point of view from which the unity of history might 
 be regarded. The development of civilised society is a very 
 complex fact, which has many elements or aspects ; and 
 there are other elements — e.g. the development of thought 
 or knowledge-^which might fairly claim to be taken as the 
 central and primary fact, round which other developments 
 are to be grouped. Still, the development of organised 
 political society does afford us a central element or strand 
 of social change, in tracing which we are naturally led 
 to conceive as a continuous whole the processes that we 
 are accustomed to separate as " ancient," " medieval," and 
 "modern" history. 
 
 Now in order to conceive the unity of this process vividly 
 and fully, it is important to link the past with the present 
 — to keep before our minds that " history is past politics, 
 politics present history." And when we thus connect the 
 past with the present, our thoughts are inevitably carried 
 through the present to the future, — especially to the future 
 of the group or system of states of which our own is a 
 member, and which is now manifestly dominant over the 
 greater part of the globe. And thus though, as I have said, 
 the aim of Political Science is not directly practical, 
 we are naturally led to study the past development of 
 political society with more than purely speculative curiosity; 
 we are concerned to ascertain the kind and amount of guid- 
 ance, in reference to the practical problems of our own age, 
 which we may hope to obtain from this study. As I have 
 elsewhere explained,^ I do not think that the historical 
 method is the one to be primarily used in attempting to 
 find reasoned solutions of the problems of practical politics. 
 In the first place. History cannot, I conceive, determine the 
 ultimate end and standard of good and bad, right and 
 
 ^ Elements of Politics, chap. i. 
 
I INTRODUCTORY SURVEY OF THE SUBJECT 5 
 
 wrong, in political institutions ; whether we take this to 
 be general happiness, or as others hold, human well-being 
 interpreted somehow so as to distinguish it from happiness. 
 This ultimate end we cannot get from history ; we bring it 
 with us to history when we judge of the goodness or bad- 
 ness of the past laws and political institutions which history 
 shows us. Secondly, supposing that we are agreed as to 
 the ultimate end at which a statesman should aim, historical 
 inquiry appears to me only useful in a limited and secondary 
 way in determining our choice of means for the attainment 
 of the end; in consequence of the continual process of 
 change and development through which political societies 
 move, which renders the experience of the past — unless it 
 be a comparatively recent past — largely inapplicable to the 
 present needs of the most advanced communities. 
 
 But, though the history of the past cannot, in my view, 
 be the primary source of our data for deciding the political 
 questions of our own age and country, it is still very 
 important that we should obtain from it such guidance as 
 it can furnish. Firstly, so far as from the study of what 
 has been we can ascertain the laws of political evolution, 
 and thus forecast — even dimly — what is to be, though such 
 forecast cannot determine positively our political ideal, it 
 may determine it negatively by indicating what is not to be 
 aimed at as out of our reach ; we may obtain from it some 
 notion of the limits within which any practicable ideal is 
 confined, the kind of society and circumstances for which the 
 political institutions of the future will have to be adapted. 
 We may also learn, if not with certainty still with consider- 
 able probability, which of the elements and characteristics of 
 our own political society are likely to increase and become 
 more important as the years go on, and which are likely 
 to decrease and become less important. How far any such 
 forecast is scientifically attainable, I do not yet determine ; 
 but it must always be the aim and aspiration of Political 
 Science to attain it as far as possible. 
 
 Secondly, history may render us a different kind of service 
 in dealing with other societies than our own — whether 
 
6 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 foreign nations or dependencies. For the history of political 
 institutions shows us a variety of forms of political and social 
 organisation, the study of which may enable us to under- 
 stand better the nature and probable behaviour of organisms 
 of the same kind existing contemporaneously ; since human 
 societies, as I have already observed, are co-existing in all 
 different stages of development, and we have actually to 
 deal with communities for whose present political and social 
 condition instructive analogies are to be found in the past 
 condition of societies better known to us. Thus competent 
 judges hold that it might have prevented serious mistakes in 
 our government of India, if the governing statesmen had had 
 before their minds the historical development of land-tenure, 
 as we now conceive it to have taken place in European 
 countries. 
 
 In this way history, in the ordinary sense, — the study of 
 the past, — furnishes one element of what may be called 
 " Comparative Politics," the other element being supplied 
 by contemporary observation. The two mutually assist and 
 supplement each other, though the task of combining the 
 different sets of data is often difficult. 
 
 § 3. This leads us to the question that has the greatest 
 practical interest — viz. how far we can find in the past 
 history of polity instructive analogies for our own political 
 condition ? 
 
 Now, primd facie, if we West Europeans are right in 
 regarding ourselves as in the van of progress, we can only 
 find close analogies of this kind in the recent history of states 
 that form with us a group moving together; e.g. the United 
 States and our own colonies may teach us valuable lessons 
 of experience as to the working of that representative 
 democracy which appears to be our destiny, but which is 
 more completely established there than here. 
 
 But it is not only in recent history that such analogies 
 have been sought during the long and active political discussion 
 that has taken place, since aspirations after republican liberty 
 and virtue found stirring expression in Europe in the middle 
 of the eighteenth century. From the time of Montesquieu 
 
I INTRODUCTORY SURVEY OF THE SUBJECT 7 
 
 and Kousseau, down to the time of Sir Henry Maine, a leading 
 place has been given in such discussions to the consideration 
 of democracy as known to us from Greek and Eoman history. 
 It has been held that a careful study of this previous experi- 
 ence is likely to throw important light on the process of 
 change now going on in the type of political society to which 
 our own State belongs — what we may call the normal State of 
 Western Europe and America. It is commonly agreed that 
 the West European states are at present moving toward 
 democracy; and in considering whether this movement is 
 good or bad, and how we ought to meet the dangers and 
 difficulties involved in it, analogical arguments are con- 
 tinually based on what is known to us from history as to the 
 behaviour of the Demos of Greek city-states, and of Eoman 
 popular assemblies in the latest phase of the Eepublic. I 
 hold that such analogies have to be used with great caution, 
 owing to the important differences between Grseco-Eoman 
 political conditions and those of modern Europe : especially 
 (1) the difference between the direct democracy of a 
 small state where all can meet in one assembly, and the 
 representative democracy of the larger states which are 
 the normal kind in our modern world : (2) the difference 
 introduced by slavery, which, in the most democratic of 
 ancient communities, excluded absolutely from political rights 
 a large portion of the manual labour class : (3) the separa- 
 tion of Church and State, which our modern societies inherit 
 from medieval Europe : and (4) the changed conditions and 
 position of industry in the modern State. Still, making all 
 allowances for these differences, I think that it is interesting 
 and instructive to compare the successive stages in the more 
 rapid development of the city-states of ancient Greece and 
 Italy with the successive stages in the slower development 
 of the " country-state " or " nation-state " of modern Europe.^ 
 For — whatever be the degree of resemblance between the 
 developments — at any rate the careful and systematic per- 
 formance of this comparison gives the right point of view 
 
 ^ The comparison was suggested many years ago by the German historian 
 Gervinus in his Introduction to the History of the Nine.teenth Century. 
 
8 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 for estimating the value of the lessons that will in any 
 case continue to be drawn from ancient history for modern 
 politicians. 
 
 It need hardly be added that the earlier process is con- 
 nected with the later not merely in the way of resemblance 
 and analogy. The "modern state" — the last result of political 
 civilisation — is a type exemplified almost exclusively by the 
 states of Western Europe, and the colonies that have sprung 
 from them ; and the states of Western Europe are either (1) 
 t*)^ ^ portions of the Roman Empire, broken up by the irruption 
 of the Germans, and reconstituted under the blended in- 
 fluences of Eoman civilisation and the primitive political 
 habits of the German tribes ; or (2) nations originally akin 
 to these conquering tribes, and subsequently drawn within 
 the influences of their political and social development. 
 France, Spain, Italy, are examples of the former ; Germany 
 and Scandinavia of the latter class ; England lies historically 
 between the two, but in tracing the conditions of political 
 development must be classed with the latter.^ Again, 
 the political thought of this whole group of states has been 
 to an important extent influenced by the study of Greek 
 history and the political conceptions and doctrines of Greek 
 thinkers derived from reflection on the phenomena of the 
 Greek city-states. 
 
 I propose accordingly to confine my attention mainly to 
 the political institutions of the ancient Greeks and Romans, 
 and of Western Europe and its colonies in post-Roman times. 
 And this limitation is less narrow than it seems, if the 
 special aim of Political Science, as above explained, be kept 
 in view. Of course, in the widest sense of the term, political 
 institutions are not peculiar to any one part of the globe, 
 or any one of the different races of men. Though there 
 are societies — groups of gregarious men — in which the 
 " differentiation " into governors and governed is barely per- 
 
 ^ Although England was long a province of the Roman Empire, which 
 Germany — in the main — was not, still, for reasons that will hereafter appear, 
 the political development of Germany was more influenced by ideas derived 
 from Rome than that of England. 
 
I INTRODUCTORY SURVEY OF THE SUBJECT 9 
 
 ceptible, such societies constitute a very insignificant portion 
 of humanity : it is almost universally true that a man is a 
 " political animal " in the sense of being either ruler or ruled, 
 either obeying or constituting a government of some kind. 
 But there is a sense in which higher political develop- 
 ment has originated almost exclusively in, and is still 
 mainly confined to certain portions of the white, or — as 
 some still call it — Caucasian race. They alone have 
 developed, along with the development of their civilisation,^ 
 governing organs of which the members are accustomed " to 
 rule and obey alternately"^ — whether (1) the supreme ruler 
 is merely elected by the citizens for a limited time, and then 
 gives up power and may be formally called to account 
 for his exercise of it, or (2) the supreme rule is in whole 
 or in part exercised collectively by a body of citizens meeting 
 from time to time. 
 
 In the history of political institutions these forms 
 interest us most, not only as citizens of a modern West- 
 European State, but as students of Political Science : just as 
 the highest forms of life have a special interest for the bio- 
 logist. I shall accordingly confine my attention mainly to 
 the nations who have shown a power of developing them. 
 And among them the most important and conspicuous of 
 those whose history is known to us are certainly the Greeks, 
 Eomans, and West- Europeans. They stand pre-eminent 
 among the civilised portions of humanity as having de- 
 veloped, up to the highest point that their civilisation has 
 yet reached, not only political mstitutions, but coTistitutions 
 and constitutional ideas and theories. 
 
 We cannot indeed confine our attention to constitutional 
 governments : since we shall continually have presented 
 to us, from almost the beginning to almost the end of the 
 process that we shall be studying, the form of government 
 which is commonly distinguished as " absolute " monarchy. 
 
 ^ This qualification is required, because we find the rudiments of such an 
 organ, in the form of the "assembly of the nation in arms," in that primitive 
 polity which is not confined to any one race. 
 
 2 d.px'^i-v Koi dpx^adai. 
 
lo DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 Indeed it is noteworthy, that if we take a summary 
 survey of the actual experience of civilised societies in 
 matters of government — extending it as far as we can 
 through time and space — the one which in extent of human 
 beings ruled by it surpasses all the rest is so-called Absolute 
 Monarchy. By the word Absolute it is not, of course, 
 meant that the power of the ruler over the ruled is practi- 
 cally unlimited — that he can deal with his subjects as if they 
 were a troop of cattle. Such a ruler has always been more 
 or less controlled by his fear of the disapprobation of his 
 subjects and his desire of their esteem ; by his fear of the 
 ultima ratio of revolution, which has never been unknown in 
 any political society ; by the influence of religion on his own 
 mind, and his knowledge of its influence on the minds 
 of others. He has been restrained in earlier stages of 
 civilisation by the general recognition which he shares of 
 law or custom as something fixed and unalterable, having a 
 source higher than ordinary human volition ; in later stages 
 by the complexity of the system of law and the machinery 
 of administration in a civilised state, rendering it increasingly 
 difficult for the monarch to effect any change that he 
 desires without causing other grave consequences that he 
 does not desire. What is meant by calling him " absolute " 
 is that there is no established constitutional authority — no 
 human authority that his subjects habitually obey as much 
 as they obey him — which can legitimately resist him or call 
 him to account. 
 
 It is not difficult to understand why this kind of 
 monarchy should be common. If any government — however 
 complex its structure — were in an ideally good condition, 
 the resolutions and actions of its various parts and 
 organs would be as harmonious and consistent as if they 
 emanated from one rational wOl : and obviously, the 
 simplest method of producing unity and order in the 
 effects of government is by giving the ultimate control in 
 all matters to the will of one man. The effectiveness of 
 such a government, when power is concentrated in the 
 hands of an able man, is shown by many examples of even 
 
I INTRODUCTORY SURVEY OF THE SUBJECT ii 
 
 irregular despotism both in ancient and in modern times. 
 No doubt in the great monarchies founded by conquest, the 
 habit of obedience in the conquered is not supported by a 
 sense of the advantages of government, but by a fear of 
 the consequences of resisting. But in the conquering nation 
 the habit of obedience to a single man's will is doubtless 
 strengthened by the perception of its advantage in securing 
 vigour and consistency of action in struggles with other 
 nations. Doubtless many warriors besides the warrior in 
 the Iliad have said in primitive ages, " Many ruling is not 
 good, let there be one ruler." As I have just hinted, we 
 must not suppose that where this form of government has 
 been permanently established the governed have submitted 
 with uniform patience to the evils resulting from this con- 
 centration of power in the hands of an unfit irresponsible 
 individual ; but where they have successfully rebelled against 
 it they have not endeavoured to modify the form of govern- 
 ment : they have merely got rid of one man and put another 
 in his place. 
 
 In the general history, then, of political institutions 
 it is a peculiar characteristic of certain portions of the 
 white race or races of men, that they have maintained, 
 in advanced stages of civilisation, a different method — 
 at once more artificial and more orderly — of avoiding 
 the evils of arbitrary rule ; while at the same time 
 endeavouring to maintain the unity of resolution and 
 action which is necessary for the efhcient performance of 
 governmental functions. This is what we call the con- 
 stitutional method. 
 
 Considering the greater complexity which this method, 
 when fully developed, involves, in the current conception 
 of government and the habit of political obedience, we 
 should expect to find its complete development limited to 
 societies which have made some progress in civilisation ; 
 but history further shows that the progress of civilisation, 
 at any rate in its earlier stages, has no general tendency to 
 bring it into use. It has in fact been confined, as I have 
 said, to the white race — until very recently — and mainly. 
 
12 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 though not entirely/ to the Indo- Germanic family of 
 nations : and even within these limits it seems to have 
 required special external conditions for its development. 
 
 § 4. Some explanation is required of these notions of "race'* 
 and " family of nations." Firstly, in speaking of the " white 
 race," I do not mean to imply that there are four or five original 
 stocks of human beings, distinguishable by colour and other 
 marks, as "white," "brown," "yellow," and "black" races. 
 In the present state of anthropology there is no ground 
 for assuming any such original differences of stocks ; and 
 the physical differences actually existing are more numer- 
 ous and complicated, and shade off into each other more 
 gradually, than the popular nomenclature suggests. And 
 since all varieties of human beings are zoologically of one 
 species — inter-marriage between any two generally producing 
 fertile offspring — the physical differences of race historically 
 presented may be to an indefinite extent referable to 
 crossing of breeds. A special instance of this is perhaps 
 presented by the marked differences we find between the fair 
 whites, prevalent in Northern Europe, and the dark whites 
 prevalent in Southern Europe and parts of Asia ; — as the 
 latter are considered by leading anthropologists to be prob- 
 ably due to a crossing of the fair whites with a darker race. 
 It is to be observed that this distinction cuts across that 
 which Comparative Philology would lead us to draw between 
 Aryan or Indo -Germanic and Semitic nations; and this 
 illustrates another uncertainty in which the application 
 of the notion of " race " is involved, from the difficulty of 
 separating, among the mental characteristics that distinguish 
 average members of different societies, what comes from 
 physical heredity and what from social influence. In con- 
 sequence of this affinities of language are a very imperfect 
 guide to affinities of race. Hence, in speaking of the 
 " Indo - Germanic family of nations," I must not be under- 
 stood to imply that the nations thus grouped together are all 
 physically derived from one stock ; but only that they are 
 
 ^ The constitution of Semitic Carthage appears to have borne a high repu- 
 tation in Greece in the time of Aristotle, and later. 
 
I INTRODUCTORY SURVEY OF THE SUBJECT 13 
 
 connected with one ancient social group by a continuous 
 social life, evidenced by continuity of language and at least 
 partly due to continuity of race. 
 
 At the same time there are certain broad distinctions of 
 physical race which have remained nearly permanent during 
 the range of history. As Mr. Tylor ^ says, on the wall-paint- 
 ings at Thebes we can distinguish red-brown Egyptians, Ethio- 
 pians like those of the present day, captives from Palestine 
 with the well-known Semitic profile, thick-lipped negroes, and 
 fair-skinned Libyans. And these examples may remind us 
 that civilisation is not a monopoly of the white race, in the 
 widest sense of that term. " At the dawn of history, the 
 leaders of culture were the brown Egyptians, and the Baby- 
 lonians," whose language is not connected with any known 
 language of white nations ; while the yellow Mongoloid 
 Chinese have been "for four thousand years or more a 
 civilised and literary nation." The civilisation that spread 
 round the Mediterranean was not originated by the dark 
 whites — Phoenicians, Greeks, Eomans — but only carried on 
 by them. Still we may perhaps say that higher political civil- 
 isation, the capacity for developing constitutional government 
 in a civilised state, belongs primarily to the white race ; and 
 mainly to branches of the white race which speak an Indo- 
 Germanic language, and therefore show a partial continuity 
 of descent from one single original group. 
 
 The consideration of race leads us naturally to the 
 consideration of climate and external conditions : since the 
 view that the diversity of the races of men results from a 
 number of separate origins is now antiquated ; this diversity 
 is now generally held to be due to the gradual summation of 
 the effects, direct or indirect, of the action of external con- 
 ditions on the primitive human organism. It is interesting 
 therefore to consider briefly how far climate and external 
 conditions have operated to render certain portions of the 
 white race, or its Indo-Germanic branch, more adapted for 
 higher political development than others. It would certainly 
 seem that temperate climate is favourable to this develop- 
 
 ■^ Anthropology, chap. i. 
 
14 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 ment ; since in arctic regions the special difficulties of the 
 struggle for existence, and the consequent sparseness of the 
 population, impede the development of civilisation ; while 
 it is an old remark that the inhabitants of hot climates tend 
 to be at once passionate and (except under pressure of 
 physical need) indolent. Thus the sober intelligence, self- 
 control, and sustained energy required for constitutional 
 government has a better chance of being developed in 
 temperate climes ; though, having been developed there, this 
 kind of polity may spread to other regions in which it would 
 not have originated, — like other inventions for the improve- 
 ment of man's estate, originally produced under specially 
 favouring conditions. 
 
 But climate is not the only external condition that is 
 important in tracing the history of polity. Indeed through- 
 out this history we continually meet striking instances in 
 which the exceptional political development of parts of the 
 human race is clearly due to the exceptional nature or 
 relations of the land which they inhabit. Thus in medieval 
 and modern history I need only mention the names of Venice, 
 Switzerland, Holland, England, to recall undoubted examples 
 of this. A no less important case is Greece. Even a study 
 of Greek history alone suggests strongly that the peculiar 
 configuration of Greece — with mountains that separate 
 tribes and favour independence, and water-ways favouring 
 trade and communication — is specially adapted for the 
 growth of the earlier forms of civilised constitutional govern- 
 ment : and this suggestion is supported by the fact that 
 in other cases, where nature, by large rivers running through 
 fertile plains, has favoured conveyance and communication 
 without favouring independence, and has thus facilitated a 
 transition from barbarism to civilisation, — the civilisation 
 has been developed on a purely monarchical basis. Indeed 
 the very predominance of simple monarchy that we have 
 already noticed in the greater part of the history of civilisa- 
 tion, seems to justify us in attributing the peculiar develop- 
 ment of Greece partly to its special physical conditions. 
 In the great States of Egypt, Babylonia, Assyria, Persia, 
 
I INTRODUCTORY SURVEY OF THE SUBJECT 15 
 
 whose history is antecedent to, or contemporaneous with, 
 that of Greece, monarchy is absolute, in the sense above 
 explained : from the time that we have any knowledge of 
 them, the mass of the people have "nothing to do with the 
 government of their country except to obey it," and the 
 subordinate governors have no constitutional right to oppose 
 the will of the monarch. Whenever such opposition takes 
 place, it means revolt and partial disorder. 
 
 We have, however, now to observe that so far as the 
 evidence of history goes, this is not the primitive political 
 condition : and I shall hereafter try to show that we 
 have no valid reason for regarding it as the condition that 
 naturally arises first when the state develops out of the 
 family. At any rate the earliest polity known to us in 
 the history of the peoples with whom we are to be mainly 
 concerned, appears to be — commonly if not universally — one 
 not merely of greater equality of conditions, and greater 
 individual independence, but also of greater collective 
 control on the part of the fighting -men of the primitive 
 tribe. 
 
 § 5. It is accordingly with the form of polity which Mr. 
 Freeman calls the "primitive Aryan or Indo- Germanic 
 polity," ^ that I shall commence my sketch of the develop- 
 ment of political institutions in Europe. It is not to be 
 regarded as in any way peculiar to the Aryan or Indo- 
 Germanic race : still I shall only examine it in the forms 
 in which we find it at the outset of the historically known 
 development of the branches of the Indo-Germanic race with 
 which we are specially concerned — Greeks, Eomans, and 
 Germans. I shall trace the resemblance amid differences 
 which we find in comparing the earliest known political 
 institutions of the Germans, with the earliest known political 
 institutions of Greece and Eome. Then, taking my stand 
 on these beginnings of the history of the peoples that most 
 interest us, I shall look backward and endeavour to trace 
 briefly what can be dimly and conjecturally discerned of their 
 
 1 I shall try to show later that the word "primitive " is liable to be mis- 
 leading. 
 
i6 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 political development in still earlier times, combining anti- 
 quarian speculation with inferences from what we know of 
 these earlier stages of development as exhibited by other 
 portions of society. In this way we shall get as near as — 
 in my opinion — a sober-minded inquirer ought to go to the 
 consideration of the old question of the origin of political 
 society. 
 
 Then, turning our faces towards the down-flowing stream 
 of time, we shall follow the comparatively rapid evolution of 
 the different forms of government in the city-state which is 
 the leading type of a civilised political community in the 
 most brilliant period of ancient Greece — in contrast to the 
 country-state which is the leading type in modern European 
 history. I shall trace, as far as our imperfect knowledge 
 allows, the movement from the primitive polity — in which 
 we can distinguish a certain division of powers in varying 
 proportions among three elements, a king, a council of sub- 
 ordinate chiefs, and the whole body of free fighting men 
 — to an oligarchical form of government; and shall show 
 briefly how this oligarchy tends to assume various forms in 
 different states, and to pass through various phases. I 
 shall then pass to examine the Tyrannis or unconstitutional 
 despotism which, in the seventh and sixth centuries B.C., 
 tends to prevail for a time in many of the leading states of 
 Greece — partly in consequence of popular movements against 
 the established oligarchy — and the prevalence of which is a 
 special and important feature in the evolution of the city- 
 state, in ancient Greece and medieval Italy alike. I shall 
 then pass to the period best known to us : in which a 
 movement towards fully developed democracy is, on the 
 whole, unmistakable; though this form of government is 
 often temporarily overcome by oligarchy, and towards the 
 close of the period — as the old citizen militia give place 
 to mercenary armies — is increasingly liable to lapse again 
 into unconstitutional despotism. With the aid of Aristotle 
 I shall briefly analyse the general causes that tended to 
 bring into being and preserve one or other of these different 
 forms of government in the Greek city-state : and shall note 
 
I INTRODUCTORY SURVEY OF THE SUBJECT 17 
 
 how rare in Aristotle's own view is even an approximation 
 to his ideal government by those best qualified to govern — 
 aristocracy in the true sense ; and how difficult it was even 
 to maintain that moderate constitutional democracy which he 
 recommended as the best practical form of government for the 
 Greek city-states of the latter half of the fourth century B.C. 
 Then I shall note the failure of the Greek towns, in the 
 most brilliant period of their history, to realise a stable 
 federal union ; and shall finally call attention to the remark- 
 able degree of success achieved by federation even under 
 the unfavourable conditions of Macedonian predominance. 
 
 Then, turning to Eome, I shall note the early character- 
 istics and changes of Eoman political institutions in the 
 light thrown on them by Greek analogies ; and shall analyse 
 the nature and causes of the strangely but successfully com- 
 pacted constitution that emerged from the long conflicts of 
 the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. I shall try to explain how 
 a popular assembly constitutionally supreme, and tending in 
 each of its two later forms — as assembly in tribes and assembly 
 in hundreds — to be continually more democratically organ- 
 ised, yet leaves contentedly the practical control of affairs in 
 the hands of an aristocratic senate, while Eome is conquering 
 first Italy and then the world round the Mediterranean. I 
 shall further point out how, while the process of conquest 
 went on, a continual extension of Eoman citizenship, by an 
 elaborate process of expansion and absorption combined, 
 swelled the great city-state into what Aristotle would have 
 regarded as a monstrous overgrowth ; until, under the shock 
 of the war with the Italian allies at the beginning of the 
 first century B.C., it became finally transformed, by the ab- 
 sorption of the Italians en masse, into a country-state mis- 
 represented by a metropolitan mob, and quite inadequately 
 organised for its task of imperial rule. I shall then explain 
 briefly the nature of the transition — painful and sanguinary, 
 but rendered inevitable by expansion and conquest — from 
 repubHc to monarchy, at first partly hidden under republican 
 forms and working through republican institutions ; until 
 the distinction between Eoman citizen and Eoman subject 
 
 c 
 
i8 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 has vanished under Caracalla, and, in the hands of 
 Diocletian, the Empire stands forth an unveiled and 
 untempered despotism. 
 
 Then, surveying from this point the whole antecedent 
 history of Greco -Italian civilisation, I shall examine the 
 development of the general notion of governmental functions 
 — and especially of the relation of Law to Government — 
 both as conceived by ancient thinkers, and as realised in the 
 actual facts of Greco-Eoman polity. 
 
 Then, gliding across the collapse of the Western Empire, 
 I shall note the changes undergone by the political structure 
 of the old Teutonic community, in its efforts to meet the 
 severe demands made on it by the complex and disorderly 
 conditions of the new semi -barbaric kingdoms formed in 
 the fifth century A.D. I shall show how Teutonic, Imperial, 
 and Christian institutions combined and mingled ; until, in the 
 part of Western Europe where disorder seemed almost tending 
 to dissolution, society gradually reconstructed itself on the 
 scaffolding of partial order which we call the feudal system. 
 I shall show how the Church, strong in its intellectual pre- 
 dominance, and gaining an intenser corporate life from its 
 successful struggle with disintegrating forces within and 
 without, made its great attempt to bring Western Europe 
 under ecclesiastical domination ; and I shall point out how 
 the theocratic type of government — of which Aristotle 
 knows nothing — is thus manifested, for the first time 
 in the historically known part of the process of develop- 
 ment that we are studying. I shall further show how, 
 in the secular sphere, the political importance of the dis- 
 tinction between " city " and " country " grows within the 
 medieval nation as it advances in civilisation; and I shall 
 compare with the city-state of old Greece, based on slavery, 
 the industrial town community of the Middle Ages which 
 reached practical independence in Germany and Italy ; in 
 which mechanic labour rose first to freedom and then to 
 dignity and power. 
 
 Then I shall show how the growth of the modern nation 
 into completer unity from the imperfect cohesion of the 
 
I INTRODUCTORY SURVEY OF THE SUBJECT 19 
 
 feudal system, while it added power and prestige to mon- 
 archy as the source and bond of national unity and order, 
 also produced those assemblies of estates which for a time 
 seem destined to develop into stable organs of constitu- 
 tional government; then we shall have to observe how 
 almost everywhere this fair promise was blighted — chiefly 
 through the insuperable disunion of the different " estates " 
 represented in these assemblies ; until, over the greater part 
 of Western Europe, pure monarchy comes to be established 
 and accepted as the form of government best adapted to an 
 orderly and civilised country-state. We shall also note the 
 exceptional conditions which caused federal and republican 
 institutions to come into being and flourish in the small but 
 important communities of Holland and Switzerland. 
 
 I purpose at this point to pass, in a brief and summary 
 way, from the region of political fact to that of political 
 thought, and trace down from the Eoman jurists the move- 
 ment of ideas which led toward the close of the eighteenth 
 century to the passionate demand for universal political 
 liberty and equality ; and which — in spite of the reaction 
 which followed the first attempt to realise this demand in 
 France — is yet one essential factor of the great process of 
 change, belonging mainly to the nineteenth century, which 
 has established the modern constitutional state throughout 
 Western Europe. And along with this I shall ask you to 
 contemplate the other essential factor of this great change, 
 — the example of prosperous continuity of constitutional 
 development which England alone among the greater West- 
 European states has been privileged to exhibit. I shall also 
 examine the origin, in the eighteenth century, of the individual- 
 istic theory of the functions of government ; which, in com- 
 bination with an analysis of the natural processes of 
 production, distribution, and exchange of wealth, has formed 
 the characteristically modern body of doctrine commonly 
 known as Political Economy. 
 
 Then, turning to the Western Continent, I shall briefly 
 characterise the type of polity — varying importantly from 
 the European type — which colonial independence has 
 
r 
 
 20 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 brought into existence there ; and shall examine the nature 
 and working of the Federal system by which the great 
 English colony in North America has maintained republican 
 order for a century of independent life over a territory larger 
 than Western Europe. Finally, surveying the whole history 
 of European civilisation, I shall consider what forecast may 
 be reasonably made as to its probable future development. 
 
 It may perhaps be thought that this is a great deal of 
 history to pack into so small a space. But it must be re- 
 membered that we shall not be concerned with the particulars 
 of history as such, but only with the general facts that these 
 exemplify. I do not merely mean that we are not con- 
 cerned with the personal and dramatic element of history — 
 the careers of statesmen and generals, royal marriages and 
 battles — but that for the most part we are not primarily 
 concerned with the political development of any particular 
 community, except as illustrating general causes and tend- 
 encies. What we are concerned with is the general type 
 of political society exemplified by a number of particular 
 societies at a certain stage of development, the chief 
 characteristics of the form and structure of this type, the 
 changes that take place in it, and their causes. 
 
 § 6. At this point it may be well to consider a disturb- 
 ing cause which it is important to take into account in 
 making any such generalisations as to development, namely, 
 imitation. 
 
 !For example, in modern Europe we cannot say that 
 modern Parliamentary government, in the form of con- 
 stitutional monarchy, is an independent result of similar 
 tendencies of development in Italy, Belgium, Spain, and the 
 Scandinavian kingdoms, where it is now established; it is 
 obvious to the most superficial student of history that the 
 similarity now existing among the forms of government in 
 these different countries is largely due to imitation, direct 
 or indirect, of England ; and the present English form of 
 government is itself the result of a continuous development 
 of Parliamentary institutions from medieval to modern 
 times which is nearly if not quite unique in European 
 
I INTRO D UCTOR V SUR VE Y OF THE SUBJE CT 2 1 
 
 history. When with this in our mind we study more 
 ancient periods of history, we cannot but feel that a large 
 allov/ance must be made for direct imitation in considering 
 the probable causes of the prevalence of a particular type 
 of polity at a particular stage of development among states 
 in active mutual communication, as (e.^.) Greek city-states 
 mostly were.^ 
 
 We must allow a large place for such imitation, even 
 when we have no direct proof of it. At the same time 
 the effect of imitation does not deprive the generalisations, 
 which we obtain by comparing the political institutions 
 of different states, of all substantial value. For from the 
 very fact that a certain form of government spreads by 
 imitation, we may infer that there was a strong tendency 
 in the states adopting it towards a governmental form 
 of this kind : that similar needs or desires of change had 
 come to be predominantly felt, owing to certain general 
 causes, in these different countries, even though the pre- 
 cise form adopted may be due to its having been previ- 
 ously realised in the single state that gives the model for 
 imitation. Thus it is reasonable to suppose that the West 
 European states generally would have moved in the direc- 
 tion of popular government in the nineteenth century, even 
 if the history of England had not had the unique gradual 
 development of representative institutions which has actually 
 distinguished it ; and it is a probable supposition that they 
 would have had a legislature constructed, in whole or in 
 part, on the representative principle, considering the obvious 
 material difficulties of arranging government directly by the 
 people at large in states of the size of France or Spain ; 
 considering also that all the West -European countries 
 except Italy had had — from causes which we shall hereafter 
 investigate — medieval representative assemblies of estates 
 more or less similar to the English Parliament in the 
 Middle Ages. But it would be rash to affirm that had 
 there been no British constitution to imitate, the West 
 
 1 Freeman has noticed this disturbing eflFect of imitation in his Comparaiive 
 Politics. 
 
22 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 European states generally would have had two-chambered 
 legislatures. For example, in such a country as France, if 
 the constitution -makers had been influenced by modern 
 ideas, they might easily have thought that a sufficient com- 
 plexity was introduced into the supreme government, by 
 the due separation and balance of legislative executive and 
 judicial powers, without complicating matters further by a 
 two-chambered legislature. Or again, in countries where 
 there had been no such sweeping away of old institutions 
 as occurred in France, there might have been a revival of 
 the medieval division of estates, leading to a threefold or 
 even fourfold division of parliament : as in fact occurred in 
 Sweden where the four estates — nobles, clergy, burghers, 
 and peasants — deliberated for most purposes separately from 
 A.D. 1810 to 1866. 
 
 Nor again, apart from the influence of the English 
 model, is there any reason to suppose that we should have 
 found, as we do find in several — though not in all — West- 
 European states, the peculiar form of government which 
 Bagehot has called Cabinet government, ix. government in 
 which the supreme executive functions are entrusted to what 
 is really a committee of the legislature, practically dismissable 
 at any time by a majority of the representative assembly, if 
 supported by a majority of the electorate. 
 
 I may illustrate this view — that imitation, in the de- 
 velopment of political institutions, may be taken to imply 
 a tendency, apart from imitation, to produce something like 
 the type imitated, or at least conditions favourable to its 
 maintenance — by comparing the two leading cases of city- 
 states in Greek history, which afford, one a positive, one a 
 negative example. 
 
 We all know that in the best known and most brilliant 
 century and a half of Greek history — from the repulse of 
 Persia 480 B.C. to the submission to Macedonia 326 B.C. — 
 Athens and Sparta are the two leading states ; and that, in 
 the struggle between the principles of oligarchy and de- 
 mocracy that was going on during this period in other city- 
 states of Greece, Athens was, speaking broadly, on the side 
 
I INTRODUCTORY SURVEY OF THE SUBJECT 23 
 
 of democracy, and Sparta on the side of oligarchy. In fact, 
 Aristotle complains that both these states used their pre- 
 dominant position to establish oligarchies and democracies 
 respectively in other states under their influence, " not out 
 of any consideration for the interests of the states in 
 question, but simply for their own imperial interest." ^ 
 We shall therefore be disposed, in tracing the develop- 
 ment of democracy in the Greek city-states generally, to 
 regard imitation of Athens as a probably important factor, 
 though we do not know enough details to say with any 
 precision how far it operated. But — and this is my 
 negative example — it is clear that there was almost no 
 attempt to imitate Sparta ; for, as we shall see,^ though 
 Sparta was in policy on the side of oligarchy elsewhere, her 
 government was not, in the view of ancient thinkers, one 
 that should be classified as an oligarchy, though it had 
 oligarchical elements. And this is all the more remarkable, 
 because the ideal polity, which the most eminent political 
 thinkers were led to construct by their view of the conditions 
 of human well-being, bore a much closer resemblance to the 
 actual polity of Sparta than to the actual polity of Athens. 
 That is, in the ideal polity of Plato (in his latest work) and 
 of Aristotle the citizens in a strict sense would be a class 
 from which industrial elements were carefully excluded, 
 living on the produce of lands tilled by serfs, and carefully 
 trained for the military function, as was the case in Sparta. 
 But in spite of the prestige of Sparta in the world of fact, 
 and the influence of Plato and Aristotle in the world of 
 thought, almost no tendency is discernible either to imitate 
 the actual Spartan polity, or to realise the ideal state of the 
 philosophers. This is a striking evidence that imitation 
 only takes place when the type imitated is one in harmony 
 with the general tendencies of political development in the 
 states imitating. 
 
 Still, generally speaking, it remains true that when 
 imitation has been a factor in a general change in the form 
 of polity of a number of states, it is very difficult, if not 
 
 ^ Pol. VI. (iv.) ii. 18. 2 Lecture v. pp. 76-80. 
 
24 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 impossible, to say how much of the detail of the change has 
 been due to the result of the peculiar development of the 
 polity that serves as the model. 
 
 Imitation, in short, will not explain everything, but it 
 will explain a good deal. This being so, it is important, in 
 endeavouring to ascertain the laws of political develop- 
 ment, that we should get all the instruction we can from a 
 comparison of analogous cases, in which the similarities that 
 we are able to trace cannot reasonably be attributed to 
 imitation. It is the desire to bring this comparison into 
 due prominence which has in fact determined the ground 
 plan of my book. For the unique course of European 
 history contains within itself several different series of 
 developments of polity, having, as I have already indicated, 
 a certain analogy with each other, and thus affording 
 material for mutual comparison, while to a great extent 
 independent. There is first that between the development of 
 the ancient city-states and the country-states of Western 
 Europe. But the development of Eoman polity is so 
 different in detail from Greek, that a large place cannot be 
 given to direct imitation of Greece in explaining its causes, 
 though this must not be overlooked. "We may, therefore, 
 treat the development of the Greek city-state and the 
 Eoman city - state as almost independent. The develop- 
 ment of the modern country -state thus affords a third 
 series; and we find a fourth, to which I have already 
 referred, in the development of the medieval cities. 
 
 It may be observed that of these four different series of 
 changing types of polity, three are so closely connected that 
 they form one history in which the later stages are causally 
 connected with the earlier. From the beginnings of Eome to 
 the Eoman Empire, from this to the partially incoherent 
 medieval kingdoms in which the partially independent 
 medieval cities develop, and from these to modern European 
 states, we have a continuous process, in which we cannot 
 find a break except arbitrarily. So far I agree with 
 Freeman as to " ancient " and " modern " history. This is 
 not indeed the case with the history of Greece ; still, the 
 
I INTRODUCTORY SURVEY OF THE SUBJECT 25 
 
 history of Greece has had an important influence both on 
 Eoman and on modern history, though its influence, here as 
 in other departments, has been primarily in the region of 
 thought ; it has been exercised by supplying political ideas, 
 and not by handing on actual political institutions and 
 habits. 
 
 At the same time, it is not for this reason only that the 
 development of the Greek city-state has an indispensable 
 place among the different series of developments of which I 
 have just spoken. It is an essential part of my plan to 
 study the phases through which the type of state I have 
 called " city-state " has shown a tendency to pass. This is 
 the type which, when we concentrate attention on the 
 highest forms of civilised polity, is not only first in order of 
 time, but for reasons which I shall afterwards explain, prior 
 in order of political development. Now if this type is studied 
 at all, it is indispensable to study it in Greece. The develop- 
 ment of Kome is for special reasons unique — it is the one case 
 of a city-state expanding into an imperial country-state ; and 
 the medieval cities are not perfectly independent, even in 
 Italy, where they are most nearly independent. 
 
 § 7. I have spoken in the summary survey above given, 
 sometimes of " political society " or " state," and sometimes 
 of " nation." Before we proceed further, it will be well to 
 examine more carefully the meaning and relations of these 
 terms. As I have already explained, I generally use " state " 
 and " political society " as convertible terms, except that I con- 
 fine the term " state " to societies that have made a certain 
 advance in political civilisation. But we should observe 
 that the word " state " is sometimes used in a narrower 
 sense, to denote a political society considered as being what 
 jurists call an " artificial person," and as such, having rights 
 and duties distinct from the rights and duties of the indi- 
 viduals comprising it. I shall allow myself, where there is 
 no danger of ambiguity, to use the word in this narrower 
 sense without further explanation : and I think we may 
 define the degree of civilisation which a political society 
 must have reached in order to be properly called a " state," 
 
26 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 partly by this characteristic : — that it must have arrived at 
 a clear consciousness of this fundamental distinction between 
 the rights and obligations of the community in its corporate 
 capacity, and those of the individuals comprising it. In the 
 primitive " tribal " condition of our Germanic ancestors and 
 other uncivilised and semi-civilised peoples, this distinction 
 is still obscure. 
 
 Further, it belongs to our ordinary ^ conception of a State 
 that the political society so-called should be attached to a 
 particular part of the earth's surface: and should have a 
 generally admitted claim to determine the legal rights and 
 obligations of the persons inhabiting this portion, whether 
 they are members of the society or not. This is so much 
 the case that we sometimes use the word " state " to designate 
 the portion of the earth's surface thus claimed. 
 
 I have so far treated the " unity " of a state as depend- 
 ing solely on the fact that its members obey a common 
 government. And I do not think that any other bond is 
 essentially implied in the conception of a state. Still, it 
 should be recognised that a political society, whose members 
 have no consciousness of any ties uniting them independently 
 of their obedience to government, can hardly have the cohe- 
 sive force necessary to resist the disorganising shocks and 
 jars which external wars and internal discontents are likely 
 to cause from time to time. If a political society is to be 
 in a stable and satisfactory condition, its members must 
 have — what members of the same state sometimes lack — a 
 consciousness of belonging to one another, of being members 
 of one body, over and above what they derive from the 
 mere fact of being under one government ; and it is only 
 when I conceive them as having this consciousness that I 
 regard the state as being also a "nation." According to 
 the generally accepted ideal of modern political thought 
 a state ought certainly to be also a nation; still we can- 
 not say that the characteristic of being a nation is com- 
 
 ^ If a political society were to leave its temtory and establish itself in new 
 lands, it might be held to have remained the same State during and after the 
 transition ; but the point would, I think, be doubtful. 
 
I INTRODUCTORY SURVEY OF THE SUBJECT 27 
 
 monly implied in the current use of the term " state " or 
 " political society." What is commonly implied is merely 
 (1) that the aggregate of human beings thus denoted is 
 united — if in no other way — by the fact of acknowledging 
 permanent obedience to a common government, and having, 
 through the permanence of the relations between govern- 
 ment and governed, a corporate life distinguishable from the 
 lives of its members ; (2) that the government exercises 
 control over a certain portion of the earth's surface ; and (3) 
 that the society has a not inconsiderable number of members, 
 though the number cannot be definitely stated.^ 
 
 These characteristics are found by analysing our present 
 conception of a state. But if by the aid of the comparative 
 method we retrace the history of political society up the 
 stream of development — assuming that the less developed 
 precedes the more developed — these characteristics seem to 
 become gradually dim and evanescent. Number dwindles : 
 we get back to a clan not easily distinguishable from an 
 enlarged family ; relation to land becomes loose, the clan 
 being a wandering horde of gregarious shepherds or hunters ; 
 the relation of government and governed becomes only 
 faintly discernible. The recognised chief does not make 
 laws ; the horde follows inherited customs, but there is no 
 magistrate who punishes disobedience ; if the chief were 
 to issue commands — at least in time of peace — there 
 is little probability that they would be generally obeyed. 
 Ultimately, we come back to gregarious groups in which 
 nothing that we can call definite headship is to be dis- 
 cerned. Hence arises a certain difficulty in commencing 
 the investigation of the development of political society: 
 since if we try to begin at the beginning, as seems 
 natural, we have to begin in almost utter darkness. If 
 we are right to infer that our own political society has 
 descended by direct filiation from a group of the most 
 
 ^ Usually the government of a '* state " is understood to be independent 
 of external control ; but we also apply the terra to governed societies that 
 lack this characteristic, being members of a federal union, or dependencies 
 of a dominant state. 
 
28 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. i 
 
 politically undeveloped type — a question which I do not 
 now consider — a long part of the process of develop- 
 ment must have taken place in prehistoric times. When 
 the light of history first falls upon the societies to which 
 the modern European State can be definitely traced, they 
 have all a distinct and complex political organisation ; any 
 enquiry into the first origin of political society carries us 
 beyond history proper into speculation, conjecture, inference 
 from analogy. It seems to me, therefore, best to begin with 
 the first polity historically known, without assuming it to be 
 original ; then, taking our stand on this, to conjecture what 
 preceded ; and then, by the light of history, to trace the 
 course of subsequent development. 
 
LECTUEE II 
 
 THE BEGINNINGS OF HISTORIC POLITY 
 
 § 1. In the preceding lecture I have explained the method 
 and objects of this course. What we are to study is the 
 process of development leading up to the modern state. The 
 modern state is a constitutional state ; and accordingly, in 
 viewing European history as a process leading up to it, we are 
 concerned primarily with the history of constitutions ; and, 
 having this limited object in view we may, in the main, keep 
 within the history of three branches of the Indo-Germanic 
 group of nations. We may concentrate attention upon (1) 
 Greece, (2) Eome with her empire — especially the western 
 part, — and (3) the Germanic tribes that broke up and trans- 
 formed the Western Empire, and whose political development 
 was in its turn reacted upon and largely modified by the new 
 conditions that their conquest brought about in this trans- 
 formed empire. 
 
 At the outset it is important to observe that, divergent as 
 are the Knes of development of Greco-Italian and Teutonic 
 civilisation, they yet are not so far apart in their begin- 
 nings. When we compare the earliest forms of political 
 society in Greece, Eome, and Germany, as the best at- 
 tainable evidence shows them, we find — among important 
 differences — a certain agreement in general features. 
 Indeed, according to Freeman, "there is one form of 
 government which, under various modifications, is set 
 before us in the earliest glimpses which we get of the 
 political life of at least all the European members of 
 the Aryan family. This is that of the single king or 
 chief, first ruler in peace, first captain in war, but ruling 
 
 29 
 
30 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 not by his own arbitrary will, but with the advice of a 
 council of chiefs eminent for age or birth or personal exploits, 
 and further bringing all matters of special moment for the 
 final approval of the general Assembly of the whole people. 
 ... It is the form of government which we see painted 
 in our first picture of European life in the songs of Homer. 
 ... It is the form of government which tradition sets 
 before us as the earliest form of that ancient Latin con- 
 stitution out of which grew, first the Commonwealth, and 
 then the Empire of Eome. It is no less the form of govern- 
 ment which we see in the first picture of our race drawn for 
 us by the hand of Tacitus, and in the glimpses given us by 
 our own native annals of the first days of our own branch 
 of that race when they made their way into this island in 
 which we dwell." ^ 
 
 I think that this view contains an important element 
 of truth somewhat overstated ; accordingly, in the present 
 lecture I propose to examine in order the three leading 
 cases on which Freeman's generalisation is based, observing 
 differences as well as resemblances. 
 
 But in what order shall we examine them ? This 
 question leads me to the first qualification of Freeman's 
 statement that I have to offer: viz. that the different early 
 nations whose political condition we have to compare can- 
 not be assumed to be — when we take the earliest condition 
 historically ascertainable in each case — at corresponding 
 stages of development. I observe that at the close of the 
 sketch of the original Eoman constitution, in Mommsen's 5 th 
 chapter, that historian expressly says that this earliest 
 recognisable political order of the Eoman community — the 
 constitution, as he conceives it to have existed before the 
 reforms of Servius TuUius — is later by an indefinitely long 
 course of political development than the stage which is 
 shown us in the Homeric poems, or in Tacitus's account of 
 the Germans. Accepting this view, we have a striking 
 illustration of that divergence which I before noted between 
 the chronological order of political facts, which ordinary 
 
 ^ Comparative Politics, Lect. ii., pp. 65, 66. 
 
II THE BEGINNINGS OF HISTORIC POLITY 31 
 
 history follows, and the order of development which political 
 science aims at tracing. From the point of view of political 
 science the Germans of Tacitus {i.e. of the first century A.D.) 
 are to be considered as earlier than the Eomans some six 
 centuries before : nearer the point of departure of the 
 process of development that we are trying to trace. 
 
 Can we similarly decide between the two remaining cases ? 
 Can we say which is earliest in development, the political 
 institutions of the Greeks as Homer shows them to us, or 
 of the Germans as Tacitus shows them ? Here the pre- 
 liminary objection may occur that the whole comparison 
 is on too uncertain ground. It may be said that such 
 poetic narratives as Homer's cannot furnish evidence of the 
 historic existence of a form of political society or a state of 
 civilisation: for (1) they are not evidence of the character- 
 istics of the age in which the poems were written, since the 
 poet is describing a heroic past ; and (2) they are not 
 trustworthy evidence of the characteristics of that past, since 
 we cannot attribute to the poet antiquarian knowledge. 
 There is some force in the dilemma, especially where the 
 powers, glories, and rewards of heroic personages are 
 concerned. Still I think it would be carrying scepticism 
 too far to doubt that the indications incidentally given 
 of political institutions, social customs, and industrial 
 arts — when they are clearly not introduced to heighten 
 the impressiveness of the story — on the whole ^ show us 
 Greek civilisation as the poet or poets knew it by experience. 
 And if so we may conclude that the Greeks for whom the 
 Homeric poems were composed were on a decidedly higher 
 level of general civilisation than the Germans of Tacitus ; ^ as 
 possessing walled towns, vineyards, and olive-grounds care- 
 fully cultivated, and luxurious palaces for their chiefs ; 
 importing if not producing works of art similar in techniqiie 
 
 ^ In one or two cases the poet's language suggests that he is consciously 
 describing a practice outgrown, and offensive to the sentiments of his own 
 age ; — e.g. when he describes the sacrifice of twelve Trojan youths on the 
 funeral pyre of Patroclus. 
 
 2 The Germans, according to Tacitus, sacrificed prisoners of war, Arinals, 
 L 61. 
 
32 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 to the shield of Achilles ; and, last but not least, producing 
 the poems themselves. Hence we shall not be surprised 
 to find them at a more advanced stage of political 
 development. 
 
 § 2. Let us begin, then, with the department of facts 
 chronologically latest, the primitive German constitution, 
 on which Tacitus is our chief authority. In the political 
 institutions of German tribes, as described by Tacitus, we 
 can certainly find the three elements of Freeman's Indo- 
 Germanic polity. There is the assembly of freemen in 
 arms, meeting periodically ; there are the principes or chiefs 
 of the smaller districts that make up the territory of the 
 tribe, who administer justice in these districts, usually lead 
 their fighting men in war, and act as a council to prepare 
 the business for the national assembly. And there is, in 
 some tribes, the superior chief or king ; not strictly hereditary, 
 but always chosen from a noble family ; — and we may infer 
 from other evidence that often only members of one family 
 are eligible. 
 
 But when we compare the accounts of Tacitus with the 
 description of the Germans given by Csesar in his book on 
 Gaul, we are struck with a curious fact, which the ordinary 
 account of this primitive polity as " patriarchal kingship " ^ 
 ignores. In the brief glimpses of German institutions 
 which Caesar shows, we can see no kingship at all in the 
 tribe or civitas. In peace, he tells us, there is no common 
 magistracy : the chiefs of the districts into which the 
 tribe is divided administer justice among their people : a 
 common magistracy is only formed when the tribe is at 
 war. And even in the time of Tacitus, a century and a 
 half later, kingship — permanent headship of the whole tribe 
 — would seem to have been only developed in a certain 
 number of cases. As Dr. Stubbs says, " a very large pro- 
 portion of the tribes dispensed altogether with royalty : the 
 ■state or civitas was a sufficient centre, and the tie of nation- 
 ality a sufficient bond of cohesion." ^ 
 
 ^ See for instance Bluntschli, Theory o/tJie State, Book vi., chaps, vii. viii. 
 2 Constitutional History, chap. ii. § 15. 
 
II THE BEGINNINGS OF HISTORIC POLITY 33 
 
 Thus the earliest movement of change traceable in the 
 development of the German polity seems to be a movement 
 towards kingship — meaning by " kingship " permanent head- 
 ship of the tribe, hereditary generally in a family. And 
 subsequent history confirms this: kingship spreads more 
 and more : we see it deliberately introduced where it did 
 not previously exist : we find it normal in the larger bodies 
 that ejffected the conquest of the Eoman Empire ; at length 
 the Saxons and Frisians in their native Germany seem to 
 be the only Germanic nations without it, and the Saxon 
 invaders of England, though they appear on the scene 
 without it, soon adopt it.^ 
 
 This being so, it seems rash to follow Freeman in 
 regarding a definite threefold distribution of powers as a 
 primitive Indo- Germanic institution and an "inheritance 
 from the time when Greeks, Eomans, and Teutons lived 
 together : " since, as regards the trihe, the earliest evidence 
 shows us an absence of kingship among the Germans in 
 Germany : and there seems to be no ground for assuming a 
 definite triplicity of governmental organs in each of the 
 smaller groups into which the kingless tribe is distributed. 
 In the tribes that have kings there are, no doubt, the three 
 elements clearly distinguishable. But in any case the supreme 
 authority in the Germanic tribe appears from the account of 
 Tacitus to reside in the assembly of free warriors. I may 
 conveniently show this by a quotation^ from Dr. Stubbs's 
 summary of this account, as Dr. Stubbs has certainly no 
 undue bias in favour of a democratic interpretation of the 
 institutions of our ancestors : " Under both systems the 
 central power was wielded by the national assemblies. 
 These were held at fixed times, generally at the new or full 
 moon. There was no distinction of place : all were free, all 
 appeared in arms. Silence was proclaimed by the priests, 
 who had for the time the power of enforcing it. Then the 
 debate was opened by some one who had a personal claim 
 to be heard, the king, or a jprinceps (local chieftain), or 
 
 ^ Cf. Otto Gierke, Das Deutsche Genossenschaftsreckt, pt, i. § 6. 
 ^ Constituticnial History, chap. ii. § 16. 
 
 D 
 
34 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 one whose age, nobility, military glory or eloquence entitled 
 him to rise. He took the tone of persuasion, never that 
 of command. Opposition was expressed by loud shouts ; 
 assent by the shaking of spears ; enthusiastic applause by 
 the clash of spear and shield." 
 
 " Of matters of deliberation the more important were 
 transacted in the full assembly at which all the free men 
 were entitled to be present. But the business was canvassed 
 and arranged by the priThcipes before it was presented for 
 national determination ; and matters of less import and 
 ordinary routine were dispatched in the limited gather- 
 ings of the magistrates." The assembly also "acted as a 
 high court of justice, heard complaints and issued capital 
 sentences ; " and in the time of Tacitus " the magistrates for 
 the administration of justice" in the districts and villages 
 seem to have been elected in it. 
 
 § 3. When we turn to Homeric Greece, we find that the 
 polity wears a decidedly more monarchical aspect : every 
 tribe appears to have a single head-chief, though, in the 
 Odyssey at least, the same title that is applied to him 
 (" Basileus ") is also used to denote the subordinate chiefs, 
 whom Tacitus calls principes to distinguish them from the 
 rex} Still, among the various chiefs that a Homeric tribe 
 (in the Odyssey) may have, there is normally one highest 
 chief or king, whose office descends ordinarily though 
 not necessarily by inheritance to one of his children. When 
 a suitor says to Telemachus that it belongs to him as 
 heir of his father to be king of Ithaca, Telemachus answers 
 modestly that there are " many other Achsean chiefs " in 
 Ithaca, and that some one of these may hold sway if 
 Odysseus is dead. It seems clear from the tone of this 
 discussion that Telemachus is considered to have a certain 
 claim ; but that the claim may be overruled. ^ Similarly, 
 in the primitive Germanic constitution, the right of the 
 
 ^ Tac. Germ. 11. In the Iliad the title ^aa-iXevs is never, I believe, 
 expressly applied to any one who is not either head of a 5i]/j.os or son of such a 
 head. This is one of the points in which the political conceptions of the 
 Iliad — or the older portions of it — appear to difter from those of the Odyssey. 
 
 2 Od. i. 394. 
 
11 THE BEGINNINGS OF HISTORIC POLITY 35 
 
 people to elect their king is ordinarily combined with a 
 hereditary claim to be elected, belonging to members of one 
 family. 
 
 There is, then, in the Homeric tribe a central king 
 normally hereditary, who, like the German king, in time of 
 peace has the function of deciding disputes of right among 
 the tribesmen, and protecting them from violent wrong ; who 
 represents the community in its external relations, receives 
 ambassadors and entertains strangers ; and who in time of 
 war is the normal leader of the host. Along with him the 
 subordinate chiefs or elders form a council like the German 
 priTicipes : — and we may observe that, like the German chiefs, 
 they are in the habit of settling their affairs at a banquet.^ 
 
 Further, there is no doubt that general assemblies of 
 the people are customarily summoned for the discussion of 
 matters of public importance ; but there is a serious difference 
 of opinion, among authorities of repute, as to the political 
 function of such assemblies. 
 
 According to Grote^ the Homeric assembly of freemen, 
 and the Homeric council of chiefs, are " exhibited . . . 
 as opportunities for advising the king, and media for 
 promulgating his intentions to the people, rather than as 
 restraints upon his authority . . . the king promulgates 
 his intentions. . . . But in the Homeric agora no division 
 of affirmative or negative voices ever takes place, nor is any 
 formal resolution ever adopted. ... It is an assembly for 
 talk, communication, and discussion to a certain extent by 
 the chiefs . . . but here its ostensible purposes end. . . . 
 The multitude who compose it are listening and acquiescent, 
 not often hesitating, and never refractory." 
 
 In answer to this it is urged, with undeniable force, 
 by Freeman and by Gladstone, that formal resolu- 
 tions and divisions are refinements that belong to a 
 later stage of political civilisation ; that we do not even 
 
 ^ Political dinners are very primitive institutions. ' ' De pace ac belle 
 plenimque in conviviis consultant," says Tacitus. "Give the chiefs a 
 dinner" — suggests Nestor to Agamemnon at the crisis caused by Achilles' 
 wrath. 
 
 2 History of Greece, Part i. chap. xx. (vol. ii. pp. 90, 92, 97 1st ed.). 
 
36 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 find them in the Germanic assembly of armed freemen, 
 with which the real decision of peace and war, and other 
 important matters clearly rested. " If they disapprove of a 
 proposal," says Tacitus, " they indicate their rejection by 
 murmurs and groans {fremitus) ; if they approve, they clash 
 spears." ^ Now the Homeric Greeks certainly appear to 
 refrain from noisy dissent; but in the Iliad (ix. 29, 50) 
 disapprobation of Agamemnon's proposal finds effective 
 expression in silence, followed by loud applause of a speaker 
 on the opposite side. It is evident that the speakers in the 
 Homeric assembly have the business of persuading, and that 
 persuasive eloquence is most important to them. The 
 assembly, no less than the battlefield, is a place where 
 heroes win glory i^ and even a man poor in presence, if he 
 has the gift of oratory, " shines in the gathering of his 
 people, and as he passes through the town men gaze on him 
 as a god." ^ The assembly therefore is much more than a 
 mere means of announcement ; and where public speaking is 
 an instrument of public policy, there, as Gladstone and 
 Freeman say, is the real essence of liberty. 
 
 It is evident, again, that the Trojan assembly {II. xviii. 311) 
 is held by the poet to be gravely responsible for applauding 
 the bad advice of Hector, instead of the good counsel of 
 Polydamas ; and the Ithacan assembly {Od. xvL 375) is 
 credited with the power of driving the suitors of Penelope 
 from Ithaca, as a punishment of their plot to slay 
 Telemachus. And, though it is difficult to say how far the 
 king could, in accordance with custom, decide without or 
 even against the advice of council or assembly — since 
 doubtless the distribution of functions among the three 
 organs was uncertain and fluctuating — it is clear that some 
 public acts were not within the limits of his authority. 
 Thus we hear several times * of a domain {refievo^) cut out 
 of public land to be held in severalty by some hero as a 
 reward for conspicuous public service, but it is never said 
 to be assigned by the authority of the king : — for instance, 
 
 1 Tac. Germ. 11. ^ Compare {e.g.) 11. i. 490, and iv. 225. 
 
 3 Od. viii. 172. ^ See II. vi. 194, ix. 578, xx. 184. 
 
II THE BEGINNINGS OF HISTORIC POLITY 37 
 
 after Bellerophon's exploits in Lycia, the king gives 
 him " half of all the royal honour " ; but it is the 
 Lycians who "mete him a domain fair with vineyards and 
 tilth." 1 
 
 I think, therefore, that we might infer from Homer alone 
 that in the earliest discernible form of Greek political 
 society the assembly of freemen held a position bearing 
 some analogy to that of the German Assembly; — though 
 certainly, in the society that Homer describes, the chief 
 appears to be politically more and the common people 
 less than in the Germanic society described by Tacitus. 
 
 And this general conclusion may be further supported by 
 evidence drawn from post-Homeric Greece ; which illustrates 
 again how, in tracing by means of induction and comparison 
 the general course of political development, we have to neglect 
 chronology. I mean we have to put together as parallel, politi- 
 cal conditions of different states, separated by long intervals 
 of time ; and on the other hand consider the simultaneous 
 conditions of different countries as separated by long inter- 
 vals of development. We must not indeed carry this 
 neglect of chronology too far ; for a people in low develop- 
 ment, living in communication with a more civQised one, is 
 likely to catch by the contact some elements of civilisation, 
 and thus become socially more advanced in some ways than 
 a people at a generally similar stage of development who 
 lived long before them in time. So far, however, as this 
 influence on contemporary civilisation affects the balance of 
 political forces in a primitive society like the one we are 
 considering, it is hardly likely to favour the power of the 
 general assembly of freemen ; since the chiefs, from their 
 
 ^ II. vi. 195. In the story of Meleager (J7. ix. 578), the offer of a rifxevos 
 is made by "the elders," not by the king; probably the offer would have 
 required ratification by the assembly. 
 
 It may be observed that the Homeric king's revenue appears to be regarded 
 as public revenue, which he is customarily bound to employ largely for public 
 purposes : thus the chieftains entertained by Agamemnon are said to ' * drink 
 at the public cost." — //. xvii. 249. On the other hand, he has a right to exact 
 from the tribesmen contributions towards any exceptional expense, — such as 
 that entailed by hospitality towards strangers. 
 
38 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 wealth and position, are likely to anticipate the masses in 
 civilisation, and thereby to increase their predominance. 
 This seems to be the case with the kings of Macedonia 
 when it becomes prominent in Greek history : — here, 
 indeed, the royal family claims to belong by race to the 
 more civilised neighbours. When, therefore, in spite of 
 this source of superiority, we learn from the historians of 
 Alexander that the powers of the Macedonian king were 
 constitutionally limited ; that, in particular, capital punish- 
 ment could not be inflicted except with the assent of the 
 army in war, the assembly in peace; when we find that, 
 even under so towering and triumphant a monarch as 
 Alexander, the Macedonian army in Asia retains this right, 
 and actually acquits Macedonians accused before it by 
 Alexander himself, we certainly obtain some confirmation 
 for Freeman's parallel between the primitive political 
 positions of the Teutonic and Greek assemblies of freemen 
 in arms. 
 
 But the Macedonian constitution is only known to us 
 by vague general statements and inferences from isolated 
 events. More important evidence is furnished by one of 
 the most interesting of the historic constitutions of Greece 
 — the so-called Lycurgean constitution of Sparta. I think 
 we may assume (1) that the Dorian tribes who conquered 
 Peloponnesus were in a more primitive condition, socially 
 and politically, than the people whom they subdued ; and 
 (2) that in the so-called Lycurgean constitution we have, 
 to a great extent, this original condition artificially preserved 
 and rendered uniquely stable. Through a process of change 
 now undiscoverable — which tradition has concentrated and 
 attached to the name of Lycurgus, — the natural primi- 
 tiveness of life and warlike habits of an invading horde 
 were somehow petrified into the artificial simplicity and 
 hardiness and traditional martial art of an elaborately 
 trained caste of soldiers. Now if we take the old Spartan 
 constitution (leaving out the Board of five " ephors " or super- 
 visors, which, as the best authorities agree, was a later 
 addition), we find its main features those of Freeman's primi- 
 
11 THE BEGINNINGS OF HISTORIC POLIJ Y 39 
 
 tive Indo-Germanic polity; and, in particular, in respect of 
 the powers of the assembly, it has a more striking re- 
 semblance to the German polity described by Tacitus than 
 anything we find in Homer. It was the duty of the kings 
 (I abstract from the peculiarity of the dual kingship of 
 Sparta, which need not now detain us) to call the citizens 
 together once a month at least, on the day of the full moon, 
 in a fixed place in the valley of the Eurotas. This assembly, 
 like the Germanic one, is a martial muster of the freemen 
 in arms : decisions of peace and war, treaties, and other 
 important matters of state are laid before it for decision, 
 just as before the Germanic assembly of Tacitus. In neither 
 case does the ordinary freeman take part in debate ; but 
 the assembly has to accept or reject the proposals laid 
 before it ; and even down to the time of Thucydides, as 
 that historian tells us, the decision of a Spartan, as of a 
 Germanic, assembly was expressed by the shout, and not by 
 a formal vote. 
 
 Putting all the evidence together, I think we may 
 reasonably suppose that the customary distribution of power 
 between chiefs and common freemen varied considerably in 
 different parts of Greece ; and that where more primitive 
 social conditions survived ^ — as in the mountainous region 
 from which the conquering Dorians came — the independence 
 of the common freeman, and the collective power of the 
 assembly of freemen, was greater than in the more civilised 
 parts. In connection with this it is important to notice 
 the military equipment and mode of fighting of the 
 chiefs ; for during almost the whole period of development 
 comprised in ancient history differences in military equip- 
 ment and organisation have an important correspond- 
 ence to political differences. Thus we may assume that 
 wherever Greek chiefs and nobles fought like Homer's 
 heroes from war-chariots, their political superiority to the 
 loosely arranged common herd was decidedly greater than 
 that of the Teutonic chiefs, who marched to battle on foot 
 with their fellow-tribesmen. I do not, however, think it 
 certain that this manner of fighting ever prevailed widely 
 
40 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 among the Greeks in Europe;^ since war -chariots are 
 altogether unsuited to the mountainous country that occupied 
 so large a part of Greece proper. In any case, we may 
 assume that the Dorians won their victories in Peloponnesus 
 mainly by means of the infantry which constituted their 
 principal arm of warfare in historic times : and the military 
 importance thus attaching to the common Dorian freeman 
 would tend to sustain his political position. On the other 
 hand, we may fairly regard the huge walls of great stone 
 blocks, the magnificent graves with gold treasures, and the 
 remains of palaces at Mycenae and Tiryns as evidence that 
 the Greek chieftains in Peloponnesus, before the Dorian 
 invasions, surpassed in dignity and power their counterparts 
 either in the Germany of Tacitus's time, or in the ruder 
 parts of Greece. 
 
 As regards judicial functions especially, there seems to 
 be a decided divergence between the primitive Germanic 
 polity and the earliest known Greek polity. In the 
 Germanic constitution the function of declaring justice — 
 so far as controversies of right are not settled by private 
 conflict and compromise, or by arbitration — seems to belong 
 essentially to the freemen, assembled either nationally or 
 locally; the function of the king or local chief being to 
 preside at the trial and enforce the decision. But, though 
 in Homeric Greece the judicial decision was given in the 
 Agora among the citizens at large, there is no evidence to 
 show that the freemen generally took any part in the decision 
 in ordinary cases. We may, however, infer from what has 
 been said above of Macedonia, that the assembled freemen 
 had the ultimate decision in capital cases, as seems to 
 have been the case in Eome when the condemned persons 
 appealed : it is on general grounds probable that — in 
 Greece as elsewhere — the primitive gathering of armed 
 men which formed the political assembly was at first 
 the judicial body also, for important matters of criminal 
 justice. 
 
 Turning to consider briefly the primitive Eoman con- 
 
 ^ There are traces of its ancient use in Boeotia and Euboea. 
 
II THE BEGINNINGS OF HISTORIC POLITY 41 
 
 stitution as delineated by Mommsen, we find again the three 
 elements of Freeman's primitive polity definitely and vigor- 
 ously marked. There is, firstly, the king ; ^ secondly, there is 
 the council of " fathers," which has the customary right of 
 giving counsel to the king, and is the ultimate depositary 
 of royal power when the king dies ; thirdly, there is the 
 assembly, having at least three fundamental resemblances with 
 the primitive Teutonic or Spartan assembly. It (1) meets (at 
 least) on fixed days ; (2) its consent has to be obtained for 
 measures of great national importance, e.g. for an offensive 
 war, or for a change in the " common law " or customary 
 rule of civic relations ; (3) the assembly has only to say 
 " yes " or " no " ; no speaking on proposals laid before it is 
 allowed to private citizens. It is to be noted further, that 
 an appeal seems to be customarily granted to the Koman 
 assembly in cases of infliction of capital punishment. 
 
 I have already observed that the polity thus broadly 
 characterised is not to be regarded as peculiarly Indo- 
 Germanic. Indeed, according to Mr. Spencer,^ we find a similar 
 " form of ruling agency " among " sundry Malayo-Polynesians, 
 among the red men of North America, the Dravidian tribes of 
 the Indian hills, the aborigines of Australia." We are not, 
 however, here concerned with this wider comparison. Mr. 
 Spencer somewhat characteristically adds that "govern- 
 mental organisation could not possibly begin in any 
 other way," for "no controlling force at first exists save 
 that of the aggregate will as manifested in the assembled 
 horde." But before we affirm this necessity it seems 
 desirable to examine a widely accepted theory of the origin 
 of political society which appears to supply us with the 
 controlling force required. I mean the patriarchal theory, 
 
 ^ There are some striking differences between Roman and Greek kings. 
 The Roman king has no claim to divine descent ; he is nominated either by 
 his predecessor or by an " inteiTcx " appointed by the senate ; but his admini- 
 strative power seems to go beyond that of the heroic king of Greece — in 
 accordance with the greater sternness and orderliness of the Roman character 
 which we find also exhibited in the intensity in private law of the paternal 
 authority. 
 
 ^ Political Institutions^ ch. v. § 464. 
 
42 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. ii 
 
 which gives, as the original force of cohesion in primitive 
 political society, the habit of obedience of children to 
 parents continuing as a habit of obedience to the chief who 
 is regarded as father of the clan. This theory I propose to 
 examine in the following lecture. 
 
LECTUEE III 
 
 THE PATKIAECHAL THEORY 
 
 § 1. Let me briefly sum up the results of the preceding lecture. 
 In the primitive nation as exhibited to us by its earliest 
 records in Greece and Eome, and in the German tribes so 
 far as they have a common permanent head, we find political 
 functions distributed among three differently constituted 
 organs — the king or supreme chief, a council of subordinate 
 chiefs or elders, and the assembly of fully qualified citizens, 
 which is, as I said, a martial muster of the freemen in arms. 
 These three organs are found approximately similar in the 
 different cases which we have compared ; and the distribution 
 of functions among them in any one case has a broad re- 
 semblance to its distribution in any other : — though we note 
 important divergences in detail, and of course must not 
 attribute to societies in this early stage any such precision 
 and definiteness in division of functions as belongs to the 
 constitutions of more civilised peoples. 
 
 The main business of this course of lectures is to trace 
 the subsequent process of development, through which this 
 polity passes — a process growing clearer as civilisation pro- 
 gresses and our records of past social and political conditions 
 become more precise and trustworthy. But in the present 
 lecture I want to look backward, instead of forward, into 
 an obscurer region, and to see how far we can construct by 
 the aid of conjecture a probable account of the process by 
 which the primitive polity was reached. 
 
 The question of the origin of society was much 
 debated in earlier stages of modern political thought, being 
 supposed to have a practical importance which no one now 
 
 43 
 
44 DE VEL PM ENT OF E UR OPE A N POLITY lec t. 
 
 attributes to it. Men, finding themselves in an organised 
 society, paying habitual obedience to a certain govern- 
 ment, asked why this obedience was due, and expected to 
 find the answer in some theory as to how it originated : 
 holding that knowledge of the origin of governmental 
 authority would determine the legitimacy of the present 
 claims of rulers to obedience from particular portions of 
 mankind. But this supposition of a connexion between the 
 original source of government and the present duty of obey- 
 ing it, is now generally discarded ; in considering why we 
 obey the established government, we commonly examine the 
 probable effects of obedience and resistance, — comparing the 
 evils of oppression against the evils of breaking up a settled 
 order. So that the controversy between Locke and Filmer 
 as to whether the authority of government was originally 
 derived from the free consent of individuals previously 
 independent, as Locke maintained, or from the natural 
 authority of a father over his children and children's 
 children, as Filmer maintained, has ceased to have any 
 more than a historic interest for us ; it is therefore easy 
 for us to examine the probability of the alternative con- 
 jectures with scientific impartiality. 
 
 § 2. But before launching ourselves into this dim region 
 of conjecture, it is well to have clearly before our minds such 
 knowledge, bearing on this question of origin, as is attainable 
 from a study of less obscure parts of history. We want to 
 guess how political society originated in prehistoric ages ; to 
 give ourselves the best chance of guessing right, it will be 
 well to have before us the actually known modes of forming 
 new political societies in historic times. 
 
 Now we find that new states have been formed in 
 historic times sometimes by aggregation and sometimes 
 by division, and in either case sometimes by free consent 
 and sometimes by force. Division has been in historic 
 times a not infrequent cause ; — especially in earlier stages 
 of development, in which the process that later becomes 
 colonisation goes on in the rude form of sending off roving 
 swarms to seek new settlements. But when a new political 
 
Ill THE PATRIARCHAL THEORY 45 
 
 society is formed by division, it is obviously derived from a 
 pre-existing society of the same kind ; division therefore 
 clearly cannot be the mode in which political societies were 
 originally formed out of non-political. 
 
 The case is otherwise with aggregation, which therefore 
 requires closer attention, x^iggregation by force, or conquest, 
 is a most important cause of new political communities, 
 after a certain stage of civilisation has been reached either 
 by the conquering or the conquered community. But savage 
 tribes at the lowest stages of development, though con- 
 tinually at war, do not coalesce through conquest pure and 
 simple ; the vanquished are exterminated or driven away, not 
 absorbed — at least the captured males are exterminated, the 
 women being perhaps saved for concubinage or domestic work. 
 Thus we have no ground for regarding conquest as a factor 
 in the very earliest formation of political societies : — and 
 indeed it would be difficult to conceive the formation of 
 political societies out of non-political elements taking place 
 in this way. 
 
 On the other hand, we find in historic times several 
 cases in which a mainly voluntary aggregation has formed 
 a new political whole out of elements that have already 
 a political organisation of a certain kind, though often 
 one less developed. We find this process taking place 
 at the earliest stage of history as well as at the latest. 
 Most frequently, in early stages of development such com- 
 bination takes place with a view to war, and lasts at first 
 only as long as the war lasts. Thus — as I have mentioned 
 — Csesar tells us that in his time the German tribes {civi- 
 tates) had only common chiefs in war time ; in peace, the 
 smaller divisions (which he calls regiones or pagi) had 
 separate chiefs who administered justice and composed 
 differences. And for this condition of things analogies are 
 easily found in all parts of the world. ^ 
 
 But wars in this stage are often so recurrent and serious 
 that the advantage of union leads to its permanence. The 
 German tribes of which Tacitus speaks appear to have all 
 
 ^ Cf. Spencer, Political Institutions, § 451, p. 298. 
 
46 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 obtained this completer degree of internal cohesion : and, as 
 we saw, have national assemblies at which the chiefs of 
 the smaller districts are elected. Then, when we pass 
 from the Germans whom Csesar and Tacitus knew to the 
 Germans who overran the decaying empire four centuries 
 later, we find a further progress in the same direction of 
 change. 
 
 It is not, however, only with a view to war and defence 
 against foreign forces that this "integration," as Spencer 
 calls it, takes place. If communities are similar in language 
 and customs, then, as civilisation brings an increasing con- 
 sciousness of community of nature and sentiment, the mere 
 desire to establish a more perfect order in the internal 
 relations of the aggregating communities may suffice. This 
 appears when we consider exceptional cases in which 
 circumstances rendered foreign war a comparatively rare 
 incident. Thus we find that in Iceland the transition to 
 one community from a group of " Things " with separate 
 chieftains in local proximity was due to disputes between 
 neighbouring chiefs and their clients and uncertainty as to 
 the law, which brought about the " Constitution of Ulfliot," 
 A.D. 930, establishing a central "Thing" or assembly for 
 the whole island — the "Althing" — and a law speaker to 
 speak a single law. 
 
 / § 3. Voluntary coalescence, then, seems of all the historic 
 modes of formation of new states to be the only one appli- 
 cable in the case of the original formation of a political 
 society out of something that is not already such a society. 
 Accordingly, the most important historical question at 
 issue between Locke's school and their opponents may be 
 stated thus : Were political societies originally formed by 
 voluntary aggregation of heads of natural families, recognising 
 no right of government in any one more than any other prior 
 to the aggregation ? or were they formed by the extension 
 of single families into larger bodies of kindred, accompanied 
 by a recognition of superiority in individuals or families 
 specially representing the original parents ? 
 
 We may obtain some light on this question by examining 
 
Ill THE PATRIARCHAL THEORY 47 
 
 the internal structure of the earliest political society that 
 history shows us in Greece, Eome, and Germany. I turn, there- 
 fore, to the account that Maine gives of this structure, on the 
 basis of the evidence derived from comparative jurisprudence, 
 and especially from a study of Eoman law. According to 
 Maine, society in primitive times was " in fact, and in the 
 view of the men who composed it ... an aggregation of 
 families," not " a collection of individuals." Ancient law, 
 accordingly, "is so framed as to be adjusted to a system 
 of . . . corporations." It "considers the entities with 
 which it deals, i.e. the patriarchal or family groups, as 
 perpetual and inextinguishable." -^ It is to be noted 
 that these entities, so far as their patriarchal character 
 is recognised in the earliest Eoman law historically known 
 to us, are families in the strictest sense : the " Patria 
 Potestas " of the head of a household extends only to his 
 wife, children, and their descendants. Over them indeed he 
 appears exercising a despotism so absolute that no member 
 of the family besides himself can be said to have had a 
 separate jural existence at all. He was not only absolute 
 owner of the property, including even the acquisitions of his 
 children : but he could chastise and even kill, could sell or 
 transfer by adoption, could marry and divorce any of his 
 children at will. This complete control within the family 
 carried with it a correspondingly extensive responsibility; 
 the paterfamilias was answerable for any damage done by a 
 son ; but he could relieve himself by tendering the person 
 of the offender as a satisfaction for the damage. And 
 while the Eoman father's power during life was thus in its 
 remarkable extent more analogous to that of an independent 
 ruler than to that of a modern parent, we may find a similar 
 analogy in the no less striking limitation of his power over his 
 estate after death. He could not originally leave any of his 
 property by will away from his children ; he could no more 
 decide what was to be done with it after his death than a mon- 
 arch of a modern state can dispose of the country he governs. 
 When, however, we ask what happened after the father's 
 
 * Anderit Law, chap. v. p. 126. 
 
48 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 death, we find that the evidence suggests two different 
 answers to the question. When we are considering the 
 consequences of the father's death contemplated in the 
 earliest Eoman Law known to us, we must consider the 
 family to break up at the father's death; those of the 
 children, or fatherless grandchildren, who are physically 
 capable of founding families — i.e. males who have attained 
 puberty — becoming independent units ; while the women, if 
 not under the control of husbands, as lacking this capacity, 
 remain subject to the nearest male relative.-^ 
 
 But an examination of the earliest Eoman law of 
 inheritance leads us to infer an earlier stage of development, 
 at which the family held together instead of breaking up 
 at the father's death. According to Maine ^ the primitive 
 Roman conception of inheritance was " succession to the en- 
 tire legal position of the deceased man." All the archaic 
 phrases in Roman Law relating to inheritance "indicate 
 that what passed from the testator to the heir was the 
 family, that is, the aggregate of ' rights and duties com- 
 bined in the Patria Potestas and growing out of it ; " hence 
 Maine conceives the original will or testament as " a mode 
 of declaring who was to have the chieftainship in succession 
 to the testator." Again the only claims of consanguinity 
 recognised in the primitive law of intestate inheritance (in 
 default of direct heirs) are the claims of " agnates " — kins- 
 men who trace their connection exclusively through males : 
 and this carries us back to a time at which a man after his 
 father's death still belonged, in some important sense, to the 
 same family group as his brothers and even remoter kinsmen. 
 For the exclusion from inheritance of all collaterals who 
 could only trace their connection through females would be 
 inexplicable unless we suppose that women — even when 
 they married after the father's death — ^left the family by 
 marriage in a sense in which men did not leave it. 
 
 1 Later, when wills overruled the original rights of kinsmen, unmarried 
 women after their father's death were placed in the protection of guardians 
 appointed by will. 
 
 2 Ancient Law, chap. vi. pp. 181, 190, 191. 
 
Ill THE PATRIARCHAL THEORY 49 
 
 Further, we have to observe that in the Eoman Law of 
 the "Twelve Tables," rights of inheritance extended beyond 
 the limits of traceable kinship to the members of the 
 " Gens," or clan, to which the deceased belonged. This 
 leads us to a very important modification of Maine's con- 
 ception of primitive society as an aggregation of families. 
 We find that in Eome, Athens, Sparta alike, — in short 
 wherever we have an accurate knowledge of an ancient 
 community — the families of the original citizens are grouped 
 in larger bodies, which so far resemble families that they 
 are held together by at least the supposition of a common 
 kinship. We may conveniently distinguish these by the 
 Eoman name " Gentes." 
 
 Such a Gens is called by Maine a fictitious extension 
 of the family.^ Its members, as such, could not definitely 
 trace blood relationship ; but they bore a common name, 
 and regarded each other as descendants or quasi-descendants 
 of a common ancestor ; and they were united by the religious 
 tie of performing sacrificial rites of a quasi-domestic kind, 
 and in early times by a complex bond of mutual rights 
 and obligations, resembling those arising out of distinct 
 kinship. Thus we find the members of an Athenian Gens 
 bound together by mutual rights of succession to property ; 
 reciprocal obligations of help, defence, and redress of injuries ; 
 mutual rights and obligations to intermarry in certain deter- 
 minate cases, especially where there was an orphan daughter 
 or heiress ; and the possession, in some cases, of common 
 property.^ 
 
 These bonds of union are so strong, that in conceiving 
 the structure of the primitive society in which they were in 
 full force, we are led to regard it as more markedly an 
 aggregation of Gentes than an aggregation of natural families. 
 And it is a not improbable conjecture that this division into 
 gentes was represented in the original political constitution 
 of Eome ; the " patres " who composed the Senate being 
 originally the chiefs of the old patrician Gentes. 
 
 ^ Similarly Grote (Part 11. chap, x.) speaks of it as an "enlarged and 
 partly factitious brotherhood." '-^ See Grote, Ix. 
 
50 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 The gentes again were grouped both at Eome and Athens 
 into larger unions — " curiae," ^parpiai (brotherhoods) — con- 
 nected by similar though less close bonds ; and these larger 
 groups were grouped again into tribes. 
 
 If, then, we contemplate the primitive nation as com- 
 posed in the manner described, of an ascending series of 
 groups — the bond of union within the group being the 
 belief or fiction of common descent, represented in and con- 
 firmed by the performance of sacred rites in worship of a 
 common ancestor — the Patriarchal Theory emerges, if I may 
 so say, spontaneously. As Maine says,^ " we can scarcely help 
 conceiving " these groups " as a system of concentric circles 
 which have gradually expanded from the same point." That 
 is, the patriarchal family prospering and holding together, 
 would become the gens ; and similarly the gens prospering 
 would develop into the larger union of the tribe. And 
 though it is only a conjecture, it is, Maine thinks, " no pre- 
 sumptuous conjecture," that the independent group thus 
 formed by development out of the patriarchal family was 
 normally governed by the " eldest male of the oldest line," 
 representing the "common ancestor of all the free kinsmen." ^ 
 
 § 4. In examining this view, it will be well to distinguish 
 three questions : — 1. Was the tie that bound members of a 
 primitive community together primarily an extension of the 
 family tie, a consciousness of kinship and common descent ? 
 2. Did the group of supposed kinsmen which constitutes 
 the most elementary political society known to us, grow 
 out of a family formed by the children of a single male 
 parent ? 3. Did the chief of such a group normally exer- 
 cise authority as representative of the parent in this original 
 family ? 
 
 The first question, I think, may be confidently answered 
 in the affirmative. There can be no doubt that man, in the 
 earliest stage in which history leads us to form a conception 
 of him, existed in groups, of which at least the ideal bond 
 was kinship. We have seen, indeed, that in the case of 
 
 ^ Ancient Law, ch. v. p. 128, and ch. vii. p. 234. 
 "'^ Early History of Institutions, Lect. in. p. 94. 
 
Ill THE PATRIARCHAL THEORY 51 
 
 the Greeks and Eomans, kinship is not generally trace- 
 able, even by traditionally preserved genealogies, among all 
 the members of any of the groups within groups of which 
 the community — or at least the old stock of citizens — 
 appears to be composed ; it may even be known that foreign 
 elements have been admitted into the union of kinsmen, 
 with or without a ceremony of adoption ; still, this does not 
 prevent the group, as a whole, from being conceived as 
 descended from a common ancestor. Even where the 
 members of the community were known not to be all kins- 
 men, it was only by feigning themselves to be kinsmen that 
 they could regard it as natural and rational to hold together 
 in political union, — the effect of the fiction being doubtless 
 powerfully aided by the admission of the fictitious kinsmen 
 to the domestic worship of the group. We have no evi- 
 dence of any similar fictitious extension of kinship among the 
 primitive Germans ; but when we catch our first glimpse of 
 them in Caesar's narrative, we find them associated in con- 
 sanguineous groups for war, and for the appropriation and 
 cultivation of land. And though in all these cases the con- 
 stitutional importance of these quasi-consanguineous divi- 
 sions appears to be diminishing when the light of history 
 falls on them, there is sufficient evidence to show clearly 
 that the internal union of a primitive political society 
 was conceived after the pattern of a family union ; that 
 its earliest elements are groups similarly framed ; and that 
 each of these communities, when we know them first, appears 
 to be conscious of a wider legendary kinship linking it to 
 neighbouring communities. Though we cannot say that the 
 belief in descent from a common ancestor is required as a 
 " condition 'precedent " for primitive tribes combining ; still 
 here too the idea of kinship as a basis of combination seems 
 so far predominant, that the belief in a common ancestor is 
 apt to grow up after combination. 
 
 § 5. We may assume, then, that the earliest form of 
 political society was a comparatively small group of persons 
 regarding themselves as kinsmen : and it is possible that 
 in some cases such a society may have been produced by the 
 
52 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 expansion of a single family. But after the evidence which 
 M'Lennan and others have brought forward as to the wide- 
 spread existence among uncivilised men of kinship traced 
 through females only, and marriage customs very difi'erent 
 from the patriarchal, I cannot regard it as even decidedly most 
 probable that any political society which we know historically 
 was actually thus developed. It is at least not improbable 
 that the gregarious group or groups from which it has been 
 derived, with whatever intervening processes of aggregation 
 and division, went through a stage in which kinship through 
 females was alone recognised; and if so, it is at least not 
 improbable that as it emerged into the stage in which the 
 paternal kinship had prevailed as the bond of family union, 
 it was composed of several families which could not definitely 
 trace themselves to a common male ancestor, though under 
 the influence of the newly -predominant idea of kinship 
 through males, they came to believe that they had had 
 such an ancestor. Evidence of this process of change, in 
 the Arabian clans, is given by Eobertson Smith in his 
 book on Ki7iship and Marriage in Early Arabia. 
 
 Here I ought to observe that Maine, in a later treatise,^ 
 admitted the importance of a good deal of M'Lennan's 
 evidence, and restated his theory in view of this evidence. 
 He admitted it " to be more than probable that, since the 
 appearance of mankind on the earth, an indefinite portion 
 of the race has suffered at different times from a serious 
 inferiority in numbers of women to men." He acknow- 
 ledged that men would be led " to establish institutions in 
 conformity with this proportion between the sexes " ; and that 
 " the tendency of such institutions would be to arrange men 
 and women in groups very unlike those in which, according to 
 . . . the Patriarchal Theory, they were originally combined." 
 And he admitted that it may be "impossible to say what 
 portion of the human race has suffered from this dispropor- 
 tion between the sexes." He still, however, insists " on the 
 
 ^ Early Law and Custom, ch. viii. pp. 214, 215. This chapter — with 
 which Spencer, in criticising Maine, does not seem to be acquainted — should 
 be read by all who give any attention to the present inquiry. 
 
Ill THE PATRIARCHAL THEORY 53 
 
 Patriarchal Theory as expressing the primitive grouping of 
 mankind " ; considering the phenomena to which M'Lennan 
 drew attention to be a temporary aberration interposed 
 between the original grouping and that later patriarchal 
 family which archaic law shows us. And he skilfully 
 turns the flank — if I may so say — of M'Lennan, by calling 
 in the authority of Darwin, who approaches the matter from 
 the zoological side.^ Darwin argues from what we know of 
 the habits of monkeys, that primitive man — when nearest 
 the monkeys — must be supposed to have lived in marriage 
 relations certainly more resembling the patriarchal family 
 than those to which M'Lennan has drawn attention : " each 
 with a single wife, or if powerful with several, whom he 
 jealously guarded against all other men," and under the 
 influence of " one of the strongest of all instincts, common 
 to all the lower animals, namely, the love of their young 
 offspring." There is even some reason for attributing to 
 him, in some cases, permanent monogamic unions in this 
 earliest jpost-simian condition. Without denying the force of 
 Darwin's reasoning, I think we may observe that, under the 
 influence of the studies of savage life to which M'Lennan 
 and Darwin led him, Maine's Patriarchal Theory, in its final 
 form, has undergone a material change. As you will 
 remember, an essential characteristic of the patriarchal 
 family in Ancient Law is that the patriarch — the oldest 
 living male ascendant — is supposed to bear despotic sway 
 over his gTown-up sons, as well as the women and young 
 children of his household, and the "implicit obedience of 
 rude men to their parent," which this conception involves, is 
 spoken of as a " primary fact." ^ But it is difficult to sup- 
 pose this a primary fact in the patriarchal family that Maine 
 shows us in Early Law and Custom. Of this family he 
 says (p. 198) that it is "more than barbarous, it is extremely 
 savage," (p. 209) that "sexual jealousy, indulged through 
 power, might serve as a definition of " it, " the power of the 
 strong man" is "the principal formative cause" of it (p. 215). 
 
 ^ See Descent of Man, Part ill. ch. xx. 
 ^ Ancient Law, ch. v. p. 136. 
 
54 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 But in such a group based on sexual jealousy and physical 
 force, what motive is there to make the grown son, in full 
 youthful vigour, submit to the despotic authority of the 
 father ? Maine suggests that it is respect for the paternal 
 wisdom (p. 198), "the strongest and wisest male rules." But 
 though barbarous people often show a more marked respect 
 for the wisdom that normally comes with age than men in 
 a more advanced stage of civilisation, it is attributing more 
 to this sentiment than any evidence will support, if we sup- 
 pose that it would make men submit to despotic control in 
 the teeth of strong animal passions. And nothing that I 
 can learn of monkeys or other animals at all supports this. 
 I learn {e.g?) that among gorillas " but one adult is seen in a 
 band ; when the young male grows up a contest takes place 
 for mastery, and the strongest, by killing and driving out the 
 others, establishes himself as the head of the community." ^ 
 All this seems highly unpatriarchal. In short, granting the 
 " Cyclopean " family, with a single male head ruling despotic- 
 ally over wives and children of tender years, to be as primi- 
 tive a condition of human society as we can conjecturally 
 get back to, I see no ground for regarding the Patriarchal 
 family of Ancient Law as similarly primitive, or for assuming 
 it to have developed immediately out of the Cyclopean 
 family. The two are dissimilar in respect of the very char- 
 acteristic which is most important for our present inquiry 
 into the development of the state — the submission paid by 
 a number of grown men to one. 
 
 § 6. The controversy thus seems to concentrate itself on 
 the third of the questions above distinguished, — the relation 
 of political to paternal power. According to Maine, the 
 power of the father — or his representative — is a fact so 
 essential to the structure of primitive society, that "kin- 
 ship, as the tie binding communities together, tends to 
 be regarded as the same thing with subjection to a 
 common authority. The notions of power and consan- 
 guinity blend," ^ though " they in nowise supersede one 
 
 ^ Dr. Savage, as quoted by Darwin, Descent of Man, Part iii. ch. xx. 
 ^ Early History of InstUiUwns, pp. 68, 69. 
 
Ill THE PATRIARCHAL THEORY 55 
 
 another." Thus in the case of "the smallest group, the 
 family," it is " difficult to say whether the persons com- 
 prised in it are most distinctly regarded as kinsmen, or as 
 servile or semi-servile dependants of the person who was 
 the source of their kinship " ; and this confusion of " kinship 
 with subjection to patriarchal power is observable also in 
 the larger groups into which the family expands. In some 
 cases the tribe can hardly be otherwise described than as the 
 group of men subject to some one chieftain." Now it is 
 probable that wherever primitive chieftainship was strong, 
 this fusion of ideas tended to result. But we have no 
 reason to regard this extent of the chiefly power as a normal 
 condition of the earliest political societies : and even if we 
 suppose a clan developed out of a really patriarchal — not 
 Cyclopean — family, it would not follow that its chief had 
 his power simply because he was conceived, as the eldest 
 ascendant, to " represent " the father of the family which had 
 expanded into the clan. This idea of " representation " seems 
 to me too artificial and refined to have so decisive a force at 
 so early a stage of development. And certainly in the his- 
 torically known cases in later times, to which Maine refers, 
 where groups of kinsmen, developed out of more or less 
 patriarchal families, hold property in common, — though not 
 as independent groups, but as part of a larger state, — we 
 find no such transmission of paternal power. It is true that 
 in most of these cases — e.g. in the Hindoo joint undivided 
 family — the eldest male of the eldest line, if of full mental 
 capacity, is generally placed at the head of affairs. But as 
 Maine ^ admits, he is merely manager, not patriarch ; and 
 " if he is not deemed fit for his duties, a ' worthier ' kinsman 
 is substituted for him by election"; just as the principle of 
 election, at least within the royal family, seems to have been 
 generally accepted in the appointment of the Teutonic king 
 or supreme chief, where such a supreme chief existed. 
 
 Thus, even where the institution of the family as we con- 
 ceive it, under the rule of the male parent, is firmly estab- 
 lished within the society, we still find the principle of 
 
 ^ Early History of Institutions, p. 117. 
 
56 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. hi 
 
 election on the ground of personal efficiency combining with 
 the principle of inheritance in the male line to determine 
 chieftainship. Similarly there is much evidence to show 
 that in such societies personal superiority, physical or mental, 
 or both, is a powerful factor in determining the retention of 
 the chief's office. Thus, in Homeric Greece, Laertes and 
 Peleus have to give up their chieftainship when old age 
 comes on. And we may reasonably suppose that such 
 personal superiority, especially military capacity, was in an 
 indefinite number of cases the origin of new chieftainship. 
 Tacitus tells us that among the Germans the leader in war 
 was chosen for his valour ; and we cannot doubt that this 
 was frequently the case in primitive communities, or that a 
 successful war chief would frequently retain his chieftainship 
 after the war was over. Other superiorities, besides martial 
 valour or skill, have also to be taken into account ; e.g. the 
 supposed possession of peculiar divine favour, or means of 
 influencing the gods — the " medicine -man" of a tribe, as 
 Spencer says, is in a favourable position for rising to chief- 
 tainship. The story of Numa, in early Eoman history, 
 suggests a rise of this kind. 
 
 On the whole, then, I think we must suppose the process 
 of development by which permanent hereditary kingship came 
 to be established, to have been one in which this principle 
 of selecting the strongest or wisest — wherever vigorous or 
 skilful leadership was felt to be specially necessary — com- 
 bined and conflicted, in various ways, with the tendency to 
 recognise the son as the natural successor to the father, 
 which is likely to have been strong where male descent 
 definitely determined succession to private property. There 
 is no reason to regard the father's power, in the patriarchal 
 family, as the original type of political power ; but doubt- 
 less the firm establishment of the patriarchal type of family 
 contributed importantly to the stability and strength of 
 tribal headship. 
 
LECTURE IV 
 
 SUMMARY OF THEORY OF ORIGIN 
 TRANSITION FROM PRIMITIVE KINGSHIP 
 
 § 1. In my last Lecture I laid before you the results at which 
 I have arrived, after studying the evidence for and against 
 the Patriarchal Theory of the origin of political society. 
 Briefly summed up they are these : — 
 
 1. It is an undeniable and important truth that the 
 political communities of those Indo- Germanic nations with 
 whom we are specially concerned are, in the first stage in 
 which history leads us to conceive them, found to be 
 organised in groups based on real or assumed kinship ; 
 at least the core or nucleus of the community is so organised, 
 though round this nucleus there may be a large accretion of 
 other elements.^ 
 
 2. I think, however, that such a community is rather to 
 be regarded as an aggregation of houses or " clans," each in- 
 cluding several families, than an aggregation of families under 
 the despotic control of the eldest male ascendant, as Maine 
 suggests. That is, the divisions between the Gentes, in the 
 earliest state of things that ancient law leads us to conceive, 
 are more marked than the divisions between the families 
 within each Gens. In Germany, and probably in Italy and 
 Greece also, we have to suppose the tribe distributed primi- 
 
 ^ It must always be recognised that though kinship is the ideal bond, the 
 need or convenience of union, especially for war, is, to an extent not now 
 traceable, the actual bond. And though doubtless in early times the groups 
 that thus become welded into one are mostly kin before the amalgamation — 
 as Rome and Latins — still we must admit an indefinite number of cases in 
 which alien gi'oups were absorbed. This Maine notices, but does not perhaps 
 emphasise enough. 
 
 57 
 
58 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 tively in groups of kinsmen, holding and cultivating land 
 largely in common : both in Eome and Athens we see such 
 groups — gentes or r^evr] — based at least on the idea of kin- 
 ship, and internally united by a common worship, a certain 
 degree of obedience to a common chieftain, mutual rights of 
 succession to property, and reciprocal obligations of help in 
 distress, defence and redress in quarrel. These latter ties 
 no doubt were stronger among members of the same family, 
 or near kinsmen within the larger group ; but still they 
 effectively bound together the whole Gens and made 
 the most marked line of division that which separated 
 Gentes. 
 
 3. I do not however think that we can regard the 
 chieftainship of the gens as normally derived from the 
 domestic control of the Patriarch of the patriarchal family, 
 transmitted to the eldest son of the eldest line as the family 
 expands into the clan. For I do not think we can assume 
 this patriarchal form of the family to have continuously 
 existed through primitive ages : since M'Lennan and others 
 have shown the widespread existence — in very different 
 races and regions, not excluding Indo-Germans — of either 
 polyandry or the uncertain and transient marriage relations 
 implied in the customary tracing of kinship through females 
 only. And the kind of family which zoological analogies 
 suggest as primeval, — based on sexual jealousy and physi- 
 cal force, with the strongest male ruling and guarding his 
 females and their young — does not help us to explain what 
 specially requires explanation in the organisation of the 
 clan, namely, the obedience of many grown men to one man 
 not physically stronger than they. Even in the cases in 
 which the patriarchal family may have been established, 
 and have then expanded into the clan, it does not seem that 
 the rather artificial and refined idea of " son representing 
 father," is sufficient to explain how hereditary chieftainship 
 becomes established in a group into which this family 
 expands. Especially as in the groups of this kind which we 
 know as parts of States more advanced in civilisation, there 
 is certainly no transmission of quasi -paternal authority 
 
IV SUMMARY OF THEORY OF ORIGIN 59 
 
 to the man placed at the head of affairs ; he is manager, not 
 patriarch. 
 
 I admit that the estabhshment of the patriarchal family 
 within the clan — as I conceive it — was doubtless an im- 
 portant factor in rendering chieftainship hereditary. The 
 chief would aim at handing down his position like his 
 property, and it would seem natural to others that he should 
 do this ; if he had a likely son they would acquiesce ; and 
 the chieftainship would become elective within the family — 
 somewhat as we find it in the Irish clans. But it does 
 not in any way follow that the power of the chieftain was a 
 complete continuation of the " patria potestas " : and though 
 we may reasonably conceive the chief of the Gens as manager 
 of whatever property was held in common, we have no 
 reason to conceive him as having absolute control over it, or 
 over the other members of the Gens. 
 
 This view will I think be confirmed, if we consider 
 more closely what the functions of the chief or king must 
 have been at the earliest stage in the social development 
 of the peoples that we are considering. Apart from the 
 management of common property, and putting any supposed 
 relation to the Divinity out of account, these functions must 
 have been mainly strategic and judicial. The chief has not 
 to legislate : since, in this stage of development, law exists 
 only in the state of custom which no individual or combina- 
 tion of individuals has any definite authority to alter : and 
 what in later times are distinguished as internal executive 
 functions must be supposed to have been very rudimentary 
 in the beginnings of political development. The tribe or 
 clan requires a leader in war, and a judge in peace : — 
 but, as Maine ^ holds, the preserved traces of earliest 
 law and legal ceremony show the judge's ordinary work 
 to have been a kind of arbitration : he has to decide 
 the disputes between families that are voluntarily brought 
 before him, and especially to bring blood-feuds to a peaceful 
 termination. Now it is obvious that very different qualities 
 are required for strategic and judicial functions respectively. 
 
 ^ Aiicient Law, ch. x. 
 
6o DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 The best judge would ordinarily be an old man, skilled in the 
 customs of the tribe, but he would not be most fit for leader 
 in war. So far, therefore, as chieftainship was determined by 
 efficiency, we should expect the two functions often to fall 
 apart. And in fact, as Mr. Tylor^ says, "in barbarous 
 countries the tribe-chief and the war-chief may be found 
 side by side " : though doubtless, " when the power of the 
 bow and spear once asserts itself, it is apt to grow further." 
 
 § 2. Leaving these speculations, let us return to the 
 " primitive polity," which, with the qualifications I have 
 given, I think we may accept as giving a general type of 
 government — allowing for large variations in different times 
 and districts — which belongs to the " tribal condition " of 
 Greeks, Eomans, and Germans in the earliest stage in which 
 history throws any light on it. The streams of political 
 development are thus, as I said, tolerably close together at 
 the point to which we trace each back. We have now to 
 follow their divergent courses. 
 
 But before beginning the development of Greek polity, 
 with which we shall be mainly concerned in this and the 
 five following lectures, I should like to point out a hypo- 
 thetical advantage and an actual disadvantage of study- 
 ing the phenomena of political development in Greece, as 
 compared with studying them in the history of modern 
 states. The advantage is that there are so many more 
 instances to generalise from, if we only knew them. Here 
 I may remind you that we have to think not only of Greece 
 proper ; for Greek immigrants, at an early stage of Greek 
 civilisation, filled the isles of the Aegean including the large 
 island of Crete, and the west coast of Asia Minor, with 
 small independent communities, which became city-states 
 as civilisation went on ; then later Greek colonisation still 
 further extended this type of polity, carrying it up the 
 coasts of the Adriatic and making Southern Italy a " Magna 
 Graecia," spreading over the greater part of Sicily, extending 
 northward to the Crimea, eastward along the coast of the 
 Euxine, southward to Libya, westward even to far Marseilles. 
 
 1 See Tylor, Anthropology , ch. xvi. p. 431. 
 
IV TRANSITION FROM PRIMITIVE KINGSHIP 6i 
 
 It is easy to see that there were thus brought into being 
 independent city-states in hundreds, a comparison of whose 
 polities would have afforded a rich field for induction. 
 But, unfortunately, our knowledge of most instances is 
 extremely meagre and fragmentary. The only constitutions 
 that we know with anything like fulness are those of 
 Sparta and Athens. In other cases, I think the best that 
 we can say is that we probably know the general character 
 of the most important constitutional changes ; but in many 
 cases we cannot say even this. 
 
 Owing to this, I think only a few broad generalisations 
 can be confidently made with regard to the changes in the 
 forms of government of Greek city-states generally. And 
 an important question then arises how far we can generalise 
 from Sparta and Athens taken as types. I think that, as 
 regards early history, we may do this to some extent, taking 
 Sparta as a type of a community formed by superimposing 
 a conquering tribe on a conquered community, the con- 
 querors becoming a ruling class monopolising political 
 rights ; and Attica as a type of a community " integrated " 
 as it passes out of the tribal condition into that of a 
 city-state, without any such traceable effect of conquest. 
 
 Again, I think we may regard Athens as a representative 
 type to an important extent of Greek democracy in the 
 fifth and fourth centuries B.C. ; partly through the influence 
 of natural imitation, in consequence of the leading position 
 rapidly taken by Athens after the expulsion of the tyrants 
 at the end of the sixth century (510 B.C.), and especially 
 after the successful resistance of Athens to the Persian 
 invasions in the first quarter of the fifth century. On the 
 other hand, we have to bear in mind the quasi-metropolitan 
 position of Athens, derived from her maritime empire, 
 which makes her, so far, unlike other cities. The splendour 
 of Athens was largely due to her imperial position ; and the 
 fulness of her political life was at once stimulated by the 
 task of ruling her empire, and financially sustained by the 
 contributions of the subject cities. But, allowing for this, 
 it is, as I remarked before, at any rate probable that the 
 
62 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 Greek states that moved towards democracy in the fifth 
 and fourth centuries were powerfully influenced by the 
 example of Athens, and had a tendency to copy her institu- 
 tions. It would, however, be a fundamental mistake to 
 assume similarly that Sparta was a type of Greek oligarchies. 
 The Spartan constitution must be regarded as almost sui 
 generis, and though the Spartans support oligarchies else- 
 where against the drift to democracy, they do not support 
 constitutions of which their own is a type. 
 
 § 3. Let us now observe the movement as regards the 
 head chieftainship or kingship of the tribe in the early 
 stage of the races we are examining. 
 
 As the "primitive polity" has a threefold division of 
 functions among king or head chief, subordinate chiefs, and 
 assembly of freemen, it is natural to conceive that the three 
 kinds of government, popularly distinguished in Greek thought 
 of the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. as monarchy, oligarchy 
 or aristocracy, democracy, come from the preponderance 
 at different times of one or other of these elements, and 
 it is natural to suppose that they preponderated successively 
 — one, few, and many ; kingship becoming oppressive and 
 causing a movement against it which threw power into 
 the hands of subordinate chiefs or nobles; and this govern- 
 ment of the few becoming oppressive in its turn, and thus 
 causing a change to more democratic conditions. 
 
 And this is, in fact, the view of the natural order of 
 constitutions taken by Polybius, the historian of the second 
 century B.C., who saw the establishment of Eoman dominion 
 over Greece, and thus is, among the Greek writers personally 
 interested in free Greece, the one who had his attention 
 specially directed to Eome. He saw the first subjection of 
 Greece by Eome (146 B.C.); and previously to this had 
 lived in exile seventeen years in Italy. Thus — unlike 
 Aristotle, of whose view I shall speak later — his generalisa- 
 tions as to the development of polity are naturally formed 
 on the basis of the experience of Eome, now dominant, as 
 well as of Greece. According to the generalisations of 
 Polybius, polity is to be conceived as passing naturally 
 
IV TRANSITION FROM PRIMITIVE KINGSHIP 63 
 
 through the following stages : — Monarchy, through the vices 
 to which it tempts, degenerates into tyranny. Then, the 
 luxury and insolent immorality of the tyrant leading to 
 scandal and hatred, there follows aristocracy. This in its 
 turn degenerates into oligarchy as the ruling class takes 
 partly to money-getting, partly to insolent debauchery, and 
 becomes in both ways oppressive. Then, the masses being 
 stirred by this oppression to resistance and retaliation, there 
 follows democracy ; which, when Demos in his turn becomes 
 insolent and lawless, turns to ochlocracy till the people again 
 find their master in a monarch, and the round begins again. 
 
 Now, as regards the earlier stages, especially the position 
 of the tyrant between the legitimate king and aristocracy, 
 this scheme certainly seems — as Polybius expressly says — 
 to suit the history of Eome. Through all the uncertainties 
 of tradition we seem to discern clearly that the later king- 
 ship in Rome was more masterful and oppressive than the 
 earlier ; and after kings are got rid of they do not come 
 back. The popular memory of hate and aversion that the 
 violent end of the monarchy leaves behind is successfully 
 kept alive by the patricians who succeed to rule ; the word 
 " king," as Mommsen says, seems to have acted on a Roman 
 populace like the word " popery "on an English populace. 
 So long as the Roman state remains really a city-state, there 
 is no more monarchy ; it is not till Rome has expanded into 
 a country-state, with an empire subject to it, that monarchy 
 comes in again, as an apparently indispensable organ for 
 maintaining the coherence of this great structure. 
 
 And we hear of one or two instances of similarly violent 
 transitions in Greece, one of which, no doubt, specially influ- 
 enced Polybius and probably, taken together with Rome, 
 led him to the generalisation above given. This is the 
 tradition in Achaea — the strip of country in the north of the 
 Peloponnese, which is so obscure in the brilliant period of 
 Greek city-states and becomes so important later, in the 
 third century, as the nucleus of the Achaean League. We 
 find Achaeans at the beginning of Greek history, in Homer, 
 as the common name for Greeks, and Achaeans at the end 
 
64 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 (Achaia in the New Testament), but hardly hear of them in 
 the middle ! Well, Polybius ^ tells us that kingship ended 
 in Achaea, because the people were displeased with the sons 
 of the last king "for ruling not according to law, but 
 despotically," and so changed the government to a demo- 
 cracy (et? hr)^oKpaTiav). What importance is to be attached to 
 this statement as an apparent exception to the general rule 
 that when monarchy was put down oligarchical governments 
 follow, I will consider presently. I now only mention 
 it as an instance of violent transition on account of the 
 tyrannical aggravation of kingly rule. 
 
 We hear of one or two other instances of similar violent 
 transition.^ But on the whole, though the imperfections of 
 our knowledge render it difficult to speak confidently, we 
 must, I think, regard them as exceptions. Certainly in 
 Athens, Thebes,^ and Argos * the reduction of royal power is 
 represented as peaceful ; and I think we may infer it as 
 having been normally peaceful, or, at any rate, not due to 
 violent reaction against despotism where the government 
 remains in the royal house after the transition to oligarchy. 
 Of this there are several instances known to us. Compare 
 the famous oligarchy of the Bacchiads at Corinth, the 
 Basilids at Ephesus and Erythrae in Asia Minor, the 
 Penthilids at Mitylene in Lesbos, the Aleuads at Larissa 
 in Thessaly ; in all these cases, when life-long monarchy 
 has come to an end, the chief offices of government appear 
 to be still confined to the royal house.^ Contrast with 
 this the expulsion of the Tarquins at Eome. The difference 
 obviously means a comparatively peaceful transition to 
 oligarchy. 
 
 I think, then, that we may infer from our evidence 
 that the transition to oligarchy in Greece was more often 
 
 1 Polyb. Hist. ii. 41. 
 
 ^ Samos, Plut. Qu. Gr. cli. 57 ; perliaps Megara, Paus. i. ch. xliii. 3 ; and 
 Arcadia, Paus. viii. ch. v. 13, tliough the extent and nature of the power of 
 these "Kings of Arcadia" is very dubious. 
 
 3 Paus. IX. ch. V. 16. "* Paus. ii. ch. xix. 2. 
 
 ^ Using the term royal house in an enlarged sense. The Bacchiads were 
 a large clan of over 200. 
 
IV TRANSITION FROM PRIMITIVE KINGSHIP 65 
 
 gradual, and without any great shock of revolutionary 
 violence. And, in fact, from the time that we first hear 
 of Greek polity, the old-fashioned monarchy — the monarchy 
 of the primitive polity, with functions limited by law or 
 custom, and customarily shared with council and assembly 
 — this monarchy appears to be gradually declining in 
 relative prestige. We see this decline in Homer, as we 
 pass from the Iliad to the Odyssey ; where, as I have said, 
 it is even marked by the use of the title " Basileus," which 
 in the Iliad is, I think, always appropriated to the head 
 of a demos or his sons ; ^ but when we come to the Odyssey, 
 " basileus " is " chief " rather than king. This is shown 
 early in the poem, in the passage already referred to, where 
 Telemachus says there are many chiefs (ffao-ckrje^) of the 
 Achaeans in Ithaca, though, as afterwards appears, the 
 island has only one city, and its inhabitants form one 
 " demos " with one assembly. And again, when Odysseus 
 in his travels is thrown on the shore of pleasant Scheria, 
 where the noble Phaeacians dwell in what is manifestly 
 represented as an ideal and happy condition, we find, from 
 the statement of the head-chief Alcinous, that there are 
 " twelve glorious chiefs (^acnXrj€<;) who rule among the 
 people, and he is the thirteenth." ^ It is evident that 
 monarchy is moving downwards towards oligarchy.^ 
 
 Still, though there is comparatively little evidence 
 anywhere in Greece that the transition to oligarchy was 
 due to a movement against an oppressive extension of 
 monarchical power, monarchical despotism has an im- 
 portant place in the development of Greek polity; but it 
 comes after oligarchy, not before it, and is, in all the cases 
 
 ^ Lecture 11. p. 34. 
 
 ^ Od. viii. 391. The ^aaiXTJes in Phaeacia are clearly under-kings ruling 
 separate districts, a certain amount of integration having taken place : Kara 
 87J1J.0V implies this. 
 
 ^ The transition seems to have been (a) sometimes to a single /SaaiXeiJy 
 generally elective for a year with reduced — chiefly sacrificial — functions (cf. 
 Ar. Pol. iii. 9, 8), and (&) sometimes to boards of ^aa-iXels. Compare Kyme 
 (Plut. Qu. Gr. 2, p. 360), Elis (Cauer^ 253), Mitylene (Cauer^ 428). I do not 
 think the ^acnXaes at Elis were limited, as Gilbert says {Griech. Staatsalt. 
 § 19, p. 100), to priestly functions. 
 
 F 
 
66 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 actually known to us, irregular, unconstitutional despotism. 
 It will be convenient to call this by the Greek name 
 "Tyrannis." Its nature, causes, and development I shall 
 consider more fully in a later lecture. At present I have 
 only referred to it to make clear the very important differ- 
 ence between the evolution of Greek and Eoman polity 
 respectively ; that, speaking broadly, the place of despotic 
 monarchy is in the Greek order of development, not between 
 the old monarchy restrained by custom and oligarchy, but 
 between oligarchy and democracy. The Tyrannus is not, as 
 at Eome, a primitive monarch using his power oppressively 
 beyond the limits of old law and custom, but an ambitious 
 leader who wrests monarchical power from oppressive 
 oligarchs by the aid of popular support. 
 
 § 4. We may complete our general view of the manner 
 in which the three lines of development — Greek, Eoman, 
 German — diverge by noticing the striking difference be- 
 tween Greece and Germany. 
 
 In early German history the movement is, as we have 
 seen, towards kingship. The German tribes appear on the 
 scene, in Caesar, largely without the institution, but it appears 
 to be gradually adopted everywhere ; and when once adopted 
 it has remarkable stability, as it lasts on through medieval 
 and modern history. In Greece, on the other hand, almost 
 the only traceable movement is the other way : between the 
 age of Homer and the earliest period really historical, 
 kingship in Greece proper has in most States changed into 
 a form of oligarchy ; — one of the few exceptions being 
 Sparta, where, as I have said, primitive institutions were 
 artificially preserved ; but even here kings are reduced to 
 little more than hereditary commanders-in-chief. What is 
 the explanation of this ? 
 
 Partly, no doubt, the Germans are in an earlier stage of 
 development ; partly, however, we have to refer it to the 
 fact that the process of civilisation that was going on in 
 Greece tended towards the development of small compact 
 states ; which ultimately, in the most advanced communities, 
 have a definitely urban character, the ideas of " city " and 
 
IV TRANSITION FROM PRIMITIVE KINGSHIP 67 
 
 "state" coming to be blended in a single notion. Whereas, 
 when the Germans began gradually to grow more civilised 
 through contact with the Eoman Empire, the idea of a 
 civilised polity with which they thus became familiar was that 
 of a State extending over a large area of territory, includ- 
 ing municipalities as a subordinate element of a coherent 
 political order; and during the centuries of dissolution and 
 reconstruction, in which the conquered and semi-barbarised 
 fragments of the empire were growing into orderly and 
 coherent nations, this idea of a " country-state " governed 
 their development. 
 
 The important effects of the distinction between town 
 and country, as elements of the modern state, are familiar 
 to us all ; but we do not always reflect on the profound 
 historical significance of the distinction. While the history 
 of civilisation in ancient Europe is the history of a social 
 life that had its focus always in the town, from which 
 " civility " dimly radiated into the country, the history of 
 modern Europe through the Middle Ages and the Eenais- 
 sance shows us this civilisation modified by the habits of a 
 conquering race, who were distinguished by their fondness 
 for country life, and who retained this characteristic long 
 after they had become civilised. 
 
 Hence it is one of the most essential differences between 
 Greek politics and modern European politics — a difference 
 from which many others flow — that, in the most civilised 
 period of Greek history, at any rate up to the time of 
 the Macedonian predominance, the political ideal of the 
 most highly civilised Greeks was essentially a city-state. 
 A Greek of this period was of course familiar with bar- 
 barian communities, notably the huge Persian monarchy, in 
 which one government ruled over large countries ; but yet he 
 could hardly conceive of a high degree of political organisa- 
 tion being attained by a community whose political life did 
 not centre in a single town.^ He had, indeed, a sentiment 
 
 ^ Though Sparta was in a certain sense not a town, but an "agglutination 
 of five adjacent villages," it had the political characteristics of a town — 
 common assembly and close intercourse — in a peculiarly high degree. 
 
68 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 of nationality extending beyond the limits of his city : he 
 recognised ties that bound him as a Dorian, say, to other 
 Dorians, as a Hellene to other Hellenes ; but these sentiments 
 were usually feeble in comparison with the patriotism that 
 glowed in a good citizen for his own city. They prompted 
 him to combine with other Hellenes in religious ceremonials 
 and celebrations, and to aid them in war against foreign foes, 
 — perhaps to form leagues, designed to be permanent, for 
 military defence ; — but they did not usually dispose him to 
 form such a political union as would involve the sacrifice of 
 the autonomy of his own city. The apparent exceptions to 
 this general statement, though very extensive, are mostly 
 either found among Greeks who are behind the leading 
 states in political and social development, or they are 
 cases of hard fact conflicting with an ideal still cherished. 
 On the one hand, as Freeman says,^ " the robbers of 
 Aetolia, the respectable but obscure townships of the 
 Achaian shore, and some other of the less advanced and 
 less important members of the Hellenic body" — Acar- 
 nanians, Phokians, and others, "possessed, as far back as 
 we can trace their history, some germs of a polity which 
 may fairly entitle them to rank among Federal common- 
 wealths." On the other hand, Greek history shows us 
 many cities, sharing the full stream of Greek civilisation, 
 that submit to the rule of other cities ; but the submission is 
 mostly reluctant, and involves a sense of inferiority. Of 
 civilised Greeks, in the palmy days of Greece, it is generally 
 true that, however conscious an individual may be of wider 
 circles of nationality, his city is the one political whole of 
 which he permanently and strongly feels himself a part ; 
 and though this city may be in fact dependent on Athens 
 or Sparta, its independence is the ideal condition after 
 which he aspires. 
 
 This view of the political ideal of Greece finds emphatic 
 
 expression in the writings of the philosophers Plato and 
 
 Aristotle. However much these two great thinkers may 
 
 disagree, they agree in taking as an ideal political com- 
 
 ^ History of Federal Government, chap. ii. p. 16 (2nd edition). 
 
IV TRANSITION FROM PRIMITIVE KINGSHIP 69 
 
 munity a single city, together with the country required to 
 supply the material needs of its inhabitants ; they cannot 
 conceive a free civilised community, if really well governed, 
 to be organised on a larger scale. 
 
 We may distinguish different causes that combined to 
 produce this effect. 
 
 1. The primary cause of the growth of the town, as dis- 
 tinct from the village, is of course economic ; it consists in 
 the extension of exchange rendering convenient a larger 
 aggregation of persons engaged in trade or manufactures in 
 adjacent buildings. But 
 
 2. The opportunities that the town affords for more 
 habitual and varied communication of experience and thought, 
 and for gratification of common sentiments by art, social 
 expansion, and organised ceremonial, tend to make urban 
 civilisation far outstrip rural, especially before the discovery 
 of printing. Thus civilised life seemed to the Greek to be 
 necessarily connected with cities, where there was a market- 
 place for daily meeting, ornamental temples and porticoes, 
 theatres for music or recitation, gymnasia for athletic exer- 
 cises, etc. 
 
 But all this is only part of the required explanation. 
 Civilisation has all over the world developed in towns ; the 
 peculiarity of Greece is that they were independent towns 
 with vigorous and intense national life. I have, however, 
 already drawn attention to the physical conditions which 
 had at least an important share in causing this independence ; 
 namely the configuration of Greece, which at once separates 
 by land and affords easy means of communication by sea : so 
 that the more advanced Greek tribes acquired a blending of 
 those habits of independence as regards outsiders, of mutual 
 dependence and es'prit de corps within the community, that 
 we find among mountaineers, with the awakened intellect 
 and varied experiences of a seafaring people. 
 
 3. Assuming this independence, we may note, as a third 
 important reason for the Greek tendency to associate high 
 political development with urban life, the large amount of 
 protection which the walled town gave against hostile attack. 
 
70 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 This made city life not only more delightful and elevated 
 than village life, but safer. Villagers, if they could not hold 
 their own against an invading enemy in the field, had to fly 
 to trackless mountain coverts, or huddle wretchedly into 
 little strongholds where their normal life could not be 
 carried on ; but city life could go on at Athens during the 
 Peloponnesian war with full and vigorous pulsation — how- 
 ever disagreeable it might be to see the Lacedaemonians cut- 
 ting down one's barley and fruit trees, and to have to turn 
 out on cold nights to do garrison duty.-^ 
 
 Then, as gradually there formed itself in the Greek mind 
 the conception of the State as the whole of which all the 
 individual citizens were parts, to whose interests the 
 interests of any individual might be legitimately sacrificed, 
 and to whose will, as expressed in its constitution and laws, 
 the wills of all officials from highest to lowest were subordi- 
 nate, — the city came at the same time to be conceived as the 
 necessary outward framew^ork of this inner political order. 
 A larger State seemed to be incapable of furnishing the 
 means for effective performance of civic functions, for how 
 in such a State could the citizens meet in one assembly and 
 receive announcements from one herald " not being a 
 stentor " ? and how could they have the knowledge of each 
 other's characters, necessary for determining questions of 
 justice and distributing offices of state according to desert ? ^ 
 
 Thus, while the material unity of the town, and the con- 
 centration of life which it causes, assists the development of 
 the conception of the State and the habits and patriotic 
 sentiment attached to it, so, on the other hand, the develop- 
 ment of political life thus inseparably connected with town 
 life, completes and fixes the Greek notion of the city com- 
 munity — i.e. a community inhabiting a district with a city 
 for centre — as the highest and ultimate form of human 
 association. 
 
 ^ It is to be observed, however, that this walling round of whole large 
 towns only becomes general gradually, e.q.^ even Athens has only its Acropolis 
 fortified under the Pisistratids. 
 
 2 Aristotle, Pol. iv. (vii.) iv. 
 
IV TRANSITION FROM PRIMITIVE KINGSHIP Ji 
 
 § 5. The process of transition from the village to the town, 
 and from small towns to larger, was often, we may note, semi- 
 compulsory, — e.g., it appears so in Athens and in Eome so 
 far as we can dimly discern it through the mists of legend, — 
 and we may conjecture that the process was powerfully pro- 
 moted by the ambition of primitive kings whose dignity and 
 wealth were enhanced by the result. At the same time it is, 
 I think, to this development of civilised life in small separate 
 communities tending to become city-states, that the transition 
 from kingship and the further series of stages through which 
 the political institutions of Greece passed is largely to be 
 attributed. While kingship spreads and develops among 
 the Germanic tribes, during the first few centuries in which 
 they are known to us, largely, it would seem, from the 
 value that it is felt to have as the bond and symbol of 
 national unity, so, on the other hand, the smallness and 
 concentrated residence of the Hellenic communities appears 
 to have rendered the bond superfluous and the symbol 
 unimpressive. 
 
 This is substantially Grote's -^ explanation of the origin 
 of the oligarchy in Greece. As he says : — when the personal 
 deficiencies of the hereditary king came to be felt, " there 
 was nothing in the circumstances of the community which 
 rendered the maintenance of such a dignity necessary 
 for visible and effective union; in a single city and a 
 small circumjacent community, collective deliberation and 
 general rules, with temporary and responsible, magistrates, 
 were practicable without difficulty." Thus . . . "the 
 inferior chiefs who had originally served as council to 
 the king, found it possible to supersede him and to alternate 
 the functions of administration among themselves ; retaining 
 probably the occasional convocation of the general assembly 
 as it had existed before, and with as little practical efficacy. 
 Such was in substance the character of that mutation which 
 occurred generally throughout the Grecian States, with the 
 exception of Sparta ; kingship was abolished, and an oli- 
 garchy took its place — a council deliberating collectively, 
 
 ^ See History of Greece, Part ii. chap. ix. 
 
72 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 deciding general matters by the majority of voices, and 
 selecting some individuals of their own body as temporary 
 and accountable administrators. It was always an oligarchy 
 which arose on the defeasance of the heroic kingdom ; the 
 age of democratical movement was yet far distant, and the 
 condition of the people — the general body of freemen — was 
 not immediately altered, either for better or worse, by the 
 revolution." 
 
 As I have before said,^ I consider that Grote somewhat 
 underrates the importance of the primitive assembly ; and 
 his statement that it was " always an oligarchy " which took 
 the place of the primitive kingship is probably too broad. 
 As we saw just now, Polybius tells us that in the Achaean 
 towns the violent overthrow of the monarchy led at once to 
 democracy ; and it is easy to conceive that in small societies 
 undisturbed by conquest, and out of the main stream of 
 industrial and commercial progress, a comparative equality 
 in wealth and manner of life was maintained among the 
 citizens much longer than elsewhere, so that when the king 
 was superseded what naturally followed was a moderate 
 democracy. I conjecture that this may have been the case 
 in some parts of Arcadia also. But speaking broadly and 
 generally, it is doubtless safe to affirm that when political 
 society passed in Greece out of the stage of primitive king- 
 ship, it passed into that of primitive oligarchy. 
 
 It is to be noted that the transition took place at very 
 different times in different States. In the time of Thucy- 
 dides there are no kings left in any of the city-states that 
 are in the full current of Hellenic civilisation ; but that 
 historian speaks (I. ch. iii.) of a " king of the Thessalians " 
 in the middle of the fifth century, and we may infer from 
 Herodotus (vii. 149) that Argos had a hereditary king at 
 the time of the Persian war, whereas long before that date 
 the so-called "king" at Athens has dropped to a mere 
 elected member of a board of chief magistrates. In Corinth 
 and Chalcis, the commercial centres which sent out colonies 
 in the latter half of the eighth century, we learn that the 
 
 1 Lect. II. pp. 35, 36. 
 
IV TRANSITION FROM PRIMITIVE KINGSHIP 73 
 
 colonies were sent out by a trading oligarchy. In Athens 
 too the process, according to tradition, had begun before 
 the middle of this century. 
 
 The process in the case of Athens, where we can trace 
 the change most definitely, appears to have been very 
 gradual. First the monarchical office is shorn of a part of 
 its power by the appointment of a " polemarch " or 
 commander-in-chief distinct from the king; then a third 
 magistrate {ap^oav) is appointed — who ultimately becomes 
 the chief executive official for matters of internal govern- 
 ment — and the kingly office ceases to be hereditary : then 
 the term of office for all three is limited to ten years : then 
 the office of chief magistrate — hitherto confined to the royal 
 house — is thrown open to all the nobles {evTrarpihai) ; finally 
 (683 B.C.) executive functions are divided among nine annual 
 magistrates. Meanwhile it would seem that, as a natural 
 consequence of these changes, the council of elders, that had 
 in earlier times shared the functions of government with 
 the king, gradually increased in power. For when the chief 
 magistracy became elective, the election naturally fell to 
 this body : then, when the term of office became annual, 
 as vacancies in the council were naturally filled by 
 those who had served as magistrates, it is easy to under- 
 stand how this permanent body would tend to become 
 superior in prestige and power to the annual magistrate. 
 When this process of change is complete, we have the 
 oligarchical form of government definitely substituted for the 
 monarchical. 
 
 The nature and ultimate result of this process of 
 transition doubtless varied much in different communities ; 
 but almost everywhere kingship goes. Probably the 
 change spread from community to community largely by 
 conscious imitation ; when one city had put down its 
 king, its neighbour was moved to do the same ; probably 
 the insolence, oppression, weakness, of some kings, the ability 
 and good government of others, hastened it here, retarded it 
 there ; but the result is too general and uniform not to be 
 attributed mainly to general causes. And I think we may 
 
74 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. iv 
 
 largely attribute it to the simple conviction that as the 
 unity and order of the gradually more civilised and 
 concentrated community could be maintained without him, 
 the single li^ift-devouring king " had become a superfluous 
 burden. 
 
LECTUEE V 
 
 EAKLY OLIGARCHY IX THE GREEK CITY-STATE 
 
 In the preceding lecture we were considering the movement 
 towards oligarchy in Greece, and concentrating attention on 
 the relation of nobles to monarch. The nature of the 
 oligarchy that succeeded was, as I have said, different in 
 different cases. In some cases the main powers of govern- 
 ment were retained within the royal family or clan, until 
 the period of Tyrannis arrives. This was the case {e.g.) at 
 Corinth, where we are told that the house of the Bacchids 
 or Bacchiads ruled for ninety years — the last half of the 
 eighth and the first half of the seventh century B.C. ; a 
 yearly magistrate being chosen out of the family to fill the 
 place of the hereditary king. And, as I said before, we 
 hear of similar kingly families exercising oligarchical rule 
 in several other city-states up to the time of Tyrannis. In 
 other cases, so far as our knowledge goes, the power was 
 shared among a group of families when monarchy declined, 
 e.g. Eupatridae at Athens and Hippobotae at Chalcis and 
 Eretria in Euboea. 
 
 Let us now turn to consider what change, if any, took 
 place as regards the third governmental element in the 
 primitive polity — the assembly of the freemen in arms. 
 There is no reason to suppose that any change in power on 
 this side necessarily accompanied the reduction of monarchy. 
 Here, doubtless, as Homer would suggest, the predominance 
 of the wealthy landowners was complete in many cases 
 before kingship comes to an end : the king was only the 
 coping-stone of an oligarchical structure of society. Still it 
 is easy to understand how the abolition of monarchy would 
 
 75 
 
76 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 render the governing families even more decidedly pre- 
 dominant in this assembly, which we may suppose, with 
 Grote, to have been retained with something like its 
 primitive functions. But apart from any change in the 
 relation of king to subordinate chiefs or elders, we may 
 distinguish different causes operating to give this assembly 
 an oligarchical character — causes somewhat different in 
 different classes of states. 
 
 Before doing this it is needful to clear up a certain 
 amount of vagueness and confusion that attaches to the 
 ordinary notion of oligarchy. Oligarchy is defined by 
 Aristotle as the rule of the rich few: and doubtless in 
 times near Aristotle's the issue between oligarchy and 
 democracy might be broadly stated as the question whether 
 a rich minority should rule or the mass of free citizens. 
 But this is not the only way in which Oligarchy = Eule of 
 a minority might — or did — arise : since the whole body of 
 citizens might be a minority, even a small minority, as 
 compared with non-citizens (even excluding slaves). 
 
 This double conception of oligarchy^ may be fitly illustrated 
 from the case of the Greek state whose constitution most 
 clearly recalls the features of the earliest known period — 
 Sparta, the champion of oligarchy in Greece. We have in 
 the Spartans a body of professional warriors — Herodotus 
 reckons them at 8000 men at the time of the Persian war, 
 and Aristotle reports a tradition that they were once as 
 many as 10,000 — an invading tribe permanently fixed by 
 conquest in Sparta as owners of the land in certain parts 
 of Laconia and Messenia ; maintaining a singular system of 
 rigorous education, drill, and semi -communistic regulation, 
 with a view to the maintenance of simplicity of life and 
 martial valour and skill. They lived on the produce of lands 
 cultivated by a much larger number of serfs called " Helots " 
 — at the battle of Plataea, in the Persian war, we find seven 
 
 1 This double conception of oligarchy is overlooked by Freeman when he 
 treats the three elements of his primitive polity- 
 King "i ( Monarchical elements. 
 Council of chiefs 
 Assembly of free warriors 
 
 }( Monarchical 
 as simply equal to -| Oligarchical 
 I Democratic 
 
V EARL y OLIGARCHY IN THE GREEK CITY-STA TE 77 
 
 Helots attending on each Spartan — serfs attached to the soil, 
 but only required to supply a fixed amount of agricultural 
 produce ; and they held in political dependence the person- 
 ally free inhabitants of the rest of the territory, whom we 
 may estimate at more than three times their number. 
 
 Their original constitution was, as I have before 
 explained,-^ the "primitive polity" but slightly modified. 
 There were two kings — the cause of the duality not 
 ascertainable, but probably due to an early coalescence of 
 communities — whom we may regard as having originally 
 the functions of the Homeric kings : in the period best 
 known to us they were mainly important as hereditary 
 generals; though they retained special religious privileges 
 and conspicuous special honours, and also certain judicial 
 functions. Secondly, there was a senate of elders, composed 
 of men over sixty, elected for life by the assembly of fully 
 qualified citizens — elected by a quaint old fashion of acclama- 
 tion, estimated by officials placed so that they could not see 
 who was acclaimed. Thirdly, there was the general assembly 
 of full citizens over thirty, who had the power of electing 
 senators and high magistrates, and whose assent was required 
 in the rare event of a new law, and for the determination of 
 war and peace, and the ratification of treaties.^ This assembly 
 of full citizens may be assumed to have originally consisted 
 of the descendants of the whole conquering tribe — speaking 
 broadly : but the condition of paying the contribution 
 necessary to provide the common meals — which every 
 Spartan with full civic rights was obliged to share — ex- 
 cluded the very poor: and this exclusion grew more im- 
 portant as time went on. 
 
 I ought to mention a remarkable restriction in the power 
 of the assembly, said to have been made a century after 
 
 1 Lect. II. pp. 38, 39. 
 
 2 When Herodotus (vi. 56) tells us that the kings have the "right of 
 making war upon whatever country they please, without hindrance from 
 any other Spartans," I think he must be understood to mean not the right 
 of declaring war, but of determining the course of the campaign after the 
 declaration of war. Or Herodotus may have made a simple mistake : cf. 
 Thuc. I. XX. Cf. also Herodotus, iii. 46 ; v. 64 ; vi. 106. 
 
78 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 Lycurgiis, that " in case the people resolved on a wrong 
 course the senate with the rulers should reverse their 
 decision." ^ It has been inferred ^ that this must have re- 
 duced the decision of the assembly to a mere form : but I 
 think it evidently in no way affected their power of refusing 
 assent to what was proposed — 'preventing any proposed change 
 — it only gave an equal power of prevention to the senate. 
 
 This was the original constitution : but there was pre- 
 sently added a board of Ephors or Supervisors, elected 
 annually in some way which we do not precisely know, 
 but which, Plato says, comes near election by lot. 
 Appointed, it seems, originally for police purposes, and as 
 a check to neglect of duty or misuse of power by other 
 magistrates, these Ephors gradually increased their power 
 and became the supreme executive for domestic affairs, 
 with a considerable amount of control even in war. 
 Their power, in its nature and extent, the secrecy and 
 relentless severity with which it was exercised, and 
 its object — the maintenance of the constitution alike 
 against discontented Spartans and discontented serfs and 
 dependants — has some striking resemblance to that of the 
 Council of Ten at Venice. They could arrest and imprison 
 any Spartan — even magistrates, suspending them from their 
 functions : even the kings were bound to appear before 
 them after being three times summoned ; and they had 
 power of life and death over the serf cultivators and the 
 inhabitants of the dependent towns of Laconia. 
 
 jN'ow, in modern times, no one seems to have any doubt 
 that the Spartan government is oligarchical or aristocratic 
 (the two terms being used nearly convertibly — not dis- 
 tinguishing as Plato and Aristotle do the " government of 
 men of merit" from the "government of the few rich"). 
 But there is considerable disagreement as to the reason why 
 it is so. Is it (1) because the Spartans are few compared 
 to their many serfs and subjects ? Or is it (2) because the 
 
 1 Plut. lAfc. vi. 7. 
 
 2 See Spencer, Political Institutions, § 488 ; derived from Grote, Part ir. 
 chap. vi. Grote's view, however, is that which I have given. 
 
V EARLY OLIGARCHY IN THE GREEK CITY-STATE 79 
 
 Spartans themselves are a many governed by a few? The 
 former answer is not, I think, what a Greek would ordinarily 
 have given. The Greeks regarded the Helots as broadly 
 equivalent to the slaves in other cities, and Aristotle at 
 least in considering the political constitution of Sparta 
 ignores the non-Spartan inhabitants of Laconia altogether. 
 And if we consider merely the internal political relations of 
 the Spartan community, they present rather a doubtful and 
 changing, than a clearly oligarchical character. There may 
 have been a time at which the "real power was in the 
 hands of the senate : " ^ but in Aristotle's time it is clear 
 that the substance of power had passed into the hands 
 of the Board of Supervisors or Ephors. Aristotle speaks, 
 indeed, of the senatorship as a position of great dignity 
 and honour — " prize of merit " — but he does not describe 
 it as having more than judicial functions ; whereas he 
 speaks of the Board of Ephors as "having the decision 
 in the most important matters," and having "very great 
 and despotic power." And though Grote, taking this latter 
 view, calls the Spartan government a " close, unscrupulous, 
 and well -obeyed oligarchy," we may infer from Aristotle 
 that, in the view of Greek political thinkers, the application 
 of the term "oligarchical" to the power of Ephors over 
 Spartans would have seemed at least doubtful. The office 
 of Ephor was open to all full citizens ; the mode of election, 
 not precisely known, was certainly so far democratic that it 
 gave no advantage to wealth and social position (Aristotle 
 complains that it admitted " poor and venal " candidates) ; 
 the Board only held office for a year, and were responsible 
 like other magistrates when they laid it down. Accordingly, 
 Aristotle's view is that when the Ephors became predominant 
 " the polity gradually changed from aristocracy to demo- 
 cracy," ^ i.e. of course so far as rule over fully qualified 
 Spartan citizens is concerned. 
 
 Hence, so far as Sparta can be properly viewed as clearly 
 and permanently exemplifying the oligarchical principle, — 
 
 1 See Bluntschli, Theory of the State, Book vi. chap. xvii. 
 2 See Aristotle, Politics, 11. ch. ix. : compare also vi. (iv.) ch. ix. 
 
8o DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 and certainly, as Aristotle recognises, Spartan policy was 
 steadily on the side of oligarchy elsewhere in Greece, — it 
 must be on account of the relation of the whole body of 
 the Spartans as a ruling " few " to a very much larger 
 subject population. Erom this point of view the Ephorate 
 may doubtless be regarded as an eminently oligarchical 
 institution — I mean eminently adapted to the maintenance 
 of a ruling minority against revolutions, whether initiated 
 among their subjects or among discontented members of 
 their own body. But it is important clearly to apprehend 
 the difference between the two points of view. If we con- 
 ceive of Sparta as an oligarchy throughout its history, it is 
 not that the free warriors of Sparta lost their share of political 
 power, but that they became practically a governing few in 
 relation to their serf -cultivators and the free inhabitants 
 of the dependent towns of Laconia. It is from this point of 
 view only that Spartan rule is clearly oligarchical, at all 
 periods of its history ; though in later times the reduction 
 of the number of fully qualified citizens,^ through loss of the 
 means required as provision for the regular training, made 
 the fully qualified citizens a minority even of Spartans. 
 
 § 2. And though the Lycurgean institutions of Sparta were 
 unique, this kind of oligarchy, in which the original assembly 
 of armed freemen of a conquering tribe becomes a " few " 
 among the conquered many, is by no means unique. It is 
 clear, e.g. that the Dorians in Argos entered into a relation 
 to the conquered Achaeans closely similar to that of the 
 Dorians in Sparta ; we have the serf cultivators of the land 
 appropriated by the conquerors — only called Gymnetes 
 instead of Helots — and a similar group of dependent towns 
 or villages, whose inhabitants had civil freedom but no 
 political independence. So again, in the towns of Crete 
 we find a similar threefold structure of society ; Dorian 
 conquerors, serf-cultivators, free but dependent provincials, 
 and in Cretan institutions as in the Spartan, the assent of 
 the assembly of free warriors is required to important 
 measures ; though Aristotle tells us that in his time it had 
 ^ See Appendix, Note A. 
 
V EARLY OLIGARCHY IN THE GREEK CITY-STATE 8i 
 
 no substantial power. And it is at least not improbable 
 that in most other places Dorian conquest led to a some- 
 what similar result at first. In other parts of Greece where 
 the political society historically known to us traces its 
 origin to conquest, the result, so far as our information 
 goes, was — ultimately if not at first — a government entirely 
 in the hands of leading families, or small groups of families. 
 This seems to have been the case in Thessaly, where the power 
 in different cities seems to have been in the hands of noble 
 families tracing their descent from Heracles; also in Thebes, and 
 in Boeotia generally, where all we hear indicates oligarchical 
 rule strictly limited to a hereditary group of landowning 
 families, which seems to narrow in course of time. So among 
 the Dorians we hear of political privileges confined to 180 
 men in Epidaurus ; and we find a similar limitation in Elis. 
 
 But it is not only through conquest that this kind of 
 oligarchical position is acquired by the body that represents 
 the aggregate of free warriors of the tribe. For in the 
 Greek city-state generally citizenship depends normally on 
 inheritance ; the children of aliens born within the territory 
 remain normally aliens — they are only admitted to citizen- 
 ship by special favour, except at crises of change.^ Hence 
 any Greek community might easily become, in this sense, 
 oligarchically constituted as it grew from small beginnings 
 into a flourishing city ; the number of free non-citizens 
 attracted by its prosperity exceeding that of citizens thus 
 limited by inheritance. 
 
 I conceive that oligarchical government may often have 
 resulted in this way in the earliest stages of the history 
 of a colony. The earliest settlers would divide the land 
 they occupied for the most part into equal lots — it having 
 been on this understanding that the original settlers collected 
 together — and as the colony flourished and grew, the de- 
 scendants of these " land shareholders," ^ would keep the 
 
 ^ In this they differed, of course, from modern Europe, where the children 
 of aliens usually become citizens of the country in which they are born. 
 
 ^ ydfxopoi, or yeibfxopoL. At Syracuse and Samos they were oligarchical, not 
 at Athens. 
 
82 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 privileges of citizenship to themselves, excluding both 
 their serfs and the trading population that the prosperity 
 of the town gradually attracted : and thus the government 
 would gradually become oligarchical.^ 
 
 On the other hand where, as in Athens, the city-state 
 that we historically know was formed by "integration" — that 
 is the political coalescence of a number of smaller towns that 
 still continued to have a "separate existence — it seems that 
 this coalescence itself must have tended to throw the share 
 of power originally exercised by the citizens en masse into the 
 hands of the larger proprietors — the men of old family and 
 wealth — who actually took up their abode in the central 
 town. They alone would remain practically citizens in the 
 full political sense, for eVen though the smaller proprietors 
 were not formally excluded from the assemblies, they would 
 seldom be able to attend. 
 
 Thus, as I conceive, in more than one way, without any 
 formal change in the political position of the old assembly 
 of freemen, a concentration of political power in the hands 
 of a comparatively small minority of the free members of 
 the community might be gradually brought about. 
 
 § 3. There is, however, a further important cause — trace- 
 able in some cases, and which we may assume to be tolerably 
 widespread — tending to produce an economic condition favour- 
 able to oligarchy, namely, growing inequality of property. 
 There is, I think, sufficient evidence of an indirect kind, to 
 make it probable that in primitive Greece the tenure of land 
 was at first largely collective ; that is, with pasture common, 
 and allotments of land approximately equal, appropriated 
 
 ^ The Transvaal is an instance in our own time of the develojjment of an 
 oligarchy in this way. 
 
 I suppose that a process of this kind had taken place at Apollonia on the 
 Ionian sea, and at Thera, where Aristotle [Pol. vi. (iv.) iv. 9 (1290 b)) tells 
 us that there was "a minority of simply free" — not necessarily wealthy — 
 "citizens ruling a majority," the civic honours being "engrossed by the 
 families which claimed a pre-eminent nobility, as having been the original 
 founders of the colonies, although they Avere numerically few and their subjects 
 were many." As I go on to explain, the number of the ruling class would 
 usually tend to be diminished by the loss of land — and consequently of full 
 civic rights — on the part of many of the descendants of the original citizens. 
 
V EARLY OLIGARCHY IN THE GREEK CITY-STATE 83 
 
 perhaps at first temporarily to ordinary members of the 
 community: larger portions being specially appropriated to 
 chiefs and sometimes to braves who have rendered special 
 service to the community. 
 
 As regards pasture, the fact that values in early times 
 were measured in cattle seems decisive ; since it is difficult 
 to see how cattle could be a convenient medium of exchange 
 unless pasture was in common. As regards arable land, a 
 change seems to be taking place during the period of com- 
 position of the Homeric poems. In the Iliad, while we read 
 of common arable land, it is noteworthy that none of the 
 terms applied to a rich man imply landownership ; the 
 rich man is either described as a " man of many flocks and 
 herds " or as a " man of much gold " and " much copper." 
 And even in the Odyssey the term applied to a large land- 
 owner, "man of many lots," carries us back to the time 
 when portions of land — doubtless roughly equal — were 
 distributed by lot among heads of families. Again, the 
 old institution of common meals, at Sparta and elsewhere, 
 is probably a survival from collective ownership of land by 
 a group of real or fictitious kinsmen. 
 
 Even after complete appropriation had come in, we find 
 from Aristotle that there were several states, e.g. Sparta, in 
 which, for some time longer, the buying and selling of the 
 lots of land was either altogether prohibited or discouraged — 
 only permitted under exceptional circumstances. Still, even 
 the division of inheritances in families of varying size would 
 tend to inequality ; and the tendency would operate more 
 rapidly when sale and purchase was permitted. 
 
 Now we may fairly infer from Solon's constitution — 
 taken in connexion with the analogies of Eome and 
 Germany — that for some time after private property in 
 land had been fully developed civic privileges and burdens 
 remained connected with the ownership of land of a certain 
 value. The landless freeman who had to work as a hired 
 labourer would be relieved of the duty of fighting at his 
 own charge, and would therefore probably lose his place in 
 the assembly of freemen. The political power of large 
 
84 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 landowners would, in any case, tend to increase as their 
 possessions increased. And this increase of power would be 
 specially marked so long as the importance of cavalry was 
 predominant in war; which was the case in early times — 
 not of course equally everywhere, still widely/ The infantry 
 seems to have long remained an unorganised rabble, except 
 at Sparta. Obviously, only the comparatively rich could 
 afford cavalry equipment for themselves and their followers. 
 Thus we understand how, as Aristotle tells us, the first 
 " polity " or constitutional government in Greece, which was 
 formed after the era of the kings, was substantially under the 
 control of the " knights " ^ — landowners who formed troops 
 of cavalry at their own charges. I conceive, however, that 
 the smaller landowners, who would serve as foot-soldiers at 
 their own charges, — called at Athens " land-shareholders " 
 {rfewfiopoL) in distinction to the gentry of old family {evirarpi- 
 Bat) — would retain a place in the assembly of free citizens 
 and the right to take a part in elections, though the offices 
 and the substantial power would be concentrated in the 
 hands of the gentry. 
 
 This constitution Aristotle does not consider to have 
 been at first oligarchical in the bad sense of the term : i.e. 
 not an oppressive or selfish rule of the few. And, though 
 I do not regard Aristotle as an important authority on a 
 period so early, I think it probable that this was largely 
 true : that these early governments of few may be fairly 
 called " natural oligarchies," meaning that power was left 
 in the hands of the Few, because the Many were not fit for 
 it and did not seem to themselves to be so. 
 
 I conceive, then, that oligarchical conditions come to 
 predominate not in one simple way, but in a variety of ways ; 
 partly through the concentration of power in the hands of 
 the old council, raised in power by the substitution of an 
 
 ^ I may observe that as the art of war progressed the preponderance was 
 transferred from the knights to the heavy-armed infantry, and at a later 
 stage again, old-fashioned soldiers were startled to find battles lost and won 
 by light-armed troops : and Aristotle says that the development of this form 
 of warfare gave an important gain to the poorer citizens in civil dissensions. 
 
 2 Pol. VI. (IV.) 13. See Appendix, Note B. 
 
V EARLY OLIGARCHY IN THE GREEK CITY-STATE 85 
 
 annual magistrate or board of magistrates for the hereditary 
 king ; partly through the limitation of the numbers of fully 
 qualified citizens {a) by the exclusion of the conquered in 
 states founded on conquest and of later immigrants in 
 colonies and (&) by the effect of inequality of wealth and 
 of political "integration" combined in states like Attica. 
 Oligarchy is thus established in the states taking the lead 
 in civilisation as early as the eighth century. As I said, in 
 the period of colonisation which begins soon after the middle 
 of the eighth century — in which Corinth and Chalcis in 
 Euboea take a leading part — these commercial states have 
 already passed into the stage of oligarchy. But it begins 
 at different times in different communities and lasts for 
 varying periods. Then in the seventh century the move- 
 ment against oligarchy begins — but in parts of Greece 
 where agricultural industry predominates and conservative 
 habits hold sway, it lasts longer, so far as we know un- 
 disturbed. 
 
 Frequently, however, in the first stage of the struggle 
 for power between the oligarchs and the masses, the defeat 
 of the oligarchs does not result in the establishment of 
 democratic institutions : Demos in this first stage is unripe 
 for rule. The mass of free citizens have not sufficient 
 diffused intelligence and faculty of combination to grasp 
 collectively the reins of power: these are seized by an 
 ambitious individual who has taken the lead of the move- 
 ment with an eye to his own aggrandisement. Thus we 
 have Tyrannis, a reversion to monarchy, but to monarchy 
 in almost all cases of an irregular unconstitutional kind, 
 universally regarded as a breach of right and established 
 order, even when the monarch governed with mildness and 
 good effect. 
 
LECTUKE VI 
 
 TYRANNIS 
 
 § 1. I HAVE before spoken of the phenomenon of "Tyrannis" 
 — the tendency, at a certain stage or stages of the develop- 
 ment of Greek polity, for the government to fall into the 
 hands of a single individual, who — in all the particular 
 cases of lifelong despotism historically known to us — obtains 
 power in a violent and irregular way ; and who sometimes 
 succeeds not only in holding it for life, but also in trans- 
 mitting it at his death to some member of his family. 
 This, as I said, is a feature which distinguishes the develop- 
 ment of Greek from that of Eoman polity ; and it is also 
 interesting to the student of Political Science, from the 
 remarkable parallel which we find to it in the political 
 development of the medieval city-community in Italy — to 
 which I shall draw attention later. 
 
 I use the Greek name " Tyrannis," because, on the one 
 hand, the English word " Tyranny " suggests too decidedly 
 that the Tyrannus used his power in a practically oppressive, 
 arbitrary, and cruel manner. This was often so, but not 
 always, and the Greek word, as used by writers of the fifth 
 and fourth centuries, does not imply it. Thus Aristotle, 
 writing in the last quarter of the fourth century, tells us that 
 there are two methods by which a "Tyrannus" might preserve 
 his power : the repressive, which was the method adopted 
 by the majority, and the conciliatory ; but he imphes that 
 a Tyrannus who governed with mildness or moderation 
 would be none the less a Tyrannus. On the other hand, 
 the word " despot " does not sufficiently suggest the lawless 
 and irregular character of the power. And this is a 
 
 86 
 
V 
 
 ^ or 
 LECT. VI TYRANNIS 87 
 
 fundamentally important characteristic, at least down to 
 the time of the Macedonian predominance. The Greek 
 Tyrannis, in almost every case known to us in free Greece, 
 begins in a cowp d'6tat, and remains irregular and lawless. 
 "VYe know of no case in which an independent Greek state 
 ever " ofifers a crown," unless the acceptance of Gelon as 
 king of Syracuse, after the victory over the Carthaginians, 
 is an exception : and even this is not quite clear. 
 
 In considering the extent and conditions of Tyrannis, we 
 are led to distinguish between an earlier and a later period. 
 The earlier period favourable to Tyrannis begins, so far as 
 we know, in the first half of the seventh century, in Greece 
 proper ; and in this region and in the islands and Asiatic 
 cities (leaving out of account the eastern cities that 
 have fallen under Persian rule) has, speaking broadly, 
 come to an end before the end of the sixth century. It 
 must be understood that it begins and ends at different 
 times in different cities : and that in no particular case is 
 this irregular despotism, even when it becomes hereditary, 
 very long-lived. According to Aristotle the duration of 
 the Tyrannis of Sicyon — a hundred years — is the longest. 
 But the "Age of the Tyrants " in these regions may be taken 
 to be about 6 5 to 5 B.C. Then follows the time of vigorous 
 and brilliant republican life which begins with the Persian 
 wars and lasts till the predominance of Macedonia. This 
 is the period which we chiefly read about when we read 
 Greek history : it is the time when the political conscious- 
 ness of the Greek city-state is at its height, and republican 
 sentiment, whether oligarchical or democratic, is on the 
 whole too strong to admit of a lapse into despotism. 
 
 In the younger colonies of Sicily and Southern Italy, 
 the period of the earlier Tyrannis begins and ends at a later 
 date. It does not begin till the end of the seventh century, 
 and its most brilliant time in Sicily is the first quarter of 
 the fifth century — not long before the general putting down 
 of Tyranni, 467 B.C. 
 
 Then what we may distinguish as the later Tyrannis 
 begins soon after 400 B.C. : but, at least until the time 
 
88 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 of the Macedonian supremacy, it does not spread to any 
 extent comparable to the earlier. The distinction between 
 the two is not to be pressed too far, as if there were a 
 sharp division between the types belonging to the two 
 periods respectively ; but, speaking broadly, the causes of 
 the two are different. The causes of the earlier Tyrannis 
 belong more to the inner political development of the 
 Greek city-states : it is usually rendered possible — the 
 opportunity is given — by the first imperfect movements 
 towards popular government. The causes of the later 
 Tyrannis appear to lie more outside the general develop- 
 ment of the polity ; political disorder is always a favouring 
 condition, but an important cause is the growing tendency 
 to employ mercenaries. 
 
 Another kind of cause, which is operating in certain 
 parts at the end of the first as well as in the second period, 
 is the relation of weak states to powerful neighbours. An 
 individual ruler is found by the powerful neighbour to be 
 the most convenient way of governing what is practically 
 a dependency. From this cause, for example, Tyrannis 
 became prevalent in Ionia on the coast of Asia-Minor at 
 the end of the sixth century B.C., — and in Greece generally 
 after the conquest of Persia by Alexander, and before the 
 development of Federalism, as manifested in the growth 
 of the Achaean League, largely brings it to an end. 
 
 Speaking broadly, we may say then that the earlier 
 Tyrannis occurs before the citizens of Greek city- 
 states have arrived at full political consciousness. The 
 later revives, after the habits of peaceful industry have 
 diminished the ordinary citizen's power and habit of self- 
 defence. And accordingly, as Aristotle explains, the person 
 who becomes Tyrannus is a different type in each case. In 
 the earlier times, before rhetoric was developed, the man who 
 acquired the position of leader of the popular movement 
 was usually a man of military ability ; so that the transition 
 from demagogue to Tyrannus was easy, and the Tyrannus 
 of the first period was for the most part developed out of a 
 demagogue. The later demagogue, on the other hand, was 
 
VI ' TYRANNIS 89 
 
 ordinarily not a fighting man, and therefore not qualified for 
 a successful cowp d'4tat : and the later Demos, having arrived 
 at political maturity, was generally less easy to deceive. 
 But though more difficult to wheedle it might be coerced ; 
 and the development of the mercenary system of fighting 
 offered dangerous opportunities for coercion by daring 
 adventurers with military ability, especially when faction 
 and bad government had weakened the attachment to 
 constitutional government and the efiective coherence of 
 the community. 
 
 § 2. The causes of the movement against early oligarchy 
 seem to be : — 
 
 1. Oppression of smaller cultivators by men of wealth, 
 partly by encroachments on common rights, as, e.g., in 
 Megara, where Theagenes the tyrant killed the cattle of the 
 rich that were encroaching on common land ;^ partly again — 
 as civilisation goes on — through increasing recourse on the 
 part of the smaller cultivators to the dangerous resource of 
 borrowing from the rich, so that the rich oppress the poor 
 as creditors under the old severe laws against debt — as in 
 Eome later. 
 
 2. In commercial towns the growth of new wealth outside 
 the closed group of old families, which raised up a growing 
 force of new claimants for full citizenship.^ 
 
 3. The awakenment of mind due to trade and communica- 
 tion ; and concomitant decaying of old simplicity of manners 
 and old moral restraints, leading to more offensive luxury 
 and insolence of the rich.^ 
 
 To these we may add: 4. Distrust of unwritten law, 
 which gradually came to be used more and more as an 
 instrument of oppression by the rich who administered it. 
 
 This last, and partly the first, is sometimes met by 
 the introduction of written codes. The seventh century is 
 the period in which the codifier or legislator appears for the 
 
 1 Aristot. Pol. VII. (v.) ch. v. 9 (1309 a). 
 
 - See Appendix, Note C, on Early Oligarchy and Trade. 
 
 3 Aristotle {Pol. vii. (v.) x. 19 (1311 b.)) tells us that the Penthalidae 
 were put down at Mitylene in Lesbos, because they went about the streets 
 beating honest citizens with bludgeons. 
 
90 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 first time in history as distinct from legend, as well as 
 the Tyrannus. He appears first in the colonies ; Zaleucus at 
 Locri (about 662 B.C.) is mentioned as the first author of 
 written legislation/ and Charondas of Catana was not 
 much later. In both cases it seems a probable conjecture 
 that the codifier saved the state from Tyrannis. About 
 the same time as Charondas, or earlier, we have Dracon's 
 legislation at Athens, and, a little later, Solon's. The latter, 
 however, did not prevent Tyrannis.^ We do not know 
 how far Zaleucus or Charondas or Dracon had political 
 power entrusted to them. Solon, we know, had, and he 
 accordingly may be classed as an example of the Aesymnete. 
 The Aesymnete was, as Aristotle says,^ a despot or dictator — 
 that is he had unlimited power — but elected according to law ; 
 elected either for life or for a term of years — Solon only 
 for one year — or to do a particular work. The instance 
 Aristotle gives is Pittacus of Mitylene, who was appointed 
 for ten years (590-580 B.C.). Aristotle says that he was 
 the framer of a code, but not of a polity {e<yh6To vofjbwv 
 Brjficovpyo^ aX)C ov TroXtreta?, Pol. II. xii. 13). Probably 
 he made the oligarchy tranquil and tolerable ; at any 
 rate we hear of no Tyrannus afterwards.* But this 
 regularly appointed dictator is exceptional ; the far more 
 ordinary phenomenon is Tyrannis. 
 
 § 3. In considering the conditions of the earlier Tyrannis 
 we must bear in mind the great inequality in development 
 
 1 Strabo, vi. 259, 
 
 2 Solon does not " save Athens from tyranny," but gives a better prepara- 
 tion for working democracy ; the forms of the Solonian constitution seem to 
 have, lasted through the Tyrannis. 
 
 ^ Arist. Fol. III. ch. xiv. 9 (1285 a) ; vi. (iv.) ch. x. 2 (1295 a). 
 
 ^ But Pittacus comes after a Tyrannis ; indeed he put down a Tyrannus, 
 Melanclirus (612-609 B.C. circa). Nic. Damasc. fr. 54 (Ap. Miiller, vol. iii. 
 pp. 388, 9) mentions as an Aesymnete Epimenides at Miletus, who was 
 appointed in consequence of the murder of one Neleid by another who 
 made himself Tyrannus ; the rule of the Neleids was thus put down. This 
 is not obviously due to a movement against oligarchy. Also Gilbert {Griech. 
 Staatsalt. vol. ii. p. 141) remarks that Aristarchus at Ephesus — at the time 
 of the revolt of the Persians against the Medes — is rather an Aesymnete than 
 a Tyrannus. On the whole, there is inadequate evidence that the Aesymnete 
 results from a struggle of Demos against Oligarchy. 
 
VI TYRANNIS 91 
 
 of different parts of Greece, owing to which, even within the 
 little area of Greece and her colonies, different independent 
 communities were at the same time at different stages of 
 development. 
 
 Civilisation, carrying with it tendencies to political change, 
 came to Greece from the sea ; so that the inland populations 
 tended to fall behind the maritime in political development. 
 And it came from the South and East. Egypt and Phoenicia, 
 especially Phoenicia, handed on the torch of civilisation to 
 Greece; so that the inhabitants of the North-west were 
 behind those of the East and South — even the maritime 
 parts — except so far as they received colonies from Corinth, 
 whose exceptional position enabled her to trade equally with 
 East and West alike. This inequality of development is 
 strikingly shown by the different times at which different 
 parts of Greece adopted city life. This is a point of much 
 importance. The type of political society, of which the 
 political and social life is concentrated in a central city, 
 became, as we have seen, as civilisation in Greece developed, 
 the recognised prevalent type of a civilised polity. But we 
 must not suppose that the small independent communities 
 of Greece assumed this form at anything like the same time 
 everywhere. It is true, on the one hand, that it is coming 
 in in Homer. In the Odyssey the chiefs and nobles of 
 Ithaca, the class from which Penelope's suitors came, are 
 conceived by the ninth- or eighth-century poet as all living 
 in the single city of the island, and the foreign suitors are 
 described as " those from other cities." ^ On the other hand, 
 Thucydides ^ tells us that in his times, the latter half of the 
 fifth century, the western Locrians, Aetolians, Acarnanians, 
 and other inhabitants of the north-western continent of 
 Greece lived still in the old-fashioned way in small unfortified 
 villages, and consequently retained the old habit of carrying 
 arms, which had been long ago abandoned in the growing 
 security of the more civilised parts of Greece. In a great 
 part of Arcadia, again, the " canton," or group of villages, 
 remained the normal political unit until a comparatively late 
 
 1 Od. xxiv. 418. 2 xhuc. i. 5. 
 
92 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 period : and it is interesting to trace in the case of Arcadia — 
 of which more is known than of the western parts of which 
 Thucydides speaks — the gradual process by which the urban 
 type of polity invades the mountainous district. The most 
 striking events in this process are the cases of what the 
 Greeks called " synoikism " — a conception and fact quite 
 peculiar to Greek history — the deliberate and artificial 
 transformation of a number of villages into a town ; of which 
 a conspicuous and well-known case is the foundation in the 
 fourth century of a "great city," Megalopolis, in the south 
 of Arcadia, as a rival to and bulwark against Sparta, founded 
 at the instigation of the Thebans after the battle of Leuctra. 
 
 It must be observed that this synoikism has a double 
 aspect, political and material. It is essentially and primarily 
 a political change, but it carries with it a material change 
 to a varying extent. What is determined and enforced is 
 that the political life of a group of villages, which have 
 hitherto been largely independent, is to be carried on in 
 either a new city or an old city enlarged ; that the govern- 
 ing assemblies and councils should meet in this city, and 
 the governing individuals permanently reside there. As to 
 the rest of the villagers, it would be usually left open to 
 them to reside in their old dwellings if they like ; but if 
 they do, they must be content to be governed from the 
 central town. 
 
 In earlier times the process of " integrating " the canton 
 — the political community scattered in villages and small 
 towns, with considerable local independence — into a city-state 
 was doubtless less artificial and more gradual : but in one 
 form or another it is going on all through Greek history. 
 
 I noticed in the last lecture how, in the earlier time, this 
 change first tends in the direction of oligarchy so far as the 
 constitution of the assembly is concerned. The rich men 
 congregate in the new or enlarged city, the poor cannot 
 afford to leave their farms ; so that even without any formal 
 deprival of old constitutional rights, the latter would cease 
 practically to attend the general assembly of freemen. At 
 the same time, the same concentration, as the industrial and 
 
VI TYRANNIS 93 
 
 commercial element of the cities grows, naturally favours 
 the movement towards democracy, of which the earlier stage 
 gives the opportunity for Tyrannis. 
 
 But this growth of industrial elements, again, would take 
 place very differently in different states, even where the 
 government was centralised. In preponderantly agricultural 
 districts, where the mobility of mind due to easy com- 
 munication with foreigners, the variety of industry that 
 trade brings with it, and the accompanying enlargement of 
 desires are not found, the old " natural oligarchy " of rich 
 landowners would naturally remain much longer; and in 
 such districts, when the time for democratic movement came, 
 the idea of Tyrannis had become abhorrent to the political 
 consciousness of Greece generally, so that this stage drops 
 out in their development. 
 
 § 4. Accordingly we cannot regard Tyrannis — even in the 
 period known as the age of the Tyrants — as a stage through 
 which the Greek polity universally or even normally passes, 
 though it is a stage very generally passed through by states 
 developing under certain conditions. Certainly there are 
 many instances of Tyrannis, and doubtless more would be 
 known to us if our information were more complete. But, 
 looking closer, we are able to distinguish, and it seems to me 
 important to distinguish, the parts of Hellas and her colonies 
 — expanded Hellas — where the conditions during a certain 
 period were favourable to Tyrannis from those where they 
 were unfavourable. 
 
 In the cities on the coast of Asia Minor, and the Sicilian 
 
 and Italian colonies, it seems very general, and in those 
 
 ' parts of old Greece that were open to the influence — at once 
 
 civilising and disturbing — of commerce. But we cannot 
 
 say this of the larger part of old Greece. 
 
 Let us glance at it. Passing over the less civilised and 
 progressive peoples of the north-west, where primitive con- 
 ditions of life and village communities went on, we find in 
 Thessaly that oligarchical conditions continue much beyond 
 the period of early Tyrannis, and when Tyrannus at length 
 comes in, it is not the demagogue Tyrannus. Then in 
 
94 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY i.ect. 
 
 Boeotia we do not hear of Tyrannis. There is a close 
 oligarchy at Thebes at the time of the Persian war, which 
 seems to be a survival of an old state of things, and when 
 the time comes in the fourth century for an effective demo- 
 cratic movement, it is too late for Tyrannis ; and probably 
 this is true of other Boeotian cities. Passing to Pelo- 
 ponnesus — in Sparta and Laconia of course there was no 
 Tyrannis : nor was there in Argos, which was saved perhaps 
 by the survival of kingship with reduced powers. Nor have 
 we any evidence of Tyrannis in Elis nor in the smaller, 
 more democratic communities of Achaea, or in the cantons 
 of mountainous Arcadia. 
 
 On the other hand, Attica and the maritime and mostly 
 commercial states of the Isthmus and Euboea — Sicyon, 
 Megara, Corinth, Chalcis — afford, from the middle of the 
 seventh century onward, famous instances of the earlier 
 Tyrannis ; and, as I said, in a period somewhat later, we find 
 it flourishing in the colonies — including the city-states of the 
 Asiatic coast formed by Greek immigration before colonisa- 
 tion proper begins. It is especially rife in the Sicilian 
 colonies, where it has a brilliant career. Colonial polity 
 was doubtless naturally more mobile,^ and perhaps also the 
 mingling of races was favourable to Tyrannis. 
 
 And this leads me to notice that in some cases, again, 
 Tyrannis seems to be excluded, even in regions where it 
 abounds, by the broadening of the basis of the oligarchy. 
 It is not an infallible remedy, but it seems, on the whole, 
 efficacious. For example, there are five cases ^ — one in 
 Asia Minor, three in Italy, one in northern Greece — in 
 which, though the government is still regarded as an 
 oligarchy, the supreme deliberative body is in number a 
 " Thousand." Considered relatively to the size of the 
 Greek city-state, and as compared, e.g., with the oligarchical 
 rule of single families, or small groups of families, this may 
 
 1 See Appendix, Note D, on Priority of Colonies in Civilisation. 
 
 2 Kyme in Aeolis, Opus and its colony Italian Locri, Rhegium, Croton. 
 There is also Colophon, but I think the evidence for the existence of a 
 formally limited political body of this kind at Colophon is not adequate. 
 
VI TYRANNIS 95 
 
 be regarded as a broad-bottomed oligarchy : and in one case 
 at least its establishment is described as an extension of 
 citizenship. Now, it is noteworthy that in three out of these 
 five cases we hear nothing of Tyrannis (though four of them 
 are in the region of Tyrannis), and in one of the remaining 
 two the Tyrannus is clearly imposed from without, as an 
 instrument of foreign rule. Accordingly, though our infor- 
 mation is very imperfect, it seems fair to assume that this 
 broad-bottomed oligarchy was less exposed to the disorders 
 that gave the opportunity to the would-be Tyrannus. 
 
 Similarly, in one or two cases where we hear of an 
 extension of political privilege leading to a governing body 
 of 600, we do not hear of Tyrannis.^ 
 
 § 5. Before leaving Tyrannis a word should be said of its 
 effects. It is difi&cult for us to judge of these, especially 
 in the earlier form, for we feel that some deduction must be 
 made from the darkly coloured accounts of the ancient 
 writers ; we have the proverbial " lion painted by the 
 man " ; we do not know the case for the other side. 
 
 It is nevertheless noteworthy that in Greece, in spite 
 of the prevalence of the Tyrannus in fact, we do not 
 hear any theoretical defence of him. For instance, we 
 do not hear that he ever posed as the defender of 
 order, or religion, or as the embodiment of the will of 
 the people and vindicator of its rights against oligarchical 
 oppression. That is a defence which modern writers have 
 given for him, but I know no Greek writer who gives 
 it : and though, as we have seen, many tyrants make 
 their way into Tyrannis through demagogy, they are not 
 usually described as even theoretically maintaining the 
 character of popular leader when they have established 
 their rule. Practically, no doubt, they do this to some 
 extent, especially the original Tyrannus ; he continues his 
 demagogy, but his successors usually assume the monarch. 
 Thus, in the case of the famous 100 years Tyrannis at 
 Sicyon, Cleisthenes is said to have crowned the man who 
 
 1 Heiaclea, Massalia (Arist. Tol. vii. (v.) vi. 3), but compare Syracuse in 
 the fourth century. 
 
96 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 decided against him as umpire in an athletic contest.^ So 
 at Athens, Pisistratus is said to have stood his trial before 
 the Areopagus. So at Corinth, again, Cypselos was noted 
 as having never had a bodyguard of spearmen during his 
 rule. But this " popularity " seems to wear out, if not in 
 the lifetime of the first Tyrannus, at any rate in that of his 
 successor — if he succeeds in making his power hereditary. 
 So that Demos often joins cordially — and sometimes with 
 passionate resentment — in the expulsion of the despot.^ 
 
 But no doubt it was chiefly the rich and well-born who 
 had cause to hate the Tyrannus. Certainly the " repressive 
 method " of despotic rule, which Aristotle characterises for 
 us, was directed chiefly against the well-to-do. The repres- 
 sion of banquets and clubs, of education, and of all sources 
 of high spirit and mutual confidence among the governed, 
 the maxim that the tyrant's subjects were to be kept " poor " 
 and " busy " — all this would practically affect the rich only ; 
 — the poor were doubtless " busy " before. This repressive 
 method was traditionally attributed to Periander of Corinth, 
 one of the most famous and powerful of the Tyranni of 
 the earlier type, and the story that Herodotus tells,^ — how 
 Periander of Corinth sent to Thrasybulus of Miletus, asking 
 counsel in the art of government : how Thrasybulus took 
 the messenger into a cornfield, talked to him about his 
 journey, and while talking lopped off the tallest ears of 
 corn, but gave no other answer : and how Periander under- 
 stood the symbolic act — this also suggests that it was 
 chiefly the " men of light and leading " that had to fear. 
 So, again, the public works by which more than one 
 Tyrannus gained fame — e.g. the building by the Pisistratids 
 of the temple of Olympian Zeus at Athens — would give 
 employment for the poor, while the taxation needed for this 
 would fall chiefly on the rich. The same may be said of 
 wars — at any rate such as the brigandage of Polycrates of 
 
 1 Arist. Fol. VIII. (v.) xii. 2. 
 
 2 See the case of Corinth (Nic. Damasc. fr. 60 (Ap. Miiller, vol. iii. p. 
 394)), Chalcis (Arist. Pol, viii. (vi.) iv). 
 
 3 V. 92. 
 
VI TYRANNIS 97 
 
 Samos — but probably the booty of successful wars would 
 generally render them popular. 
 
 On the other hand, we ought to note the success of 
 the Tyranni in raising the power and prestige of the State. 
 The Tyrannis of Sicyon seems to be its only period of great- 
 ness and — apart from party feeling — Corinthians must 
 have had some pride in Periander, and Samians in Poly crates. 
 Gelo at Syracuse, who, contemporaneously with the Persian 
 invasion of Greece, defends the cause of Hellenic culture 
 against the Carthaginians in Sicily, is a striking instance 
 of this ; after his great victory he is hardly a Tyrannus, 
 he is an accepted monarch. We must note, too, that the 
 Tyrannus often adorns his city and patronises literature 
 and art. 
 
 But probably unconstitutional rule, condemned by the 
 common moral sentiments of the more cultivated part of 
 the nation — at any rate before the period of Macedonian 
 predominance — was almost always found demoralising in 
 the long run. It is, at any rate, remarkable that though 
 Tyrannis seems to have been by no means always oppressive 
 in its method of government ; though it seems to have been 
 sometimes mild and judicious, raising the power and fame 
 of the community, prosperous in war and encouraging art 
 and learning at home : still, being always irregular and 
 lawless and introduced by violence, it was unmistakably 
 condemned and repudiated by the moral consciousness of 
 Greece. 
 
 The profound distinction drawn between monarchy on 
 the one hand and both oligarchy and democracy on the 
 other is not easily apprehended by us, studying the history 
 of Greek political struggles in the light of modern ideas : 
 we find that monarchy no doubt is introduced by cowps 
 d'Mat, but so are democracy and oligarchy continually 
 brought in by revolutions that seem no less violent and 
 lawless : especially since, in the struggle between Athens 
 and Sparta for supremacy, each of the leading States was 
 identified with one or other of the contending political 
 principles. To explain the special abhorrence of Tyrannis 
 
 H 
 
98 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 we have to bear in mind (1) that even when democracy 
 or oligarchy is initiated or aided by violence, the constitu- 
 tion actually fixed is commonly the result of some com- 
 promise agreed upon and so formally lawful ; and (2) that 
 monarchy — at least in the period before Aristotle known 
 to us from contemporary historians — never comes in in 
 any other way. Further, we have to note that in the 
 debate carried on between oligarchy and democracy there 
 were theoretical reasons on either side of undeniable force. 
 C ceteris paribus, it is obviously reasonable that the judgment 
 of the many should prevail over that of the few; cceteris 
 paribus, again, it is obviously reasonable that the judgment 
 of the wise and good should prevail, whether they be few or 
 many; and the minority of persons of wealth have at any 
 rate special opportunities — through leisure — of acquiring 
 political wisdom, and special immunities from the tempta- 
 tions that are the chief cause of ordinary crimes. But no 
 similar theoretical reason could be found, as regards the 
 human beings existing at the time when political theories 
 were framed, for making the judgment of one prevail over 
 that of his fellow-citizens generally. 
 
 The question may be asked, on what did the tyrant's 
 power, if thus generally disapproved, rest as its basis ? 
 Government normally rests on either active sympathy and 
 approval, or on habit of obedience of — if not the whole 
 community — at least a part formidable to the rest. On 
 what, then, did the tyrant's power rest ? The answer, I 
 think, is this : tyrannis generally begins with the more 
 or less avowed support of a powerful section of the citizens 
 — generally the poorer class — discontented with the actual 
 government ; but it does not need, when once established, 
 any support beyond that of a limited body of mercenaries, 
 who do not care what the tyrant does so long as he pays 
 them — the citizens generally being kept obedient through 
 habit, fear, and lack of combination. 
 
 When the period of the earlier Tyrannis is past, we 
 enter on the stage in which republican government of 
 some kind is normal, and for some time almost universal ; 
 
VI TYRANNIS 99 
 
 the prevalent political sentiment in the city-state is, as I 
 said, for a century or so, almost everywhere strong enough 
 to exclude Tyrannis. The issue accordingly lies in this 
 period between oligarchy and democracy : the general 
 characteristic of this stage of development is that there is 
 a decided drift towards democracy ; though in a minority 
 of cases oligarchy maintains itself, and in a larger number 
 there is a prolonged struggle between the Few and the 
 Many which never seems to be decisively settled, until in 
 the latter half of the fourth century the Macedonian pre- 
 dominance introduces new conditions. I am inclined to 
 conjecture that if the internal development of these states 
 had been undisturbed by their external relations, the move- 
 ment towards democracy would have been on the whole 
 more unmistakable, though it would still doubtless have 
 been less complete in some cases than in others. But the 
 predominance of Sparta — however balanced by that of 
 Athens — gave an important support to oligarchy elsewhere, 
 especially before the battle of Leuctra, 370 B.C. 
 
LECTUEE VII 
 
 GREEK DEMOCRACY 
 
 § 1. In my last lecture, after completing what I had to 
 say of the conditions of the earlier Tyrannis, I went on to 
 characterise briefly the struggle between oligarchy and 
 democracy that is going on through the most brilliant 
 period of free Greece, from the Persian War to the 
 Macedonian predominance — say 480 — 336 B.C. — one 
 and a half centuries. The general characteristic of the 
 political movement is a drift towards fully developed 
 democracy, that is from more oligarchical conditions to 
 moderate democracy, and from moderate democracy to ex- 
 treme democracy. 
 
 The drift towards democracy can, however, only be 
 traced in a broad way — it is by no means uniform or 
 steady. In a few cases oligarchy, perhaps with some 
 democratic forms — assemblies of citizens for some purposes 
 — seems to maintain itself; in more cases we hear of 
 revolutions and transient lapses into oligarchy. The 
 tendency to democracy is partly interfered with by the 
 external relations of states — e.g. the important commercial 
 centre, Corinth, seems to have been kept oligarchical almost 
 all the time after the earlier Tyrannis down to the 
 Macedonian period by the influence of Sparta. It must 
 be remembered, too, that our information is very frag- 
 mentary. Still on the whole the drift is unmistakable ; 
 of the changes that we hear of — though we cannot say 
 " vestigia nulla retrorsum " — still, many more are towards 
 democracy than from it. 
 
 And the " naturalness " — if I may so say — of democracy 
 
 lOO 
 
LECT. VII GREEK DEMOCRACY loi 
 
 is made to appear by the political enthusiasm that accom- 
 panies it, and by the fact that a national movement is so 
 often also a democratic movement. We may illustrate this 
 by the brief brilliant period of democracy at Thebes, in 
 the first part of the fourth century. It is a movement at 
 once democratic and national which carries Thebes to the 
 commanding position in which it is placed by the battle 
 of Leuctra in 370 B.C. — the decisive battle which put 
 an end to Spartan predominance and unique military 
 prestige. Another example may be found in the develop- 
 ment of Arcadia immediately after. When, under the 
 influence of the Theban leaders during the period of Theban 
 predominance, Arcadia gave itself a new federal constitution, 
 and at the same time formed, as I have noticed,^ a new 
 " great city " out of a number of villages for more efficient 
 resistance to Sparta, the government of the new Pan- 
 Arcadian union was, as a matter of course, democratic in 
 form ; the governing body included all of fighting age. 
 So again, when after 334 B.C. Alexander frees the Ionian 
 cities from Persian domination, he is described as giving 
 them back democracy as a matter of course. 
 
 And this drift is clear from Aristotle, and the reason 
 he gives for it is noteworthy : " Now that cities have grown 
 so large, it is not easy to establish any other form of govern- 
 ment." ^ Further, the drift is seen in another way, in the 
 fact that democracy tended to become more democratic up 
 to Aristotle's time. What he describes — very unfavourably 
 — as the extreme form of democracy, in which the decrees 
 of the popular assembly are above the law, was, he tells us, 
 chronologically developed last. We may note, too, that 
 Aristotle says that democracies are more "secure and 
 permanent" than oligarchies,^ and again that oligarchy and 
 Tyrannis are the most shortlived among forms of govern- 
 ment.* I take this to refer to the oligarchies of this later 
 period, and to indicate that the reactions to oligarchy in 
 this period of drift to democracy were mostly transient. 
 
 1 See Lect. vi. p. 92. a Pol. iii. xv. 
 
 ' Fol. VI. (IV.) xi. * Pol. VIII. (v.) xii. 
 
102 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 § 2. I should now like to give a general characterisation 
 of the types of oligarchy and democracy in this period. 
 But as regards oligarchy we lack the evidence. We know 
 something of the Spartan constitution; but I may again 
 remind you that the Spartan polity was sui generis, a quite 
 peculiar survival, not, in the Greek view, clearly an oli- 
 garchy — at any rate not a representative oligarchy. 
 All I shall do, therefore, is to notice briefly what Aristotle, 
 in the Politics, gives as a summary classification of oligarchies, 
 arranging them in order of intensity.^ 
 
 The mildest kind of oligarchy — sometimes called timo- 
 cracy — was one in which there were public assemblies and 
 numerous juries or courts of law, as in a democracy, only 
 limited to persons possessing a certain property qualification, 
 high enough to keep these functions in the hands of a 
 minority of the citizens, but not so high as to make the 
 minority a small one. The higher the property qualification, 
 the more intensely oligarchical, of course, the form of govern- 
 ment became : but this was not the only way of intensifying 
 oligarchy. Sometimes the function of deliberating and 
 deciding important matters of state — war and peace and 
 treaties, legislation, election and supervision of the executive 
 — which were exercised in a democracy by the general 
 assembly of citizens, was confined, wholly or in part, to a 
 small elected body ; sometimes, again, the oligarchical char- 
 acter of the constitution was intensified by the vacancies in 
 such a deliberative body being filled up by cooptation; 
 sometimes, finally, the membership of such a body was made 
 hereditary and thus the extremest form of oligarchy attained. 
 
 Election to the Magistracies in an oligarchy was similarly 
 limited by a property qualification ; and the magistrates were 
 usually, altogether or for the most part, appointed by 
 suffrage — not by lot ; only in the intensest form of oligarchy 
 were the magistracies made hereditary in certain families. 
 
 ^ Pol. VI. (iv.) vi. See also Pol. vii. (v.) vii. Aristotle's classification of 
 different kinds of oligarchy would be of more use if lie had had — as he 
 appears not to have had — any conception of historical development rendering 
 the kinds of oligarchy prevalent at one period different from those prevalent 
 at another. 
 
VII GREEK DEMOCRACY 103 
 
 Sometimes, we gather, the right of voting in the assemblies 
 was formally wider than it was practically: it being an 
 oligarchical artifice to secure practically a preponderance 
 of the wealthier by the apparently severe method of fining 
 them for non-attendance. It was characteristic of oligarchy, 
 too, to have a small council for the initiation of measures 
 to be passed by the deliberative body, as contrasted, e.g., 
 with the large " Boule " of 500 at Athens. 
 
 § 3. Let us pass to consider democracy, of which, from the 
 literary splendour that surrounds Athens, we know more. 
 In the case of democracy, too, the question is simplified by 
 the express statement of Aristotle that the drift towards 
 democracy was a drift towards fully developed or extreme 
 democracy.^ And of this we may take the Athenian 
 constitution of the fourth century as a type. 
 
 In the fifth century the process of development is going 
 on at Athens ; in the fourth we have the finished result. 
 This appears clearly from the recently discovered mono- 
 graph, professedly by Aristotle, and clearly of his age, on the 
 constitution of Athens. The writer regards the constitu- 
 tion as established in 403 B.C. as identical with that under 
 which he was living at the end of the third quarter of the 
 fourth century. He reckons it as the eleventh ; and of the 
 
 1 Aristotle distinguishes four kinds of democracy, and his order of merit 
 is so far the reversal of the chronological order that the best is undoubtedly 
 the oldest (cf. Fol. vii. (vi.) iv.) and the worst undoubtedly the latest 
 (cf. Pol. VI. (iv.) vi.). Probably the intermediate in demerit are also 
 regarded by him as intermediate in time ; but they are rather vaguely 
 conceived. His more historical idea of the best is clearly near the 
 Solonian : in which all free citizens had the right to elect the officers and 
 to call them to account and to judge {alpelaBoLL rds a.px^'^ >^^^ eidijveiv Kal 
 SLKa^eiv), but the magistracies were limited by property qualifications ; and 
 where the people being mainly agricultural were too busy to have many 
 assemblies, and practically too busy to serve on juries, there being no pay- 
 ment for either. 
 
 Aristotle mentions as an instance of the best kind of democracy the 
 Mantinean. This would long remain purely agricultural, and Herodotus 
 and Polybius'both testify to its high reputation. Here, as Aristotle main- 
 tains, the assembly did not elect to the offices ; this was done by a body 
 elected from all the citizens (tlv^s alperol e/c irdvTuy). What other democracies 
 of this old type there were, we do not know. The language of Polybius 
 suggests that Achaea may have furnished examples of such. 
 
I04 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 preceding ten stages no less than six belong to the fifth 
 century. The century opens with the moderate democracy 
 of Cleisthenes ; but the Athenian democracy is not finally 
 delivered from " oligarchical tutelage " ^ by the reforms of 
 Cleisthenes. Indeed it is, I think, a fairly trustworthy 
 historical generalisation that " oligarchical tutelage " — the 
 influence of the minority in any society, who along with 
 wealth inherit culture and traditions of political experience 
 and practice — "oligarchical tutelage" dies hard. And 
 certainly this was so here. The council of Areopagus, 
 according to the writer of the Athenian Constitution, re- 
 covered power — without any formal vote — through its 
 services at the crisis of the Persian war, and held it for 
 seventeen years, till 462 B.C. And that this was pre- 
 ponderantly oligarchical is evident from the attack made on 
 it by Ephialtes and Pericles.^ From that time till the end 
 of the century the movement towards full democracy is 
 rapid, but it is not complete till nearly all the civil 
 magistracies are practically open to all citizens, and the 
 attendance at the council and assembly, as well as in 
 the law courts paid. This final result is begun in the 
 brilliant age of Pericles — to whom the payment of jurymen 
 is due : but the payment for attendance at the assembly 
 is after his time. In short, I repeat the fifth century is 
 a period of continual change, and not till after the brief 
 and infamous interlude of oligarchy at the end of the 
 Peloponnesian war, does the democracy become stable, at the 
 beginning of the fourth century. ^ 
 
 ^ The phrase is Mr. Wards Fowler's, but the view he takes is different 
 from the above. See his City State of Greece and Rome, p. 161. 
 
 2 This council was filled up by the nine chief magistrates for each year. 
 
 As regards these, too, there was gradual progress. They were elected, 
 not appointed by lot, for twenty-four years after the expulsion of the Tyrants 
 in 512 B.C. ; then, for a period unknown, appointed by lot out of a number 
 previously selected by each of the ten tribes of Cleisthenes ; then, finally, 
 this previous selection was made by lot. When the change took place we 
 do not know ; but we do know that only after 457 B.C. was the archonship 
 open to any but Pentakosiomedimni and Knights — the two highest property- 
 classes ; in 457 it was opened to the third class. But doubtless for some 
 time later the competition was limited by their being unpaid. 
 
VII GREEK DEMOCRACY 105 
 
 We do not know exactly how far the Athenian institu- 
 tions were representative, but we may infer from Aristotle 
 that the following characteristics were found widely in 
 Greek democracy of the fourth century. There was first an 
 assembly, open to all full citizens of a certain age, actually 
 governing and not merely electing and controlling governors. 
 At Athens, in this supreme governing assembly, which met 
 regularly forty times a year, besides extraordinary assem- 
 blies on emergencies, all the most important governmental 
 decisions, including the management of the whole foreign 
 policy of the state, and the initiation of legislation, were 
 determined ; and any citizen who had done nothing worthy 
 of disfranchisement might speak. We learn from Aristotle 
 that while it was the general characteristic of democracy in 
 the small states of Greece to have as supreme organ of 
 government such a deliberative body to which all citizens 
 were admitted, there were considerable differences in the 
 extent to which this body actually governed. In the most 
 moderate form of democracy its function was to elect the 
 magistrates, examine the accounts, and decide questions of 
 peace, war, and alliance, leaving other matters of administra- 
 tion to the elected magistrates and council. It is clear 
 however, as I have said, that the tendency of development 
 up to his time was towards the more extreme form of 
 democracy, in which the final decision of all important public 
 matters is habitually claimed by this supreme assembly. 
 
 The powers of the magistrates, and of the governing 
 council (" Boule ") that prepared business for the assembly, 
 were quite subordinated in the Athenian form of democracy. 
 Accordingly the principle that "one man is as good as 
 another " was applied to these offices, in the form of election 
 by lot from among all citizens of blameless life who applied : 
 except in the case of offices for which special qualifications 
 were obviously required, such as military offices and the 
 most important financial ones. To these it would have 
 been too dangerous to apply the lot. 
 
 That poor men might really be able to take part in the 
 business of government, attendance at the Athenian council 
 
lo6 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 was paid, and ultimately at the assembly too; and this 
 seems to have been regarded as necessary for securing the 
 real effectiveness of the democracy. Though it must be 
 borne in mind that the Demos at Athens and elsewhere, 
 having a basis of slavery beneath it, did not include the 
 greater part of that class of manual labourers which tends 
 to preponderate in a democratically governed modern state, 
 still it is evident from the complaints of Aristotle, not to 
 speak of Aristophanes, that it included a mass of persons 
 — small traders, artisans, etc. — whose poverty rendered them 
 incapable of adequate leisure for the effective performance 
 of public functions. Unpaid attendance was liable to be 
 scanty attendance, and then the assembly might fall under 
 the control of the rich and their dependents. 
 
 Administration of justice was also popular, and was also 
 paid for similar reasons. At Athens, actions were decided 
 by large popular juries of varying size, the normal number 
 — at least for important suits — being 501. 
 
 There is another important characteristic of Athenian 
 democracy when fully developed. The popular assembly 
 did not itself legislate, or avowedly and regularly allow 
 its decrees to override the law; though this no doubt 
 occurred in fact too often under the influence of popular 
 passion. The actual business of legislation was given to a 
 numerous committee of law-makers (we hear of 1000 and 
 500) selected from the jurors for the year. This was not, 
 of course, a committee of experts; still, such a body of 
 sworn jurors would work under a much stronger sense 
 of responsibility than the ordinary assembly.^ And the 
 
 ^ Note the care with which in the fourth century the work of legislation 
 was divided between iKK\7)(ria and vofxod^rai. 1. At the first assembly in 
 each new year the established code was voted on {^mxetpoTovia vbjxwv) — after a 
 debate in which every citizen could propose changes in the law — chapter by 
 chapter. 2. If the vote on any chapter was negatived, vofiodirat taken from 
 the heliasts (jurors) were appointed in the fourth ordinary iKKX-qcia. Mean- 
 while the proposer of a change had to exhibit in public the old law and the 
 proposed ncAv law side by side, by the statues of the Eponymi; and also to 
 give copies of them to the ypafifiareijs, who read them in public at the inter- 
 vening meetings ; and at the fourth the people, of course with a "probouleuma," 
 decided the number of vo/Modirai, the time allowed them, the pay, and named 
 
VII GREEK DEMOCRACY 107 
 
 sovereign assembly endeavoured to protect itself against 
 illegality in its decrees by rendering the proposer of such 
 a decree liable to a criminal process.^ This protection 
 seems in fact to have been very imperfect ; sovereign 
 Demos did not always observe his self-imposed restraints. 
 It is clear that in speaking of that extreme democracy, 
 which is hardly a constitution at all but a mob-tyranny, 
 Aristotle has the Athens of his own time partly in view. 
 But the elaborate character of the restraints at least shows 
 that the need of excluding mere mob-tyranny was fully 
 recognised in the political consciousness of Athens. 
 
 § 4, I have now completed a brief sketch, following the 
 order of development, of the chief forms of government in 
 the Greek city-states up to the time of Macedonian pre- 
 dominance, and briefly discussed the causes that tended to 
 bring them into being, and the conditions favourable to 
 their existence, at different stages of development. There is, 
 however, one question of much interest which I have as 
 yet only dealt with in one case — that of Tyrannis — namely, 
 how did these different types work in practice ? How far did 
 they maintain the well-being of the community governed ? 
 Especially we are disposed to ask this with regard to 
 democracy, towards which, as I said, there is a natural drift 
 in the fourth century B.C., just as there is a similar drift 
 now in the West -European states. But this question, 
 owing to the scantiness of our information, is still more 
 difficult to answer satisfactorily than the questions we have 
 been discussing. 
 
 We may, however, throw some light on it by examining 
 the political views and theories of the eminent thinkers, 
 chiefly of the fourth century, whose writings have come 
 down to us. The most important are the views of Plato 
 and Aristotle ^ ; but I shall also refer to Plato's master, 
 
 five ffw-fiyopoL to defend the existing law. 3. Then with a probouleuma of 
 the council on each proposal of change, the vofiodirai decided finally whether 
 the law ought to be altered. 
 
 1 Compare Lect. XII. pp. 175, 6. 
 
 2 We may say, generally, that in tracing the process of the development of 
 the modern State we find the influence of Greek politics on modern primarily 
 
io8 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 Socrates, whose life ends just at the beginning of the fourth 
 century; to Xenophon, Plato's fellow - disciple ; and to 
 Isocrates the rhetorician, whose work shows a certain 
 rivalry and antagonism to that of Plato which Aristotle 
 carries on ; and whose political view, therefore — since he 
 had some claim to be a political thinker as well as a 
 rhetorician — it is all the more interesting to compare with 
 theirs. 
 
 Both Plato and Aristotle gave much thought to the 
 definition and classification of forms of government. Plato's 
 dialogues present us with two different schemes of classifica- 
 tion : one in the Republic, the other in a later dialogue, the 
 Statesman. From this latter Aristotle's classification is in 
 the main derived; and I will begin with Aristotle's, because, 
 while admitting his great debt to Plato, one cannot doubt 
 that he far surpassed him in the extent of his knowledge of 
 political facts. 
 
 The classification adopted by Aristotle is a sixfold one. 
 It is based on a double principle of division, so that it may be 
 conceived as a pair of similarly divided triads. He takes 
 the obvious and already current threefold distinction ex- 
 pressed by the terms Monarchy, Aristocracy or Oligarchy, 
 and Democracy : but he combines this with a principle 
 derived from Socrates — which like other characteristic 
 doctrines of that sage was a truism in theory and unhappily 
 somewhat of a paradox in practice — the principle that the 
 
 in the region of thought or ideas, while Rome is the main ancient source of 
 modern political facts. And in the region of thought Aristotle's Politics has 
 a special interest, as being the manual from which modern thought in its first 
 stage learnt its first lesson in the scientific analysis and classification of 
 political phenomena. This lesson is liable to be misinterpreted if we do not, 
 in studying it, bear in mind that it is framed in view of the variety of con- 
 stitutions actually developed in Greek city-states, and is primarily applicable 
 to these. But if we bear this in mind : if we remember also that it was 
 written just after the close of the period of real independence of Greek city- 
 states — after the battle of Chaeronea, and the Congress of Corinth, and 
 while Alexander was conquering Asia — and if we consider not merely the 
 general scheme of classification, but the particulars and comments with which 
 Aristotle fills it up, it certainly yields the most important insight into the 
 evolution of the city-states — and especially the later stage of this evolution — 
 as judged by a most penetrating and disengaged intellect. 
 
VII GREEK DEMOCRACY 109 
 
 true ruler is one who seeks to promote not his own interest, 
 but the interest of the ruled. Combining the distinction 
 thus introduced with the older threefold classification, we 
 get three " correct " constitutions in which the governing in- 
 dividual or body is truly governing, in the Socratic sense : — 
 (1) Kingdom = the rule of an individual of pre-eminent 
 merit; (2) Aristocracy = the rule of the persons best quali- 
 fied to rule ; and (3) what he in a special sense calls 
 " Polity " or " Constitutional Government," in which supreme 
 power is in the hands of the majority of citizens, but with a 
 constitution so arranged as to avoid the defects of mob-rule. 
 Parallel to these we have three perverted forms : — (1) 
 Tyrannis =r the selfish rule of one; (2) Oligarchy = the 
 selfish rule of a wealthy minority; (3) Democracy = the 
 selfish rule of the comparatively unpropertied many. 
 
 The symmetry of the scheme obviously requires that 
 Aristocracy — like Oligarchy, which is the perversion of 
 Aristocracy — should be the government of the Many by the 
 Few. And Plato certainly held that the government by 
 persons properly qualified to govern — the essential meaning 
 of Aristocracy for both him and Aristotle — must be the 
 government of a few. " It is impossible," he says, " that 
 the multitude in a State can attain the political art ; in a 
 city of 1000 men you would hardly find 50 good draught- 
 players, much less 50 experts in statesmanship."^ And 
 Aristotle, in the passage in which he introduces his scheme, 
 gives this as the received view of Aristocracy, i.e. it resembles 
 oligarchy in its numerical relations, though only numerically.^ 
 
 It is, however, to be observed that after careful discus- 
 sion Aristotle decides ^ that the mass of ordinary citizens, if 
 properly trained, may be collectively wiser than the few, 
 and so collectively better qualified for the highest deliberative 
 or judicial work, though not individually for executive 
 magistracies; accordingly, in constructing his ideal state,* he 
 decides that all the citizens are to share in government 
 
 1 Plato, Fol. 292 E. 
 
 "^ See Nicom. Ethics, viii. ch. x., and Politics^ iii. ch. vii. 
 
 ^ Pol. III. ch. xi. •* Pol. IV. (VII.) ch. xiv. 
 
no DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 when they come to a sufficiently advanced age. But the 
 citizens in Aristotle's ideal polity do not include artisans or 
 traders, or even husbandmen — for mechanical and com- 
 mercial life is ignoble and opposed to virtue, and though 
 agricultural life is not in its nature so demoralising as 
 mechanical or commercial life, it lacks the leisure which is 
 essential to Aristotle's ideal of a citizen. His citizens are 
 accordingly a body of landowners, living at leisure on the 
 produce of their lots of land, which are supposed to be 
 cultivated by slaves or serfs. They are still, therefore, a 
 select minority, compared with the whole number of human 
 beings required by the material needs of the community. 
 
 Keturning to the sixfold classification, made up, as I said, 
 of a pair of similarly divided triads, how does Aristotle 
 arrange these six forms of government in order of merit. 
 In the first brief draft of his views in his Ethics the scheme 
 is simple and symmetrical; we have to keep the first three 
 in order of arithmetical progression, and to invert this order 
 in the second triad. So that the scale of merit will be 
 
 Kingship, 
 
 Aristocracy, 
 
 Constitutional Government or Constitutional Democracy, 
 
 Simple or unbalanced Democracy, 
 
 Oligarchy, 
 
 Tyrannis or illegitimate Despotism. 
 
 If one man can be found of such pre-eminent excellence 
 as to deserve sole rule, this is the simplest and best solution 
 of the problem : where there is no such unique individual 
 the functions of government should be entrusted to those 
 best qualified to perform them. But Aristotle's later views 
 modified this order. In the treatise on Politics kingship no 
 longer seems tp him better than aristocracy, and his view 
 of aristocracy has diverged, as I said, from Plato's. Still, 
 of all governments selfish despotism is worst ; and selfish 
 oligarchy is more odious than selfish democracy. 
 
 The mere aspect of this classification suggests a painful 
 suspicion that its author means to imply a general condemna- 
 
VH GREEK DEMOCRACY 1 1 1 
 
 tion of the actual governments in Greek city-states ; for he 
 selects to denote the perverted forms the terms which his- 
 torians ordinarily use in classifying the actual governments.^ 
 And his further exposition makes this suspicion a certainty. 
 His definitions of oligarchy and democracy — in his bad 
 sense of the terms — are not merely abstract and formal : 
 they are intended to be definitions of the prevalent political 
 facts. This is clear from the care with which he explains 
 that the essential difference between the two is not merely 
 numerical — as the derivation of oligarchy might suggest — 
 it is rather the distinction between rich and poor. He 
 describes various kinds of each, some worse and some better ; 
 he notes too that a government may be in form democratical 
 but substantially oligarchical ; but he clearly holds that the 
 study of the actual facts of Greek political history in the 
 later period for the most part shows us societies divided 
 into the party of the rich few and the party of the poor 
 many, struggling for mastery with selfish ends ; the ordinary 
 result, whichever wins, involving the oppression of the other 
 party. 
 
 § 5. And this condemnation of fully-developed democracy 
 is not Aristotle's view only. It is the prevalent view — we 
 may almost say that it is the only view that has come down 
 to us, if we put out of account the speeches of the orators, 
 who, as their business was to persuade Demos, could hardly 
 tell him plainly that he was incompetent and oppressive. 
 Plato's antagonism to democracy is stronger than Aristotle's. 
 
 ^ In the main Aristotle's classification only systematises distinctions 
 recognised in the ordinary thought of Greece. In a curious discussion which 
 Herodotus (Bk. iii. 80-82) maintains to have taken place among the seven 
 conspirators in Persia, in the course of the conspiracy which ended in bring- 
 ing Darius Hystaspes to the throne, the characteristics of the governments 
 of One, the Few, and the Many are contrasted ; and the profound differences 
 between the true king and the tyrant, and again between the rule of the wise, 
 the really best, and the rule of the wealthy few, were more or less recognised 
 in ordinary language. What remained to complete the systematic six-fold 
 classification was to lay stress on a corresponding distinction between con- 
 stitutional law-abiding rule of the majority, keeping within the limits of 
 moderation and justice, and the more extreme kind of democracy in which 
 the masses systematically oppressed the rich. 
 
112 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 Xenophon's undisguised partisanship of Sparta has drawn 
 on him the severe reprobation of Grote. These, however, 
 it may be urged, are all of one school of thought, they 
 share the Socratic influence. But this cannot be said of 
 Isocrates : yet he too, in his political pamphlets, published 
 about the middle of the century in the form of deliberative 
 speeches, speaks no less strongly of the oppressiveness and 
 incompetence of unbridled democracy under the guidance of 
 unprincipled demagogues. These men, he says, " do not 
 merely compromise our national name : they enrich them- 
 selves at our cost by impeachments, indictments, and all 
 the machinery of calumny, and grind us down by oppres- 
 sive taxation. And their incompetence is equal to their 
 rapacity. Under their influence we do not know our own 
 minds for a day ; and, while the penalty for private bribery is 
 death, the most incapable men become our generals by their 
 large bribes to the popular assembly." ^ 
 
 All this, no doubt, relates to Athens primarily. But 
 the Athenian democracy was, by general agreement, the 
 most brilliant example of Greek democracy, and, as I have 
 said, doubtless a pattern widely followed in the general 
 drift towards democracy. And Isocrates expressly tells us 
 that his condemnation is not confined to Athens. " We are 
 protected," he says, " by the fact that our competitors are no 
 less ill-governed. . . . We save the Thebans and they save 
 us. . . . It would be worth while for either to pay the members 
 of the popular assembly of the other." ^ Of Argos — another 
 state of old prestige that had now long been democratic — 
 Isocrates says elsewhere, " that whenever the Argives get a 
 breathing time from war, they take to killing their most 
 illustrious citizens." ^ 
 
 I think we may take it as undeniable that whatever 
 merits the full-blown democracy of the fourth century in 
 Greece may have had, it was generally disliked and con- 
 
 ^ Isocr. (Or. viii.) de Pace. [Not a literal translation, but condensed from 
 diflferent parts of the Oration.] 
 
 ■2 Isocr. (Or. viii.) de Pace, 171 a, b. 
 3 Isocr. (Or. v.) Ad Philipp, 92 d. 
 
VII GREEK DEMOCRACY 113 
 
 demned by the class of thoughtful persons whose utterances 
 go down to posterity. 
 
 But again, while agreeing that unbridled democracy is 
 bad, our writers all seem to agree that ordinary selfish 
 oligarchy — the government of the rich minority in their own 
 interest — is worse. " A bad democracy," says Isocrates no 
 less than Aristotle, " is a less evil than an oligarchy " : " even 
 our corrupt democracy would seem divine compared with 
 the government of the Thirty Tyrants " : and " if we go 
 through the chief cities of Hellas, we find that they have 
 prospered less under oligarchy than under democracy." ^ It 
 is true that Plato, in the Republic, regards democracy as 
 worse than oligarchy ; he puts forward a theory of natural 
 tendency to degeneration, according to which such a con- 
 stitution as the Spartan — which he places next to his ideal 
 state — tends to degenerate into oligarchy through the 
 corrupting effect of money - getting ; then oligarchy tends 
 to degenerate into democracy, and democracy into Tyrannis. 
 It is an interesting fact that the first theory of political 
 evolution which the history of European thought offers us 
 is a theory of degeneration. And instances might doubtless 
 be quoted from Greek history to exemplify each of these pro* 
 cesses of degeneration ; but the general order of the succes- 
 sion of forms does not correspond to the general facts of 
 that history, in which, as we have seen, the period specially 
 known as the " Age of the Tyrants " comes before that of 
 fully - developed democracy. In any case Plato seems to 
 have given up this order of demerit at the time of writing 
 the Statesman ; here, as I have said, he gives the order of 
 demerit which Aristotle has adopted, " democracy, ohgarchy, 
 Tyrannis." 
 
 § 6. Plato's justification for assigning these relative posi- 
 tions to democracy and oligarchy in his later scheme is 
 noteworthy. The government of the Many he holds is 
 essentially a weak government ; it is a form of govern- 
 ment under which people are comparatively little governed. 
 As compared with a government both wise and strong, 
 
 "• Isocr. (Or. vii.) Areopag. 154 b, 152 c. 
 
 I 
 
114 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 this faineant character of democracy appears to Plato a 
 defect; but as compared with the selfish coercion of 
 oligarchs, it is a relative merit. 
 
 And certainly we have to note in democracy on the 
 whole, by the testimony of all our witnesses, a remarkable 
 maintenance of liberty in the strict sense of individual 
 liberty — power of doing what one likes, without dangerous 
 disorder. " The tyranny of the majority," which seemed to 
 Tocqueville and Mill so important a danger of the coming 
 democracy of Europe, certainly does not appear as a marked 
 characteristic of the Demos of Athens. On the contrary, 
 democracy leads, Demosthenes tells us, to a general absence 
 of severity (" iravra irpaorepa ") ; ^ a " general freedom of 
 speech " (irappTjaia), says Euripides ; ^ "we go each on his 
 own way, and do not scowl at other people for going 
 theirs," says the Thucydidean Pericles.^ The "very dogs 
 are more impudent than elsewhere," says Plato, " and the 
 donkeys march along with the air of fully-qualified citizens." * 
 "You are not even allowed," says the pseudo-Xenophon 
 (author of a diatribe against the Athenian constitution), 
 " to beat a slave who does not get out of your way in the 
 street." ^ This at least we moderns, whatever our political 
 creed, shall not put down as a point against Demos. When 
 we try to estimate the general happiness of the political 
 and social organisation of the Greco-Italian civilised world, 
 this great fact of slavery is a heavy weight in the pessimistic 
 scale : there is some comfort in the thought that the weight 
 was somewhat lightened by democracy. 
 
 But, it may be asked, was not the treatment of the rich 
 an exception to this general disposition to make things 
 easy all round ? Were they not oppressed with un- 
 equal taxation by Demos, in his political character, and 
 plundered by iniquitous prosecutions, tried by the same 
 Demos in his judicial character ? Well, we can hardly 
 doubt, as our authorities agree, that both kinds of oppres- 
 
 1 Demosth. Androt. 608. ^ Eurip. Hipp. 422 ; Ion, 672. 
 
 3 Thuc. II. ch. xxxvii. ^ Plat. Rep. 563 D. 
 
 ^ On the Government of Athens ^ ch. i. § 10. 
 
VII GREEK DEMOCRACY 115 
 
 sion went on to some extent. All that can be said on the 
 other side is that there is no sign that it went to such an 
 extent as to scare rich men away from Athens, and inter- 
 fere with its commercial and industrial prosperity. 
 
 As regards the large popular courts of justice, certainly 
 the character of the forensic speeches that have come down 
 to us from the fourth century tends to give a low idea 
 of their efficacy as instruments for administering justice ; 
 owing to the amount of misrepresentation and irrelevant 
 abuse of the adversary which the advocates exhibit, and 
 their unrestrained licence in appealing to any sort of motive 
 that may influence the judges in their favour. Still, as to 
 the extent of systematic unjust confiscation through these 
 law courts, it is very difficult to form a decided opinion. 
 When Aristophanes describes the informer as going about 
 picking out " fat delinquents and defaulters, pulpy, luscious, 
 plump, and rich," he implies that they were delinquents and 
 defaulters.^ And even when we learn from Lysias that some 
 advocates in prosecutions used to tell the jurymen that if 
 they let off the accused there would not be funds in the 
 treasury to pay them their three obols a day, we must 
 surely suppose that it was a plea against mercy to a guilty 
 defendant, not an open advocacy of spoliation of an inno- 
 cent man. Still, that it should have been said at all is bad 
 enough. So, again, though the occasional corruption and 
 tyrannous misconduct of the office-holders under Demos 
 cannot be doubted, it may reasonably be doubted whether 
 it was in any degree a distinctive feature of democracy. 
 
 As regards the over-burdening in the way of taxation, it 
 should be borne in mind that the practice of throwing extra 
 burdens on the rich was old, and there is no sign that it 
 was made worse by extreme democracy. If we hear of 
 people ruining themselves by providing choruses and torch- 
 races, there is considerable reason to think that it was 
 generally by spending more than they were legally bounn 
 to spend, from love of display. We hear of a mad 
 " decking his chorus with gold lace, and then going about 
 
 1 Ar. Knights, 259. 
 
ii6 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 in rags himself " ^ ; but the gold lace was voluntary extra- 
 vagance, not exacted from him by Demos. 
 
 The burdens in war were heavier and more painfully 
 felt; but no critic suggests that Demos was fond of going 
 to war because he had not to pay for it, — at any rate in the 
 fourth century, when democratic tendencies were most fully 
 developed. Eather the charge is that he could not brace 
 himself up with sufficient steadiness for the burdens in- 
 volved in adequate resistance to Philip of Macedon. 
 
 At the same time, while giving this qualified defence of 
 Athenian democracy, I should hesitate to extend it to Greek 
 democracy generally. It would be presumptuous to doubt 
 the truth of Aristotle's statement, that revolutions in 
 democracies often occurred " from the intemperate conduct 
 of the demagogues, who force the propertied class to com- 
 bine by instituting malicious prosecutions against indivi- 
 duals, or by inciting the masses against them as a body." ^ 
 He mentions a curious instance at Ehodes, where the 
 trierarchs — the rich men made pecuniarily responsible 
 for the provision of war -ships — were prevented by the 
 demagogues from obtaining the contributions due to 
 them from other citizens ; and so were " compelled, by fear 
 of the lawsuits with which they were threatened by their 
 creditors, to form a conspiracy and abolish the democracy." ^ 
 Similarly, he tells us that at Megara " the demagogues, in 
 order to have an opportunity for confiscation, ejected large 
 numbers of the nobles from the state, until they had 
 swelled the ranks of the exiles to such an extent 
 that they returned home, conquered the democrats in a 
 pitched battle, and established the oligarchy." ^ If this 
 account is accurate, it would certainly seem that the 
 oppression of the rich in Megara was of a very violent and 
 sweeping kind. It may be said that Aristotle is a hostile 
 witness — but his is a mind in which genuine scientific 
 curiosity seems to be always predominant ; and, as regards 
 the violence of democratic factions at Megara, we find a sort 
 of confirmation in Plutarch,^ from whom we learn that at 
 
 ^ Antiph. ap. A then. p. 103e. ^ p^/^ yjjj^ (y^ y^ 8 ^^_ (^^ xviii. 
 
VII GREEK DEMOCRA CY wj 
 
 Megara — after the ordinary stages of kingship, oligarchy, 
 and tyranny — a period of licentious democracy occurred in 
 the first half of the sixth century B.C. The poor are said 
 to have forced their way into the houses of the rich, ordered 
 lunch and dinner to be served regardless of expense, and 
 also to have passed a formal decree for the restitution of 
 the interest that had been already paid on debts. Probably, 
 as Grote suggests, the difference of race, surviving from the 
 Dorian conquest, rendered the oppression of the mob more 
 violent. The natural result was two successive relapses 
 into oligarchy, neither of which, however, seems to have 
 lasted very long. 
 
 A similar explanation may be given of the violent 
 character of the democracy of Argos. It is chiefly known 
 to us from the notorious crKyraXta-^jbo^, or " lynching with 
 clubs," by which 1200 of the upper class, suspected of 
 planning an oligarchical revolution, lost their lives, 370 B.C. 
 But that this kind of thing was not isolated may perhaps 
 be inferred from the manner in which Isocrates (346 B.C.) 
 speaks of the dissensions at Argos in the passage already 
 quoted.^ Nevertheless, democracy seems to have been almost 
 unbroken at Argos from before the middle of the fifth 
 century onward : — probably rivalry with Sparta was partly 
 the cause; oligarchs allying themselves with Sparta would 
 have patriotic feeling against them. Generally speaking, 
 violent democracy tended to cause a disturbed condition 
 with sudden lapses into short-lived oligarchy or tyranny. 
 Such oligarchies — if we may generalise from the brief 
 history of the Thirty at Athens, probably rivalled the worst 
 deeds of the worst democracies. 
 
 One form of spoliation of the rich — which has some 
 interest from its analogy to certain revolutionary aims of 
 our own day — is 77)9 avaSacrfiof; " redistribution of land." 
 Isocrates the orator when speaking of the " usual mis- 
 fortunes of cities," from which an advocate of Sparta claims 
 that Sparta alone is free, mentions among these usual 
 calamities "cancellation of debts" — such as Solon's great 
 
 1 P. 112. 
 
ii8 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 measure at Athens — and " redistribution of land : " ^ and 
 Aristotle also speaks of this as a recognised method of 
 demagogic oppression.^ He does not, however, give any 
 instance ; and Dion Chrysostom, a Greek rhetorician of the 
 Empire, says " we have absolutely no knowledge that such a 
 thing ever occurred." ^ And I have tried in vain to find a 
 historic instance of a redistribution of land carried out as a 
 democratic measure in a peaceable and quasi -legal way, 
 like Solon's cancellation of debt : though of course some- 
 thing of the kind was liable to occur in civil war when one 
 party was violently expelled. However, one can hardly 
 doubt that there must have been other instances of this 
 high-handed piece of democratic oppression : though it was 
 probably more often talked of than realised. 
 
 I have left to the last one important charge against 
 Greek democracy, based on Athenian history. It is urged 
 that the long struggle which ended in the acceptance of the 
 Macedonian supremacy over Greece generally, showed the 
 fatal short-sightedness and instability of democracy in foreign 
 policy : and that the Athenians might have resisted Philip 
 successfully had they had some other form of government. 
 I do not think it can be denied that there is much 
 foundation for the charge. But if we are comparing 
 Athenian democracy with the other forms of government 
 which we actually find produced under the same general 
 conditions as the Athenian democracy — i.e. in the small town- 
 communities of Greece — the advocates of democracy may 
 fairly rejoin by asking what other of the Hellenic towns 
 showed itself more able to cope with the situation. The 
 warmest admirers of oligarchy will hardly claim this for 
 Sparta. 
 
 On the whole, I incline to the view that it was not 
 primarily democracy that was tried and found wanting in 
 the contest with Philip : but rather the too exclusive spirit, 
 the too limited patriotism of the Greek city-states, unable 
 to rise to a really effective Pan-hellenism, an equal and 
 stable federation. Later on, when the principle of federation 
 
 1 Isocr. (Or. xii.) Panath. § 259. ^ p^i^ y,jj_ (y_) y_ 3 Qr. xxxi. 332. 
 
VII GREEK DEMOCRACY 119 
 
 is at length developed from the humble beginnings of the 
 hitherto obscure and unpretending Achaean league, and we 
 see how much federation could effect even with Athens 
 standing aloof and Sparta fallen from her high estate ; — we 
 may be almost willing to agree with Aristotle that the Greek 
 race, from its happy blending and balance of qualities, 
 might have conquered the world if it could only have 
 brought itself to live under one government. 
 
LECTUEE VIII 
 
 IDEAL STATES OF ARISTOTLE AND PLATO 
 
 § 1. In my last lecture, after giving a brief account of 
 the Athenian constitution of the fourth century, I went on 
 to note the uniformly unfavourable opinion expressed as to 
 the working of Greek democracy by Plato, Aristotle, Iso- 
 crates, and Xenophon ; there being, so far as I know, no 
 impartial utterance of importance on the other side — since, 
 as I said, any phrases flattering to Demos, on the part of 
 the orators whose business it was to persuade him, cannot 
 be regarded as evidence. 
 
 But it has been urged that "Plato, Isocrates, and 
 Aristotle knew Athens only when her best days were past, 
 and when the gifted and animated population of the golden 
 age had been thinned down sadly by war and pestilence," ^ 
 and that the Athenians, being few and depressed by 
 diminution, had naturally let their government go to the 
 dogs. I hardly think this explanation will do. No doubt 
 the population of Attica was diminished ; we hear of 
 21,000 male citizens of full age at the end of the fourth 
 century as compared to over 30,000 in the latter part of 
 the fifth. The smaller number, however, is certainly large 
 enough to work the institutions of direct democracy.^ And 
 the Athenians were far from being permanently depressed 
 by the ill success of the Peloponnesian war and the con- 
 sequent loss of their maritime empire ; on the contrary, the 
 reader of Greek history of the fourth century is struck by 
 the elasticity with which they recover from this blow and 
 
 ^ Warde Fowler, The City State of the Greeks and Eomans, p. 153. 
 2 Cf. Arist. Fol. iv. (vii.) iv. 4 ; ii. vi. 6. 
 
 120 
 
LECT. VIII IDEAL STATES OF ARISTOTLE AND PLATO 121 
 
 get together a second empire, though no doubt it is never 
 anything like the first. 
 
 And, as I said, the fourth century is the period of 
 established and fully-developed democracy ; in the fifth we 
 have the process of development. No doubt, we have a 
 time of brilliant prosperity in the great age of Pericles, 
 but according to the ancient authorities, though here the 
 critical step was taken towards the ultimate democracy, 
 there has not yet been time to see the full effect of 
 democratic institutions. This is one reason why the 
 prosperity of this age cannot be regarded as an effect 
 of the type of fully developed democracy. And another 
 reason why the Athenian constitution in the brilliant 
 period of the fifth century cannot be regarded as typical 
 is the very fact that Athens was then pre-eminently an im- 
 perial city : its national income was largely derived from 
 the tribute of other cities ; and the extent of governmental 
 functions — and pay — enjoyed by Athenians was largely due 
 to their imperial position. 
 
 Keturning to the fourth century, it should be noticed 
 that stasis, faction and civil strife, an evil characteristic 
 of the city-states of Greece generally throughout their 
 history — as we saw it was civil dissension that gave the 
 opportunity for the Tyrannus of the seventh and sixth 
 centuries — is not found in Athens under fully developed 
 democracy. In Athens the period of civil strife was over by 
 the end of the fifth century. During the fourth century 
 factions in Athens, however bitter, do not lead to disorder 
 and violence ; the struggle that we find elsewhere so 
 common between the wealthy with their partisans and 
 Demos — making, as Plato says, two cities in one, each 
 of which constantly exiles the leading part of the other 
 — from this Athens is free. And still its democracy is 
 subject, as we have seen, to the deep decided condemnation 
 of the leading thinkers and writers on politics. 
 
 § 2. But if the thinkers were agreed in not seeking a 
 remedy for the evils of democracy in the worse evils of 
 oligarchy, what precisely was the remedy that they pro- 
 
122 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 posed ? To this question both Plato and Aristotle give a 
 somewhat complicated answer. 
 
 They each construct an ideal state, which they admit 
 is not likely to be generally realised ; and each also pro- 
 poses a yis aller, a second-best course, as having more likeli- 
 hood of being practically adopted. And when we compare 
 the two, we find that though the ideal state of Aristotle is 
 very unlike the ideal state of Plato, it has a strong general 
 resemblance to Plato's second-best model of polity ; so that 
 we may put the teachings of the two thinkers together, and 
 trace in them a continuous movement of thought, from 
 political idealism of a very marked kind, very remote from 
 practical politics, towards a more practical and empirical 
 view. 
 
 The germ of the political ideal common to Plato and 
 Aristotle is found in the fundamental doctrine on which 
 the dialectical teaching of Plato's master, Socrates, was 
 based : that in the work of government, as in private life, 
 the great desideratum is knowledge — knowledge of the 
 true good of man and of the means to its attainment. A 
 man possessed of this knowledge, if called to the function 
 of ruling, would know how to promote the well-being of the 
 ruled, and would know also that his own well-being would 
 be realised in the right performance of this function. Such 
 a man would be potentially a statesman, whether he be 
 appointed or not; and it would be madness if we could 
 find such a man, not to make him ruler, instead of leaving 
 the selection of rulers to the hazard of the lot; on the 
 other hand, without this essential knowledge the votes of 
 all mankind cannot make a statesman. In these simple 
 articles of Socrates' political creed we have the germ out 
 of which the ideal aristocracy of Plato was developed. For 
 in Plato's view this indispensable knowledge can only be 
 possessed by the philosopher : a man must have been 
 trained to contemplate good in the abstract before he can 
 hope to realise it in human life. At the same time, men 
 whose natural gifts qualify them for the long and laborious 
 training which philosophy requires will always be few in 
 
VIII IDEAL STATES OF ARISTOTLE AND PLATO 123 
 
 the best regulated community, and these few again only 
 philosophers are qualified to select. Hence Plato's most 
 ideal state must necessarily be an aristocracy based on 
 cooptation ; that is, it must be a state in which implicit 
 obedience is paid to a small carefully trained class of 
 philosophers, who recruit their numbers by selecting in 
 youth those whom they deem fit for the training. 
 
 Of the other classes necessary to the existence of a self- 
 sufficing human community, the only one on whose training 
 Plato bestows serious attention in constructing his ideal 
 state is the fighting class. The state will, of course, also 
 contain husbandmen and artisans, who ought, in his view, 
 to be distinct from the warriors ; but it is only for the 
 warriors that Plato works out an elaborate system of regula- 
 tions. They, with the philosophers, form the guardians or 
 protectors of the whole community. 
 
 It is not that he regards war as a normal incident of an 
 ideal condition of human society — quite the contrary. But 
 Plato's state, though ideal, is not designed as a Utopia — it is 
 not a fancy-state but a pattern-state ; it is framed in view 
 of the actual conditions of life in Greek city-states, in which 
 it was an imperative condition of national prosperity that 
 the state should be formidable in war. At the same time 
 his — to a modern mind startling — view of the moral superi- 
 ority of the class of warriors as compared with the classes 
 engaged in providing for the material needs of the com- 
 munity, is in harmony with the Greek conception of virtue, 
 in which valour was more prominent than it would be in 
 a modern conception. This, no doubt, is an indirect effect 
 of the political conditions. Accordingly, philosophers and 
 warriors together make up in Plato's ideal view a class of 
 guardians for whom an elaborate system of training, drill, 
 and regulation of life is worked out : a system modelled 
 on that of Sparta, whose polity Plato ranked first among 
 the actual forms of government of Greece, but designed to 
 exclude far more completely the evils of selfish money- 
 getting domesticity. These evils, Plato saw, were not com- 
 pletely excluded at Sparta ; because the Lycurgean system, 
 
124 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 while drilling the men to a hardy and simple regimen, had 
 left the women undrilled ; and though the barrack life and 
 common meals of Sparta severely limited the men's enjoy- 
 ment of wealth, the desire of heaping up riches for wife and 
 family was practically found to render the Spartan only too 
 accessible to the corrupting temptations of avarice. With 
 a view, then, to a more absolute predominance of civic 
 sentiment than Sparta had attained, and with a view, at 
 the same time, to perfection of the breed of citizens, and 
 to the distribution of functions according to fitness, Plato 
 proposed to abolish private property and private families 
 altogether for his class of guardians. 
 
 This communism is strongly controverted by Aristotle; 
 and the prominence given to this controversy in his treatise 
 on Politics has rather obscured the close and fundamental 
 similarity between Aristotle's political ideal and Plato's 
 second-best state. For Plato himself came to recognise 
 that his communism was not within the range of practical 
 politics ; accordingly, in his " second-best state " — delineated 
 in a dialogue, The Laws, written many years later than The 
 BepuUic — he gives up his communism as regards both 
 marriage and private property. He does not, however, 
 abandon all hope of preventing by legislative interference 
 the fatal division of society into rich and poor, which — as 
 he emphatically tells us in The Eepuhlic — " made two states 
 at war within a single city." ^ He now hopes to prevent 
 this by constituting his citizens a body of landowners, with 
 equal inalienable allotments of land, and strictly prohibited 
 from acquiring movable property to the value of more than 
 four times that of the allotment. The lots are not to be 
 bought or sold, and each man is to leave his lot to his best- 
 beloved son ; his other sons " he shall distribute to such of 
 the citizens as are childless and willing to adopt them." ^ 
 Various other regulations are made to keep the lots equal. 
 Should population be redundant, the magistrates are to keep 
 it down, if possible ; or — if this be found impracticable — 
 as a last resource they are to send out a colony. 
 
 1 The Hepublic, ir. 422. '^ The Laws, v. 740. 
 
VIII IDEAL STATES OF ARISTOTLE AND PLATO 125 
 
 Aristotle criticises this scheme for preventing inequality 
 of property ; but he criticises it not, as a modern might 
 do, because it interferes too much with the natural laws of 
 economic distribution, but because its interference does not 
 go far enough. He considers that the scheme will break 
 down for want of a fixed limit to the number of children 
 in a family; accordingly, he proposes to introduce such a 
 limit in his ideal state. 
 
 He criticises other points in Plato's second-best state ; 
 but viewing it as a whole we can see more clearly than he 
 did how similar his own political ideal is to it in its broad 
 features. Both Plato and Aristotle agree in regarding the 
 city-state as the final form of highly organised political 
 society. In the view of both the state must not be larger 
 than a single city, with the land required to support it, in 
 order that the citizens may meet in one assembly, not too 
 large for effective deliberation, and may have the mutual 
 knowledge required for a good choice of magistrates, and 
 also required — in the view of the Greek thinkers — for a 
 good administration of justice. Indeed, on this point 
 Aristotle's conception is stricter than Plato's : he criticises 
 Plato's later state, which is designed to have a body of 5000 
 fighting men, as too large. Both agree in regarding as the 
 statesman's end the realisation in the citizens of the highest 
 attainable degree of human virtue and well-being ; and of 
 this, in the view of both, the highest mode is philosophy, 
 the activity of the intellect in the attainment of knowledge. 
 Both, again, hold that the realisation of virtue in a high 
 degree is only to be expected from a select class of citizens, 
 relieved from the necessity of providing themselves with 
 the means of subsistence, and subjected to an elaborate 
 system of education ; accordingly, in the view of botn, the 
 citizens are conceived as a body of landowners, living at 
 leisure on the produce of their lots of land cultivated by 
 serfs. Both, accordingly, exclude husbandmen, artisans, and 
 retail traders from citizenship. In the view of both the male 
 citizens must in youth be thoroughly trained for war ; and 
 both recognise — Plato in his second-best state no less than 
 
126 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 Aristotle — that it is not in human nature for this body of 
 armed citizens to submit to simple subjection to philosophic 
 rulers. Both, accordingly, agree in giving an important 
 share of political power to the military landowning class, 
 but in different ways and degrees. In Plato's scheme they 
 have the right of electing the executive magistracy, and also 
 the deliberative council to which the magistrates are to 
 refer important matters ; to improve the quality of the 
 council so elected he proposes a division of the citizens into 
 four property-classes, and a constitution so framed as prac- 
 tically to increase the electoral power of the higher classes. 
 Aristotle, on the other hand, proposes to give supreme 
 deliberative functions to an assembly of all the citizens — 
 i.e. all the land-owning class — after they have passed the 
 military age ; he also proposes to give judicial functions to 
 these citizens — assembled, I suppose, in large popular juries 
 like those of Athens. 
 
 The form of government, therefore, in Aristotle's ideal 
 State is materially nearer to democracy than that in Plato's 
 second-best State if we consider only the distribution of 
 power among the citizens ; but this difference will seem to 
 us unimportant as compared with the fact that both agree 
 in limiting citizenship to a class of landowners living at 
 leisure on the produce of the labour of serfs. This leads 
 me to a final point on which they are agreed in principle : 
 namely, as to slavery. Both hold that there must be slaves, 
 but they hold also that the slaves should be human beings 
 naturally adapted for slavery, and that no Hellene should be 
 owned as a slave.^ 
 
 § 3. This then, in brief, is the aristocratic ideal of the 
 great Socratic thinkers — putting out of account that ideal 
 monarchy, the rule of the man pre-eminent in wisdom and 
 virtue, which has clearly no relation to practical politics in 
 Aristotle's time. Eegarding his aristocracy from a historical 
 
 ^ In considering the relation of Plato and Aristotle to actual slavery in 
 Greece, we are apt to judge it too exclusively from the modern point of view, 
 and to say summarily that they accepted and defended slavery. We ought 
 also to recognise how much they were iu advance of their age by disapproving 
 slavery of Greeks. 
 
VIII IDEAL STATES OF ARISTOTLE AND PLATO 127 
 
 point of view, we see clearly that the Spartan institutions 
 have served as a model; and, accordingly, both Plato and 
 Aristotle agree in giving the Spartan polity a high place 
 among actual Greek States ; it belongs to the class of states 
 which Aristotle calls in a wide sense " aristocratic," as distinct 
 from " oligarchical," i. e. states in which the aim of the 
 constitution is to develop and politically reward merit in the 
 citizens. 
 
 Still, Aristotle does not consider that either his ideal 
 polity, or anything like the Spartan — anything that could 
 be called aristocratic — is to be generally recommended to 
 the actual city-states that he knows. The tendency to 
 democracy in these is recognised by him as too strong to 
 admit of his recommending anything that could be properly 
 called aristocracy for their adoption. What he does recom- 
 mend is what he calls in a special sense " Constitutional 
 Government" (TroXtre/a) — " Constitutional Democracy," per- 
 haps, conveys his idea better to a modern reader ^ — in which 
 men of moderate means hold the balance between the ex- 
 tremes of rich and poor, and a kind of fusion is effected 
 between the opposing principles of oligarchy and democracy. 
 
 This fusion or balance might be effected in different 
 ways : on certain points it might be expedient to adopt 
 both oligarchical and democratic arrangements in the con- 
 stitution of the balanced state : — e.g. both to fine the rich 
 for not serving on juries, as was customary in oligarchies, and 
 to pay the poor for serving, as was customary in democracies, 
 in order to secure the attendance of both. In other cases 
 the required balance would be best attained by taking a 
 mean between the two systems : — e.g. by making a moderate 
 property qualification, which would admit the majority of 
 free citizens, the condition of membership of the supreme 
 deliberative assembly, instead of a high qualification as in 
 
 ^ Just as the general term "Constitutional Government," or a "Consti- 
 tution," if applied to European States in the first half of the nineteenth century, 
 would have been naturally understood to mean "Constitutional Monarchy." 
 In the modern case the problem presented to constructors of constitutions was. 
 — given a king, how is his power to be limited and balanced : by the ancient 
 thinker the power of Demos would be naturally assumed in the same way. 
 
128 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 oligarchies. Or, again, a composite method of appointment, 
 partly oligarchical and partly democratical, might be adopted : 
 e.g. the appointments to the executive offices might be partly 
 by suffrage — which the Greeks deemed an essentially oligar- 
 chical or aristocratic mode of appointment — and partly by 
 lot, which they regarded as the essentially democratic method. 
 It was not, of course, to be expected that the adjustment of 
 the balance would be exactly even, or the same in all cases : 
 some constitutional governments would incline more to 
 oligarchy, and some to democracy. But some such mixed 
 constitution, in which neither the rich nor the poor are 
 allowed to have their way unchecked, is what Aristotle 
 recommends as a practicable ideal for the City- States of his 
 age ; but he admits regretfully that its actual realisation is 
 rare. The reasons for this I will give in his own words : — 
 
 " The reasons why most governments are either demo- 
 cratical or oligarchical are, firstly, that the class of persons 
 of moderate means is generally small in them ; secondly, in 
 consequence of the disturbances and contentions between 
 the commons and the men of property, whichever side gets 
 the better, instead of establishing a government of a broad 
 and equal kind, takes political supremacy as a prize of 
 victory, and sets up either a democracy or an oligarchy." 
 Further, the " two peoples which attain an imperial position 
 in Greece, had regard solely to their own political aims in 
 establishing, the one democracies, and the other oligarchies 
 in the cities under their rule, subordinating the interests of 
 these cities to their own interest. For these reasons the 
 intermediate form of government is either never realised at 
 all, or only seldom and in a few States." ^ 
 
 This statement represents the amount of truth that I 
 find in the arguments that have been urged by various 
 writers, from Tacitus ^ downwards, against the possibility of 
 a mixed form of government. The experience of Greek 
 history shows that the desired balance is at any rate difficult 
 
 ^ Politics, VI. (iv.) xi. 16, 18. The **t\vo peoples" are of course the 
 Athenian and the Spartan. 
 ^ Annals, iv. 33^ 
 
VIII IDEAL STATES OF ARISTOTLE AND PLATO 129 
 
 to maintain ; one or other element tends to preponderate in 
 the fusion and ultimately destroy the balance. To say that 
 such a mixed form is impossible seems to me a hasty 
 generalization ; but the experience of Greece, as summed up 
 by Aristotle, tends to show that it is likely to be rare. 
 
 And it is evident that the fusion which he thought most 
 widely practicable would incline rather to democracy, — this 
 is why I have translated his term TroKireia " constitutional 
 democracy " : it is a system in which the ultimate control 
 would rest with the majority of the citizens. He evidently 
 thinks it hopeless, in the Greek city-states of his age 
 generally, to prevail on Demos to resign this ultimate con- 
 trol ; but it may be possible to persuade him to submit to 
 checks and balances which may prevent the oppression of 
 the rich few by the poor many. But even this he only 
 hopes to effect in a stable manner in a society in which the 
 class of persons with moderate means, being numerically 
 strong, can be maintained in preponderance.^ 
 
 § 4. From a modern point of view it seems strange that 
 Aristotle, in his recommendation of a mixed or balanced 
 constitution, appears never to have thought of introducing 
 monarchy as an element in the fusion. The explanation, I 
 conceive, is partly that he did not find among the politicians 
 he knew any man of such unique merit as to render the 
 allotment to him of so large a share of permanent power 
 apparently reasonable ; partly that a real legitimate mon- 
 archy was something not within the range at least of recent 
 Greek experience. 
 
 We find that Aristotle recognises five kinds of monarchy, 
 besides the illegitimate, usurped, " unnatural " Tyrannis. 
 But (1) one of these — the Spartan — can only be called 
 kingship by courtesy ; the king is little more than a per- 
 petual commander-in-chief; his power in civil affairs is 
 insignificant. (2) Another species, the hereditary despotism 
 that is natural to barbarians, he regards as beyond the pale 
 of discussion for Greece. (3) The old kingship " according 
 
 ^ Some approximation to Aristotle's ideal appears to have been attained in 
 the third century. 
 
 K 
 
130 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. viii 
 
 to law " of heroic times was irrevocably gone ^ ; and (4) the 
 elective perpetual dictatorship ^ which had been instituted 
 in certain States in the first stage of the struggle between 
 the gentry and the masses was also a thing of the past. 
 Finally, (5) the rule of the Individual of Unique Merit, 
 which stands first in the scale of merit in the Aristotelian 
 classification of governments, was a purely ideal conception, 
 in Aristotle's age at least. There was, therefore, no legiti- 
 mate kingship really deserving the name " within the range 
 of practical politics " for Greece in Aristotle's age ; and it is 
 for this reason, I conceive, that it does not occur to him 
 even to consider a fusion of monarchy with oligarchy, or de- 
 mocracy, or both ; for to suggest any balance or compromise 
 with lawless Tyrannis would have been too daring a 
 paradox.^ 
 
 ^ It is noteworthy that Aristotle does not conceive the polity of heroic 
 times as being a balanced or mixed form of government : — he conceives the 
 king's power as limited by law or custom, but does not regard it as shared 
 with council or assembly. As doubtless his view of this polity was derived 
 from Homer, his authority may be quoted on Grote's side of the controversy 
 discussed in Lecture ii. pp. 35-37 ; but 1 nevertheless take the other side. 
 
 2 See Lect. vi. p. 90, I do not know any historical instance of such a 
 dictator {ala-v/xvijTTjs) being elected for life ; but instances were evidently 
 known to Aristotle (see Politics iii. xiv.) 
 
 ^ There is reason to doubt how far Aristotle really shared the conventional 
 sentiment against Tyrannis ; but at any rate he does not expressly separate 
 himself from it. 
 
LECTUKE IX 
 
 GREEK FEDERALISM 
 
 § 1. We have now briefly considered the different types 
 of government and transitions in Greece to the end of the 
 fourth century in their evolutionary order ; it being the aim 
 of political science to get types and the general causes of 
 transition from one type to another as clear as possible by 
 comparing instances. First, we examined the "Primitive 
 Polity," to be called monarchy if anything, but where it is 
 interesting to note, in the council of sub-chiefs or elders 
 and the assembly of the freemen in arms, undeveloped 
 organs which become prominent respectively in the stages 
 of ohgarchy and democracy. Then we discussed the transi- 
 tion to primitive oligarchy, of which the most prominent 
 aspect is the reduction of the power of the king, and 
 ultimately the substitution for him of an annual magistracy. 
 The council then becomes the ruling organ ; the assembly 
 was probably preserved, but the landowners of old family 
 predominate in it. We observed different causes tending to 
 give the assembly an oligarchical character, namely, conquest ; 
 growth, especially in colonies, of new populations without 
 political rights ; integration, under the influence of which 
 small landowners and distant tend to drop out of the 
 assembly ; increase of inequalities of wealth and economic 
 servitude of poorer freemen. The next phenomenon con- 
 sidered was Tyrannis — " irregular, unconstitutional reversion 
 to monarchy," probably, as in Athens, with constitutional 
 forms preserved ; and we distinguished the earlier type 
 developed out of the demagogue, and for which the reaction 
 against early oligarchy gave the opportunity, from the later 
 
 131 
 
132 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 for which the employment of mercenaries was a favouring 
 condition. We noted that Tyrannis was a prevalent type 
 at certain periods, but not a necessary stage through which 
 Greek states passed. 
 
 Then, when the earlier Tyrannis has, speaking broadly, 
 disappeared, the brilliant period of Greek history has 
 begun which is generally characterised by a drift towards 
 democracy. We can trace the progress in the democratic 
 direction from stage to stage at Athens, where a stable 
 democratic constitution is finally established at the end of 
 the fifth century, which remains substantially unaltered up to 
 the time of the subjugation under Macedonia. And elsewhere 
 in Greece the same tendency to democracy is seen — though it 
 does not by any means prevail universally. In one or two 
 cases, as far as we know, the oligarchical form of polity 
 maintains itself throughout this period; more often we 
 hear of oscillation between oligarchy and democracy. Also, 
 in the later part of the time, the habit of employing 
 mercenaries gives a new opportunity for tyrannis. Then 
 the Macedonian predominance and empire closes the period 
 of effective independence of the city-states, and we come 
 to the last noteworthy product of the fertile inventiveness 
 of the Greek mind in the department of political construc- 
 tion : the Federal system, of which the remarkable develop- 
 ment in the third century B.C. sheds a gleam of interest — 
 not only for the student of political science, but for the 
 ordinary reader — on the last stage of the history of 
 free Greece, the period intervening between Macedonian 
 predominance and the final absorption of Greece under 
 Eoman rule. 
 
 In considering the causes of transition from one 
 form of government to another, we have so far directed 
 our attention chiefly — putting conquest aside — to internal 
 causes. Among these, economic causes are very important ; 
 e.g. the growing inequality of wealth tended, as we saw, 
 to alter the primitive polity in an oligarchical direction, 
 making the poor freeman more dependent on the rich : 
 while again the more extensive use of money, leading to 
 
X GREEK FEDERALISM 133 
 
 borrowing on the part of the smaller cultivators, aggravated 
 this inequality into a felt oppressiveness, and tended both 
 in Greece and Eome to movements against the primitive 
 oligarchy. Also — especially in colonies and commercial 
 cities — the growth of new wealth, outside the privileged 
 classes, was a cause making for change. 
 
 But, apart from economic causes, one main impulse to 
 change is doubtless derived from the spread of the simple 
 conviction that " one man is as good as another " — those 
 outside the group politically privileged as good as those 
 inside ; a conviction of which the practical effect would be 
 continually strengthened by the openness to new ideas — 
 the weakening of the force of mere custom and habit — 
 which the gradual civilisation and the mutual communica- 
 tion of so many independent communities would cause. 
 This conviction is most obviously effective in the drift to 
 democracy, but we may suppose it operative in earlier stages 
 in a more limited form. For example, where as at Corinth, 
 one or more annual magistrates chosen from the royal house 
 are substituted for the king, we may suppose the opinion to 
 have become prevalent that one man of royal blood is as 
 good as another — and perhaps (as the Irishman in the story 
 said) " a deal better too," since the occasional inefficiency 
 of the hereditary king must have been a frequent argument 
 for change. So again, when the chief magistracy is thrown 
 open to nobles generally, we may suppose the conviction to 
 have prevailed that one landowner of old family is as good 
 as another. 
 
 But when we speak of the efficiency of the king or 
 government, we have already passed the line separating 
 internal from external relations of the community, since the 
 efficiency of the primitive king was largely estimated with 
 a view to war ; in fact, as we saw, the introduction of a war 
 chief, distinct from the hereditary king, is said to have been 
 the first step in the process of change to oligarchy at 
 Athens. And no doubt more generally, war was sometimes 
 an important factor in producing a change in the form of 
 government, and sometimes, on the other hand, a source of 
 
134 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 stability, when the established government proved itself 
 efficient. 
 
 We have noted again that the development of the city- 
 state out of the more primitive group of village communities 
 was importantly favoured by the value of the protection of 
 the walled town in war. 
 
 And finally, the predominance of federalism in the last 
 stages of the history of Greece was chiefly caused by the 
 necessity, after the Macedonian conquest of the Persian 
 empire, of having states larger than the old city-state, to 
 resist Macedonia and the large states formed out of the 
 fragments of Alexander's empire. I may add that the 
 necessity of greater strength for defence in war has been 
 the cause of federalism in medieval and modern Europe as 
 well as in ancient Greece. 
 
 § 2. The time, in short, had come for the transition from the 
 City-State to the larger political organisations which play the 
 chief part in modern European history — " Country-States " 
 we may call them. There were two modes of transition by 
 which city-states might pass into a country -state really 
 united by patriotic sentiment as distinct from empire: the 
 method of federation on equal terms, and the method of 
 expansion and absorption. The former is that which 
 prevails in this last period of Greek history when the 
 Achaean and Aetolian leagues or federations attract the 
 chief attention of the historian. The latter is that which 
 enabled Eome to become mistress of the civilised world, 
 and which we shall trace in the two following lectures. 
 The scientific interest of this historical transition lies largely 
 in a comparison of the two. 
 
 Both processes, as I have said, are forms of transition from 
 the distinctively ancient conception, expressed by the term 
 " Polls," to the conception which is most familiar to the 
 modern mind. We naturally think of a " country," not a 
 " city," as the local habitation of a State ; indeed, we easily 
 slide into using the word country in a double and mixed sense, 
 — to mean sometimes a portion of the earth's surface, some- 
 times a political community inhabiting it, sometimes a fusion 
 
IX GREEK FEDERALISM 135 
 
 of the two. Thus in any appeal to — any effusion of — 
 patriotic sentiment, the characteristics of the particular part 
 of the earth's surface inhabited by the community occupy a 
 prominent place ; to constitute the object of patriotic devotion 
 the imagination seems to require this embodiment. When 
 we think of the " sea-girt isle " of England, " la belle France," 
 or the German " fatherland," we often do not separate the 
 community from the land, but fuse the two in one notion ; 
 and in more than one case this fusion has had the politically 
 important effect of making it seem natural and right that a 
 portion of the earth's surface separated from the rest by 
 marked natural boundaries should be the territory of a single 
 state. And it is curious to note that while this blending 
 of elements in the notion of " country " is so natural to us 
 moderns, that it requires a little effort to distinguish the 
 elements, we find the corresponding fusion in the Greek 
 notion of " polis " difficult and perplexing. I believe that 
 most moderns when they begin to learn Greek feel some 
 wonder that a language so rich in subtle distinctions 
 should use the same word for " city " and " state." 
 
 Well, it is an interesting evidence of the transition in 
 political thought, as well as political fact, which goes on 
 in the third century B.C., that in Polybius's history of the 
 Achaean League, the word " ethnos " (nation) largely takes 
 the place of the word " polis " ; and the normal constitution 
 of an Hellenic "ethnos" — which has now become the primary 
 object of patriotic sentiment — is a federal constitution. 
 
 § 3. Federation of a rude kind is characteristic of early 
 history. In fact, we may say that, in Greece as well as in 
 Germany, the largest political society in the tribal condi- 
 tion is normally a very loose federation of sub -tribes or 
 cantons whose political union becomes closer as civilisation 
 goes on. The sub -tribe or canton may also be called a 
 sort of federation of villages. Thence comes the early 
 "integration" — the <tvvoiki(tixo<^ — which forms the city- 
 state from the canton. Then the development of the city- 
 state in Greece seems to check further integration; and 
 even, in some cases — e.g. Arcadia — to break up the wider 
 
136 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 national union. Hence, in the brilliant period of Greek 
 history, it is in backward parts of Greece that federation 
 seems to succeed. 
 
 We learn from historians that — besides Achaeans and 
 Aetolians — a union of this kind existed among the Phocians, 
 Acarnanians, Epirots, and the more historically important 
 Boeotians, during the palmy days of Greece. But this last 
 instance illustrates the deep opposition to a really effective 
 development of federalism which, during this period, was 
 caused by the progress of political civilisation concentrating 
 patriotic sentiment on the single city. This did not tend 
 against union of some kind, for the city-state has its 
 political consciousness and patriotic sentiment exalted by 
 holding others in subjection, and is delighted to take any 
 opportunity of doing this. But it tended powerfully against 
 that union of co-ordination on an equal footing, which is the 
 essence of federalism. Thus the position of the minor towns 
 in the Boeotian league tends, so far as we see, continually to 
 fall from that of members of a real federation into that of 
 dependencies of Thebes ; and the same phenomenon is seen 
 in the development of the league formed by Athens after 
 the Persian wars. Hence, before the time of Macedonian 
 predominance, it is only, as I have said, among the more 
 backward portions of the Hellenic body that true federalism 
 tends to be effectually maintained, and especially among 
 those where the development from rural canton into city 
 had not been fully carried out. The Aetolian league, as 
 Freeman says, is even in the later federalist period a league 
 of cantons, not a league of cities. 
 
 It is not difficult to understand how the backward and 
 primitive branches of the Hellenic race came to anticipate 
 their more successful and brilliant brethren in this develop- 
 ment. Tribes in the condition of the Aetolians or Acar- 
 nanians, scattered in villages over a thinly populated territory, 
 have their political consciousness imperfectly developed : 
 hence, as they easily break up, they also easily combine ; 
 but in proportion as the importance of the idea of 
 the state grew with the growth of the city that formed 
 
IX GREEK FEDERALISM 137 
 
 its material embodiment, the combination became more 
 difficult. 
 
 § 4. The old Achaean league was one of these federal 
 unions of comparatively unimportant city-states. Hence 
 the peculiar interest of the later Achaean league is that 
 it is a league of cities in which the isolation of the 
 old city-state is overcome, while it still retains its leading 
 characteristics. It is true that Sparta and Athens stand 
 aloof and do not accept federation, except very transiently 
 and reluctantly. But other states of old prestige — 
 Corinth, Megara, Argos, and the newer " great city " in 
 Arcadia — appear to accept it cordially, doubtless as the 
 only effective means of carrying on a struggle — which for 
 a time was partially successful — against later Macedonian 
 supremacy. 
 
 " This aftergrowth of Hellenic freedom," ^ as Freeman 
 calls it, dates from 281 B.C., forty years after the Lamian 
 war (322 B.C.) which closes the old period of Greek freedom 
 with the vain struggle to throw off the supremacy of 
 Macedonia, after Alexander's death. " During the wars of 
 the Successors," says Mr. Freeman,^ " Greece became one of 
 the chief battlefields of the contending princes. The various 
 cities were indeed often flattered and cajoled. First Polysper- 
 chon and then Demetrius . . . gave himself out as the 
 liberator of Greece : " but they both " liberated cities only 
 to become masters of them themselves. Generally speaking, 
 each Greek town became a fortress to be struggled for, to be 
 taken and. retaken, by one or other of the selfish upstarts 
 who were laying waste Europe and Asia in quarrels purely 
 personal." 
 
 The revival of the old Achaean league took place, as I 
 said, 281 B.C. But the critical step in overcoming the 
 isolation of the city-states is not taken till thirty years 
 later in 251 B.C., by a man of political genius, Aratos, who 
 persuades the old city-state Sicyon to apply for admission. 
 Hitherto the towns of the league had been individually 
 insignificant ; but Sicyon had historic prestige. From this 
 
 1 Federal Government, p. 177 (2nd ed.). ^ q^^ cit. p. 180. 
 
138 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 time the league grows. Corinth joins in 243 B.C., then Megara 
 and other states of north-eastern Peloponnesus. Then the 
 "great city" of Arcadia joins, its Tyrannus voluntarily 
 abdicating, and other Arcadian towns. Then in 229 B.C. 
 comes a further voluntary abdication of Tyranni, and Argos 
 of ancient fame is added to the league.^ 
 
 After an unlucky conflict with Sparta (221 B.C.) the 
 Achaean league goes through a period of weakness and 
 dependence on Macedonia; bat it rises again before the 
 end of the century, and when the resistless power of Eome 
 begins to predominate in Greece, the Achaean league is the 
 leading political community in southern, as the Aetolian 
 league in northern Greece. Athens in this period is 
 politically null, and such vigour as remains to Sparta does 
 not enable it to vie with the league. 
 
 The fundamental principle of the federation, broadly 
 stated, was that the states forming it became one state so 
 far as their relations to communities external to the league 
 were concerned, while retaining their original independence 
 and plurality in all internal matters. "There was an Achaean 
 nation, with a national assembly,"^ in which each of the 
 federated states had one vote; there was a national execu- 
 tive, and also national tribunals to which, as to the assembly, 
 " every Achaean citizen owed a direct allegiance." " No 
 single city could of its own authority make peace or war " or 
 treaties with foreign powers ; and it would seem that, by 
 the general law of the league, no single city could receive 
 or send ambassadors without the permission of the central 
 government, — though there are several instances of the 
 violation of this rule in the later times of the league, when 
 unwilling cities had been annexed to it by force. On the 
 other hand, each city determined with perfect independence 
 its political constitution and laws, without any interference 
 from the central government. It seems, however, to have 
 
 ^ Compare Switzerland ; how in a.d. 1315-1353 the league of forest 
 cantons after the battle of Morgarten (a.d. 1315) was joined by Luzern, 
 Zurich, Bern. 
 
 ^ Cf. Freeman, Federal Oovernment, p. 202 (2nd ed.). 
 
IX GREEK FEDERALISM 139 
 
 been an established principle of the federation that 
 citizens of any one city were admitted to the "private 
 rights of citizenship, those of intermarriage and the 
 possession of landed property, in the other cities of the 
 league." -^ 
 
 The national government was formally democratic, and 
 non-representative : all citizens over thirty years of age in 
 all the cities had a right to attend and speak in the 
 national assembly, and the single vote of each city was, we 
 may assume, determined by the majority of its citizens pre- 
 sent on any occasion. But it is interesting to note how, by 
 mere force of circumstances, the assembly practically acquired 
 a preponderantly representative and aristocratic character, 
 except as regards the element drawn from the single city 
 in which the meetings were held; since attendance was 
 unpaid, and the poorer freeman in other cities would ordin- 
 arily be reluctant to incur the sacrifice of time and money 
 that it involved.^ 
 
 Again, though the assembly was constitutionally supreme, 
 the practical difficulty of having frequent meetings prevented 
 it from attempting to administer current affairs as the popular 
 assemblies in Athens and other democratic city-states did. 
 In fact its ordinary meetings were probably held only twice 
 a year for three days each time ; and though extraordinary 
 meetings could be summoned on occasion of special urgency, 
 the power of summoning them seems to have rested with 
 the executive. From this it followed naturally that the 
 share of power exercised by the ten annually elected magis- 
 
 1 Freeman, op. cit. p. 201. 
 
 2 [There was also a "boule" (council or senate), but in our authorities 
 there seems often to be] a practical identification of council and assembly. 
 [Some passages in Polybius] look as if the two words were practically 
 synonymous. At any rate we may, I think, infer that the assembly usually 
 consisted of the "boule" only, [other members probably not attending]. 
 
 It would seem from what we hear of Rhodes, etc., that in other cases of 
 democracy in the late period of semi-independence of certain Greek cities as 
 Roman allies, the formal government by the assembly of citizens became a 
 mere form. — Cf. Cicero Rep. iii. xxxv. Taking Polybius xxix. v. along with 
 Cicero's account, one cannot resist the conclusion that the personnel of the 
 " Boule " and of the Assembly were practically the same. 
 
140 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. ix 
 
 trates, who, under the presidency of the General — also 
 elected annually — formed the executive, was practically 
 much larger than that exercised by any executive magistrates 
 in Athens ; or, we may assume, in democratic city-states 
 generally. 
 
LECTUKE X 
 
 KOME 
 
 § 1. I NOW approach the portion of my subject which 
 presents a peculiar difficulty, — from the point of view of 
 political science — as compared either with that which has 
 gone before, or with that which will follow. The difference, 
 generally speaking, between the scientific and the merely 
 historical treatment of the forms of government and of 
 political society which history presents to us, is that in history 
 proper we are concerned primarily with particular facts, and 
 only secondarily with general laws and types, causes and 
 tendencies ; whereas in Political Science we are concerned 
 primarily with the general laws and types, and only with 
 any particular fact as a part of the evidence from which 
 our general conclusions are drawn. Now in dealing with 
 Greek history the distinction is easy to maintain : the great 
 number of Greek city-states enables us — in spite of the 
 great gaps in our knowledge of their constitutions — to draw 
 general conclusions without much difficulty as to the different 
 general types of government which tend to prevail at different 
 periods in the development of the city-state, and the general 
 causes which tend to make the polity pass from one form 
 of government to another. But when we turn to Eome, 
 and try to trace the expansion of the City-State into an 
 Empire, these resources for generalisation fail us. Eome, 
 expanding, absorbing, conquering, imperial, is something 
 unique in history : there is, as the Eoman poet says, " nihil 
 simile aut secundum " : — there have been many large empires 
 under purely monarchical rule, but none founded and held 
 by a City-State under republican rule, which is meanwhile 
 
 141 
 
142 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 expanding into a Country-State. Hence in dealing with so 
 unique a fact the treatment proper to political science can 
 hardly be distinguished from that of ordinary history. 
 
 In this difficulty, I think we should try to get as much 
 aid as we can from " Comparative Politics," by applying to 
 the Eoman polity in its republican stages the ideas furnished 
 by Aristotle's analysis and classification of the varied facts 
 of Greek political life, and observing both resemblances and 
 differences. 
 
 Aristotle has been commonly believed to have included 
 Eome among the constitutions which he studied : but what 
 he said about it is entirely lost; and we have no reason to 
 believe that he gave it any special attention. He did 
 not foresee that about half a century after his death, 
 the submission of Tarentum (272 B.C.) would bring the 
 Greek colonies that had Hellenised south-east Italy — 
 " Magna Graecia " — finally under the dominion of Eome : 
 that in less than half a century more (229 B.C.) the powerful 
 Italian republic, now undisputed ruler of Italy, would inter- 
 vene for the protection of Greeks against the Illyrian pirates : 
 and would be therefore formally admitted to the Isthmian 
 Games and Eleusinian Mysteries as a member of the social 
 union of Hellenic peoples : that in a generation more 
 (200—197 B.C.) Greece as a whole would find her best 
 wisdom in siding with the Eoman arms against Macedonia, 
 and obtain from the Eoman general, who was a professed 
 admirer of Greek culture, a decreed freedom — if the term be 
 not a contradiction : that then, in fifty years more (146 B.C.), 
 the Eoman sack of Corinth would practically extinguish 
 Hellenic independence. 
 
 But these events only concern us in a secondary and 
 subordinate manner. It is more in our way to ask how 
 Aristotle would have regarded the Eoman constitution, if he 
 had known as much of it as we know. I mean the consti- 
 tution, as existing in his time, at the outset of the last 
 quarter of the fourth century B.C. : when more than a 
 generation had elapsed since the prolonged conflict between 
 patricians and plebeians had been practically decided by the 
 
ROME 143 
 
 Licinio - Sextian laws ; and having subdued and partially- 
 absorbed her immediate neighbours, Eome was preparing for 
 the final struggle with the Samnites for the supremacy in 
 the peninsula. 
 
 In the first place, it would have been clear to him that 
 it was a kind of " Constitutional Government " in the widest 
 sense in which he uses this as a special term, i.e. a consti- 
 tution in which a sort of fusion or balance between the 
 principles of Oligarchy and Democracy was attained : but a 
 balance inclining to Oligarchy, and of the kind that in a 
 common wide use of the word might be called an Aristo- 
 cracy ; since the general administration of affairs was 
 mainly in the hands of a senate, the vacancies in which 
 were filled in the first instance by persons who had held 
 the highest magistracies, having been elected to these by 
 the votes of the assembly of the people. I conceive that 
 Aristotle would have certainly held that some approximation 
 to the kind of balance that he considers desirable between 
 the Few and the Many, had been attained in the Koman 
 constitution : the Many having, not the management of 
 public affairs, but — what Aristotle considers that they 
 must have, if they are to be free and contented citizens — 
 the power to choose their magistrates, and to call them ta 
 account after their term of ofi&ce for gross misuse of their 
 powers. But the method by which this balance had been 
 attained was, in important respects, specifically unlike any- 
 thing that had fallen under Aristotle's observation. 
 
 In the first place, it would have struck Aristotle as very 
 remarkable that there was not one general assembly, but 
 two, constituted in different ways, the assembly of the whole- 
 people in centuries and the meeting of plebeians in tribes.^ 
 The former of these was less democratically organised than, 
 the latter : its organisation — attributed to Servius Tullius — 
 being, at first and probably at this time, such as to throw 
 greater burdens of taxation and military equipment, and 
 
 ^ "Tribes" were divisions originally local and administrative, which 
 became of political importance through the development of the powers of the- 
 plebeian assembly. 
 
144 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 greater political power, into the hands of the men of property 
 arranged in classes according to a graduated scale of property 
 qualifications : so that the preponderance lay with the well- 
 to-do class, who also voted before the others : — whereas from 
 the meeting of plebeians the gentry of old family were 
 excluded. It would have seemed to him remarkable that 
 while the former assembly had the power of electing to the 
 high administrative offices — consuls, praetors, censors, — the 
 latter plebeian assembly^ had, in conjunction with the special 
 magistracy that directed it, the constitutional right to call 
 magistrates to account after their term of service and to 
 fine them, though the power of finally deciding on capital 
 punishment was reserved for the assembly in centuries. I 
 do not know any case in Greece in which we have the least 
 hint of a similar duality of governing assemblies. No less 
 peculiar would have seemed to Aristotle the popular magis- 
 tracy by which the meeting of plebeians was directed and 
 which was elected by them — the Tribunes ; whose power, 
 though it was purely negative as regards administration, was 
 yet extraordinarily unlimited. The tribune could only act 
 positively as leader of the popular assembly : apart from 
 the assembly he could only forbid, not command ; but there 
 was no administrative act that was not subject to be checked 
 by his intervention ; and to make the protection thus secured 
 through these plebeian magistrates more thoroughly effective, 
 the tribune's person was protected with a sacredness beyond 
 that of any other magistrate. It was a grave offence even 
 to interrupt a tribune while he was speaking. 
 
 But it is even more remarkable to find that the main 
 legislation of the community ultimately fell into the hands 
 of this more popular assembly, from which the patricians, 
 the gentry of old family were — as I have said — excluded. 
 We are told that long before this time a law had been passed 
 making the resolutions of this plebeian assembly binding on 
 all citizens — including the patricians who were not members 
 of it ; and though in Aristotle's age this legislative power of 
 the plebeian assembly was still constitutionally subject in 
 
 ^ Concilium Plebis. 
 
ROME 145 
 
 some manner to senatorial or patrician control — in what 
 manner historians are not agreed — these restrictions were 
 subsequently done away with (287 B.C.), and before Eome 
 became undisputed mistress of Italy the legislative com- 
 petence of the plebeian assembly was complete. 
 
 If Aristotle had looked back for an historical explanation 
 of this unique constitutional result, he would have found it 
 in the intensity and obstinacy with which the struggle 
 between the old families and the new citizens or " plebeians " 
 had been carried on in Eome during the first period of the 
 history of the republic. The struggle had been so hardly 
 fought on both sides that the plebeians seem to have organ- 
 ised theniselves into a kind of state within a state, with 
 assemblies of their own under officers elected by themselves ; 
 and had compelled the gentry to recognise the right of these 
 officers to check at any point any action of the senate or 
 ordinary magistrates that they judged to be oppressive ; and 
 finally had brought them to recognise the resolutions of this 
 plebeian assembly as having the force of law. 
 
 § 2. The intense and prolonged character of these 
 struggles of the fifth and fourth century B.C., is all the more 
 noteworthy because the first stage in the process of break- 
 ing down the exclusive privileges of the gentry had passed, 
 without leaving any record of strife, while Eome was still 
 under kingly rule. 
 
 The original assembly of the Eoman people {comitia 
 curiata) was organised on what I may call the " clan- 
 principle " ; and though at least in its later form it included 
 plebeians, the power of the old families was doubtless undis- 
 puted in it — as in the Greek states generally in the time 
 of primitive oligarchy. But this assembly, though it con- 
 tinued to exist, does not appear to have had political 
 importance at any time in the history of the republic. The 
 function of electing magistrates, of inflicting capital punish- 
 ment, and — at first ^ — of legislation, had passed to the 
 assembly in centuries, of which I just now spoke : i.e. the 
 
 ^ That is, till the purely plebeian assembly obtained concurrent legislative 
 power. 
 
 L 
 
146 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 assembly not of families or clans, but of freeholders liable 
 to military service in which the patricians and plebeians 
 were arranged together in classes determined by a property 
 assessment, on a plan somewhat similar to that adopted in 
 the Solonian constitution at Athens. However, though 
 the distinction of patrician and plebeian is swept away in 
 the assembly, the exclusive right of the patricians to be 
 elected to the chief magistracies remains, and it takes 
 nearly a couple of centuries to get finally rid of it : the 
 decisive step being taken in 367 B.C. when it is finally 
 settled by the Licinio - Sextian law that one of the two 
 consuls is always to be a plebeian. It is in the early part 
 of this struggle that the plebeians organise themselves into 
 an assembly of their own, under the presidency of their own 
 plebeian magistrates, the tribunes, and obtain for these 
 tribunes the power of vetoing the acts of the regular govern- 
 ment. 
 
 How under this system the machine of government 
 did not come to a dead-lock it must, I think, have puzzled 
 many readers of Eoman history to guess ; and it certainly 
 shows the Komans to be a people of remarkable practical 
 political capacity — able to work in practice a compromise 
 that looks in theory so unworkable. 
 
 But when the plebeians had triumphed in the constitu- 
 tional struggle and secured the force of law for the resolutions 
 of their plebeian assembly, another question arises : viz. 
 why was the victory not carried further into complete 
 democracy ? Why in the century and a half that followed 
 the termination of the struggle, while Eome is conquering 
 the world round the Mediterranean, does the administration 
 of affairs remain substantially aristocratic ? so that the 
 plebeian assembly becomes an organ of legislation w^orking 
 normally in harmony with and under the influence of the 
 senate, and the tribunate is changed from the leadership of 
 popular opposition into one of the regular offices which a 
 rising plebeian of wealth and hereditary distinction takes 
 on his way to the consulship and the senate ; and, in short, 
 the distinction between the National assembly and magis- 
 
ROME 147 
 
 trates and the assembly and magistrates of the Commons 
 becomes, for a long time, a mere survival of a conflict 
 now extinct, in a nation practically governed by the gentry. 
 
 I attribute this largely to the pressure of external 
 struggles — conducted always with ultimate success, but 
 many times needing the utmost efforts and sacrifices. Such 
 struggles tended to intensify the patriotism and martial 
 spirit on which they made demands ; and in a patriotic and 
 martial people, feeling that they are well and successfully 
 led, the habit of obedience to the existing government tends 
 to OTOW stronof. 
 
 But an important part of the explanation of their 
 acquiescence is to be found, I think, in another character- 
 istic of the Eoman Plebs at this period which distinguishes 
 it very markedly from the Athenian Demos ; that its vot- 
 ing in the plebeian assembly was decided by the majority 
 not of individuals, but of the divisions originally local and 
 administrative called tribes ; the divisions being so arranged 
 that the rural element preponderated very decidedly over 
 the purely urban. It is not too much to say that the cause 
 of Home's success is largely to be found in a peculiarly 
 happy balance of urban and rural elements in the composi- 
 tion of the state. On the one hand, the prominence of 
 Eome in Latium, which gave it first the headship of the 
 Latin confederacy and afterwards enabled it to absorb the 
 other Latin communities, seems due to its situation on the 
 Tiber favourable for trade ; which developed urban life in 
 Rome to an extent that no other Latin town could rival.^ 
 On the other hand, in the political system of Rome, the 
 purely urban element was — at least until the decay of the 
 republic begins — remarkably subordinated. Originally the 
 franchise in the assembly of tribes was conditional on land- 
 ownership ; the original urban population being confined to 
 four out of the large number of tribes — gradually increasing 
 in the republican period up to thirty-five — into which Roman 
 
 ^ Moinmsen remarks impressively on the greater political force and impetus 
 which the urban concentration of Rome gave to Latins as compared with 
 Samnites. 
 
148 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 citizens were distributed. Then, when with the growth of 
 the city the landless members of the community had to be 
 admitted, they were for some time confined to the four 
 urban tribes ; which thereby became lower in prestige than 
 the rest, as constituting a kind of sink into which the most 
 despised elements of the free population — the freedmen 
 owning less than a certain amount of land — were made to 
 concentrate. The plebs of Eome in the palmy days of the 
 Kepublic were, therefore, preponderantly of the kind that 
 Aristotle thinks specially adapted for moderate or constitu- 
 tional democracy : rustic cultivators who did not want 
 to govern, but only to be secured against misgovernment. 
 And we may add — what was beyond the range of Aristotle's 
 reflection — that only to a Demos like the Eoman, which 
 conquered with the sword but held its conquests with the 
 plough, was the expansion of a City-State into a strong 
 imperial Country-State possible. 
 
 Thus, then, it came about that when, after a prolonged 
 struggle, the Eoman people had established a system of 
 checks and controls over their governing class so effective 
 that, judged by Greek analogies, it seems likely to lead to 
 complete democracy, they stopped at this point for the two 
 centuries that decided the fate of Western civilisation ; 
 leaving the administration of affairs in the hands of what 
 in Aristotle's sense as well as ours may be called an " aristo- 
 cratic " body.^ 
 
 § 3. As regards the constitution of the governing class 
 and its relations to the governed, a careful distinction must 
 be drawn between different periods of Eoman history. 
 
 For more than 150 years after the fall of the monarchy 
 — the date of which is uncertain, as is the exact nature of 
 the transition from monarchy to republic — the struggle 
 prominent in Eoman history is between patricians and 
 
 1 I may note one special characteristic in which the Roman Government — 
 until demoralised by conquest — would conform to Aristotle's conception of 
 Aristocracy as contrasted with Oligarchy : i.e. their concern for purity and 
 simplicity of manners, and the effort that was made by the laws, and by the 
 censors, to repress luxury. We are told that in 275 B.C. a man who had been 
 twice consul was excluded from the senate for having too much silver plate ! 
 
ROME 149 
 
 plebeians. But this struggle is not a simple contest 
 between the rich few and the poor many : it is this partly, 
 but this complicated by a quite different struggle, between 
 old families and new, the struggle of the rich plebeians to 
 get their share of public offices and dignities. 
 
 This is strikingly illustrated by the Licinio-Sextian laws 
 (already referred to), passed in 367 B.C., after ten years of 
 intense conflict, which constitute the most important turning- 
 point in the struggle between patricians and plebeians. The 
 object of these laws was on the one hand to secure one of 
 the two highest official posts — the consulships — to citizens 
 outside the closed group of old families ; on the other hand 
 to limit the amount of sheep and cattle that any citizen 
 might pasture on the public domain, and the amount of 
 public land that any individual might occupy — in the 
 theoretically temporary but practically permanent way in 
 which wealthy citizens got the use of public land ; also to 
 compel landed proprietors to employ free labourers in a 
 certain proportion to slaves ; and to relieve debtors from 
 the full burden of their debts by deducting interest already 
 paid from principal. This aggregate of regulations clearly 
 contains two heterogeneous elements ; one element repre- 
 senting the struggle of the nouveaux riches with the old 
 families, and the other representing the struggle of poor with 
 rich. What the mass of small rustic cultivators wanted 
 was relief from the oppressive industrial competition and 
 encroachments of the large capitalists : what Licinius and 
 the leading plebeians cared about was admission to the 
 offices. The combination of heterogeneous elements is 
 impressed upon us by the startling fact that, as we are told, 
 Licinius was one of the first persons condemned for exceed- 
 ing the limit, fixed by his own law, of land allowed for 
 agricultural occupation. 
 
 Hence we are not surprised to learn that when the 
 victory is won, the leading plebeians coalesce with the old 
 nobility : so that a new nobility is formed, in which rank is 
 given not by patrician extraction but by having ancestors 
 who had held the highest offices. It is true that it never 
 
ISO DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 became quite so close as the old : lowborn merit has a 
 chance and can win its way to the consulship, especially in 
 the first century after the admission of plebeians to the 
 consulship, while Eome is conquering Italy (367—272 B.C.). 
 Still in the main the governing few has a marked tendency 
 to hereditariness, and gradually a state of things is brought 
 about in which the scions of " consular " or " senatorial " 
 families do not quite monopolise the offices and the vacancies 
 in the senate, but they secure the lion's share of them.^ 
 
 It was the new nobility so constituted that, as re- 
 presented by the senate, was practically supreme in the 
 administration of affairs at Eome, when Eome was conquer- 
 ing its empire. But, though preponderantly oligarchical, 
 this government did not resemble one of those "Govern- 
 ments of the Few " of which Aristotle speaks. 
 
 For in Eoman constitutional theory the assembly of free 
 citizens — in its singular double form — remained the highest 
 authority in the community, and was fully conscious of its 
 sovereignty : the assembly of the centuries elected the 
 consuls, praetors, censors, and from time to time a popular 
 candidate was carried against the wish of the nobility. It 
 also was the final court of appeal when serious conflicts arose 
 among the authorities practically governing ; it alone re- 
 tained always the old right of declaring offensive war, and 
 the senate was accustomed to bring before it difficult or 
 invidious questions of peace and alliance : all new laws 
 were passed either by this assembly or the plebeian assembly 
 in tribes. But legislation was mainly, as I have said, done 
 by the plebeian assembly : and this very fact shows strik- 
 ingly how the power of the senate was maintained by 
 persuasion and management of the commons, not by coercing 
 and excluding them from political rights. Though the 
 senate for nearly two eventful centuries — between the 
 practical termination of the old struggles of patricians and 
 plebeians and the revolutionary period initiated by Tiberius 
 and Caius Gracchus — practically determined in most cases 
 
 ^ PauUus, conqueror of Macedonia, was chosen for his merit, "a rarity in 
 168 B.C.," says Mommsen. 
 
ROME 151 
 
 what laws should be passed, it found it convenient to do 
 this chiefly by means of the plebeian assembly and the 
 plebeian magistracy (probably to prevent popular opposition 
 to its measures) : and from time to time, no doubt, it had 
 to give way and allow measures to be passed which were 
 not to the taste of the nobility — though the power of each 
 tribune to check the action of another tribune as well as of 
 other magistrates became a valuable constitutional weapon 
 to prevent this. 
 
 § 4, But, it may be asked, how is it that the old conflict 
 between poor and rich — which we have seen to be one 
 element of the struggles of the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. 
 between the old nobility and the plebeians — did not go on 
 equally in the third and second century, under the regime 
 of the new aristocracy of consular and senatorial families ? 
 Why does it subside until, in the latter half of the 
 second century B.C., the Gracchi conjure up the spirits of 
 revolution ? 
 
 The answer is to be found in the results of the series of 
 successful wars which Eome was, as I have said, waging 
 during this period : because the method by which the 
 Koman government staved off agrarian discontent during 
 this period of conquest was also the method by which it 
 solved the difficult problem, how a city-state was to hold in 
 firm grasp an immense empire. Italy was subdued, as we 
 know, step by step, and while the process was going on, it 
 was the practice of Eome to exact from the conquered a 
 portion of their land.^ This land belonged in the first instance 
 to the community, and large portions of it were allowed to 
 be occupied at a low nominal rent by the rich ; still from 
 time to time great masses of the newly conquered land were 
 distributed among the Eoman citizens to be held in complete 
 ownership. To a considerable extent, but not altogether, 
 this was done by founding coloniae : which must be dis- 
 tinguished from the ordinary Greek colonies {airoiKiai), as 
 the colonists did not become the germ of a new independent 
 
 ^ One-third ordinarily : but the amount seems to have varied : sometimes 
 even the whole Avas forfeited. 
 
152 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 state. -^ They sometimes remained Eoman citizens fully- 
 qualified — in other cases they were in the position occupied 
 in early days by the inhabitants of Latium, who were not 
 citizens of Eome. That is, they were distinguished from 
 other dependent allies of Eome by certain privileges — of 
 which the most important was that Eoman citizenship 
 could be obtained by holding office in a Latin colony, so 
 that the most talented and aspiring elements in these 
 towns were continually absorbed in the dominant city- 
 state. Partly in this way, partly by the sense of com- 
 munity of language and race, the tie of these Latin colonies 
 to Eome proved sufficiently strong to stand — in the main — 
 the severest strain put upon it {e.g. the darkest hour of 
 Hannibal's invasion) : thus Latin colonies as well as those 
 of Eoman citizens remaining such, formed an effective net- 
 work of garrisons — connected by the well-known military 
 roads of Eome — maintaining Eoman dominion in other 
 parts of Italy : while they also formed a group of centres 
 from which the Latin language and civilisation gradually 
 spread over the peninsula. They therefore play an im- 
 portant part in the remarkable and unique process of trans- 
 formation by which the city-state on the Tiber was changed 
 into a country - state extending over Italy, while still 
 retaining the form of polity appropriate to a city-state: 
 — still recognising as the constitutionally supreme organ of 
 government the assembly of Eoman citizens, meeting in the 
 market-place of Eome. 
 
 Also, as I began by saying, these colonies were outlets 
 for staving off the agrarian demand which from time to 
 time tended to arise among the smaller cultivators that 
 formed the mass of the Eoman assemblies and armies : 
 while from time to time a part of this demand was satisfied 
 by allotments of public land without garrison duty. 
 
 The position of the Eoman colonists was not without its 
 
 drawbacks : at first, as we may imagine, their relations 
 
 with the old inhabitants of the towns to which they were 
 
 sent were by no means friendly. These old inhabitants 
 
 ^ They resembled the Kk-qpovx^o.i of Athens. 
 
ROME 153 
 
 were, for the most part, compulsorily transformed into 
 members of the Eoman state, but without political privileges 
 — cives sine suffragio : and it is not surprising that we hear 
 from time to time of a colony revolting and killing or 
 expelling the Eoman intruders. In time, however, the old 
 inhabitants coalesced with the new citizens and often 
 received the suffragium. Thus the Eoman state came to 
 consist of citizens of two kinds, a continuous body inhabit- 
 ing the territory round Eome, continually enlarged by new 
 absorptions till it reached the utmost limits to which it 
 seemed possible to extend the environing country of a city- 
 state : and besides this a network of colonies, whose members, 
 in some but not all cases, retained and handed on to their 
 descendants the full qualifications, civil and political, of 
 Eoman citizens — the political citizenship remaining practi- 
 cally latent so long as they were colonists, but capable of 
 being exercised if ever they transferred themselves to Eome. 
 
 In this way, through the double process of absorbing 
 conquered enemies and providing room for the expansion of 
 her own body, the settlement on the Tiber grew into a 
 state containing — at the middle of the second century B.C. — 
 328,000 citizens capable of bearing arms; a monstrous 
 " polls " in Aristotle's view. 
 
 Here its growth stopped for a time, and even temporarily 
 receded. After 177 B.C. we hear of no new allotments of 
 land, except in a single colony in Picenum 157 B.C. It 
 would appear that there was no more public land in Italy 
 to divide except what was in the occupation of the rich 
 men, who would not give it up without a severe struggle. 
 But the demand of the poorer citizens for land — which was 
 an important social cause of the expansion — still continued. 
 Hence when the century of revolution begins, that lasts 
 from the tribunate of Tiberius Gracchus to the battle of 
 Actium — the century of conflict, dissolution and agony, 
 bewildering, violent and bloody, through which the republic 
 changes into the new imperial monarchy destined to linger 
 in the East till the very verge of the modern world — the 
 question with which it begins is again the old agrarian 
 
IS4 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 question tossed between the patricians and plebeians; the 
 " Sempronian " agrarian law of Gracchus is a revival of the 
 agrarian law of Licinius passed nearly two centuries and a 
 half before. 
 
 Extensive allotments of land appear to have been made 
 in execution of the Sempronian law ; and in a few years 
 the number of citizens capable of bearing arms is stated to 
 be nearly 400,000. A further enlargement was hardly 
 possible in the direction of the traditional policy of exten- 
 sion : the next step to be taken could only be the inclusion 
 of the other Italians who had by this time become almost 
 as completely Latin in language and civilisation as the 
 Koman colonies, so that the privileges of the latter had come 
 to seem irrational and inequitable to those excluded. And 
 this step is taken soon after the end of the second century ; 
 but it is forced on Eome as a result of civil war, and 
 belongs in its causes and effects to the long process of 
 revolution. 
 
 § 5. It does not fall within my plan to narrate the steps 
 of this revolution ; but I will briefly note some of the main 
 features and causes. Firstly, in every act of the protracted 
 drama it is made very clear to the attentive observer that 
 what is breaking down is not the government of a fure 
 oligarchy or aristocracy, but of an aristocracy whose normal 
 highest organ, the senate, has all through its rule had to 
 recognise the ultimate sovereignty of a popular assembly, 
 and the executive authority of magistrates elected by it : 
 while it has in fact practically used this assembly as the 
 chief organ of legislation. The " habit of obedience " on 
 which all orderly and tranquil government rests was, in the 
 Eoman state, a habit of obeying laws passed by the assembly 
 of plebeians in tribes on the proposals of its tribunes as 
 much as it was a habit of submitting to the decrees of the 
 senate. This fact is of fundamental importance — especially 
 among so constitutionally-minded a people as the Komans 
 — when the senate has to defend the traditional political 
 order against revolution. It explains the startling want of 
 direct resistance shown by this proud nobility, so strong, as 
 
ROME 155 
 
 it seems, in established power and traditional prestige, at the 
 outset of the revolution period ; when an audacious tribune 
 (Tiberius Gracchus) bids defiance to them, and the assembly 
 under his leadership gets out of their management and passes 
 sweeping measures against their interest. For direct resist- 
 ance — to lay hands on a tribune, to oppose obstinately the 
 will of an assembly whose legislative authority is as estab- 
 lished and traditional as their own administrative authority 
 — this would be itself revolution, and would destroy the 
 advantage of their position as defenders of order. They let 
 the tide of democratic legislation go over their heads, and 
 bide their time ; when the Gracchi are no longer tribunes, 
 they take a deadly revenge; but even then they dare not 
 reverse the most important part of their legislation. 
 
 This political condition is an important factor in deter- 
 mining the form taken by the long process of change from 
 republic to monarchy. But the causes that make the change 
 inevitable lie deeper in the moral condition of the governing 
 class. The nobility who had the courage and wisdom 
 necessary for the task of conquering the world of circum- 
 Mediterranean civilisation, had not the self-restraint required 
 for governing it justly when conquered. The " assembly of 
 kings," as Pyrrhus' ambassador called them, is transformed 
 to a great extent into a gang of venal and avaricious tyrants. 
 But here again it is to be noted that the conditions of their 
 government are such that their corruption carries with it the 
 corruption of the popular assembly also. We watch, as we 
 read this dark chapter of history, not merely the degenera- 
 tion of an oligarchy, but also the demoralisation of an unde- 
 veloped democracy. To keep their power, the plunderers of 
 the provinces throw large handfuls of the plunder to the 
 people at home : in fetes and shows of increasing splendour, 
 in distributions of corn first at low price, then at merely 
 nominal prices, in wholesale bribery at elections. Thus — 
 and especially by the distributions of corn when these have 
 become regular and practically gratuitous — the old assembly 
 of solid, honest, martial peasant-citizens who trooped in to 
 vote in their great market -town with a genuine sense of 
 
156 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. x 
 
 civic duty, turns into a metropolitan mob swollen by the 
 most worthless elements of the widely dispersed mass of 
 Eoman citizens, drawn to Rome by the prospect of eating 
 the bread of idleness.^ 
 
 This change is, of course, intensified by the extension of 
 citizenship to the Italians generally — after the war between 
 the Roman State and its confederated Italian allies (90—89 
 B.C.) — inevitable as that measure was ; and thus before the 
 transition to what is practically monarchy arrives, the 
 qualification of the Roman popular assembly to legislate 
 and elect governors is more glaringly and hopelessly gone 
 than the qualification of the senate to administer the Empire. 
 
 ^ It must be borne in mind that membership of any of the thirty-five 
 tribes into which the Roman people was divided — though at first attached 
 to residence in a certain district — had long ago come to be handed down as a 
 hereditary personal right in the families of citizens who had originally 
 acquired it by residence ; and, in the latest period of the history of the 
 republic, was not limited by any condition of owning landed property. 
 
LECTUKE XI 
 
 ROME {continued) 
 
 § 1. In my last lecture I endeavoured to trace briefly the 
 development of the peculiar balance between oligarchy and 
 democracy, which the Eoman constitution presents to us, 
 from the early time of bitter conflicts and gradually com- 
 pacted compromises through the brilliant period of prosperous 
 expansion of the civic body and extension of imperial rule 
 to the final decay and transition to monarchy. 
 
 But before passing to consider the characteristics of the 
 government that was formed out of the ruin of the old 
 republican constitution, I ought to note that Polybius, in the 
 account he gives of the Eoman constitution in his time (first 
 half of the second century B.C.), finds in it a " monarchical " 
 element which I have so far left in the background. He 
 regards the constitution of Eome as a combination of the 
 three forms recognised in the current classification — 
 Monarchy, Aristocracy, Democracy — that is, he regards the 
 consuls as representing the kingly element, and says, indeed, 
 that the three elements are so fittingly distributed and 
 balanced that not even a native can say definitely which 
 preponderates. This is an important judgment of an observant 
 and thoughtful contemporary ; and no doubt we may infer 
 from it that both the power and the dignity of the highest 
 magistrate were decidedly greater in Eome than that of the 
 corresponding official in any Greek city-state known to 
 Polybius, and so far came nearer to monarchical power and 
 dignity. We cannot, indeed, infer that the older type of 
 oligarchy in Greece did not afford examples of polity 
 resembling the Eoman in this point ; but we do not posi- 
 
 157 
 
158 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 tively know of any such example, and I think we may infer 
 that Polybius knew of none. The difference is connected 
 with the fact already noted that the Eomau national 
 assembly did not attempt to govern, but was content with 
 the power of electing its governors, and, in extreme cases, 
 calling them to account; on the other hand, the senate, 
 although it became practically the supreme organ of admin- 
 istration, always remained in theory the council whose 
 advice the chief magistrate was bound to take in all im- 
 portant matters rather than the governing body whom he 
 was constitutionally bound to obey. 
 
 It is important to bear in mind, in considering the 
 government of Kome before the period of revolution begun 
 by the Gracchi, that the practical control of the senate was 
 much greater than its formal power. On the one hand, 
 in matters which the assembly formally decided, it usually 
 accepted the decision proposed to it by the senate ; on the 
 other hand, in matters in which the magistrates could 
 formally act independently, the habit of deferring to the 
 senate was firmly established. Still, the magistrates and 
 the assembly combined — even the plebeian magistrates and 
 plebeian assembly — could make the most important changes 
 against the will of the senate, without violating the accepted 
 constitution ; and unless we bear this in mind, we cannot, 
 as I said, interpret rightly the phenomena of the age of 
 revolution. 
 
 Still I do not think that Aristotle would have recognised 
 the characteristics of monarchy in the consulship, as it 
 existed in his time or the time of Polybius, so far, at least, as 
 the relations of the consuls to citizens are concerned. I say 
 citizens, because the power of the consul — or the proconsul 
 or propraetor — over soldiers on a campaign, and over the 
 subjects of the Eoman state, was much more extensive : it 
 may be fairly said that in the provinces, for the term of 
 their appointment proconsuls reigned monarchically, — 
 accordingly, as we shall see, it was this proconsulare 
 imperium made permanent in a single hand, which formed 
 the main element in the power of the early emperors. 
 
ROME 159 
 
 But in their relations to citizens, the powers of the 
 consuls — in Aristotle's time and later — were very unlike 
 anything he could have called kingly. Not only was (1) 
 the duality a great limitation ; but also (2) the power of 
 check constitutionally given to the tribunes ; moreover, (3) 
 in the latter half of the fourth century the consuls had lost 
 the judicial function, which had been separated off and 
 allotted to the praetors, and the important power of revising 
 the list of senators which now belonged to the censors. 
 Further, as I have said, in all their more important 
 functions they normally acted as a mere executive of the 
 senate, to which body they were effectually subordinate. 
 Originally, no doubt, consular power had a much closer 
 resemblance to kingly powder ; and it is interesting to note 
 the two processes of transition by which first the extensive 
 powers possessed by individual magistrates were gradually 
 differentiated out of the original unity of the royal power ; 
 and then, when the republic changed back into monarchy, 
 the new imperial power grew out of a reunion of some of 
 the divided elements. For though the imperial rule in 
 Eome is introduced at the close of a long period of 
 sanguinary lawlessness, we are not to regard it as essentially 
 irregular and unconstitutional in its nature, like the Greek 
 Tyrannis ; on the contrary, nothing is more remarkable 
 than the efforts of Augustus to drape the new absolutism 
 in the garb of constitutional authority, and fit it in to the 
 complex historical system of powers which had existed 
 before it. 
 
 § 2. Of these two transitions — from monarchy to republic 
 and, after nearly five hundred years, back again from 
 republic to monarchy — the former is veiled from close scrutiny 
 in the mist of legend. We can be sure, as we saw in an earlier 
 lecture,^ that the transition was peculiarly violent in its 
 manner, from the intense and lasting traditional aversion to 
 the idea of kingship which it left behind — an aversion which 
 gave powerful aid to the nobility in the earlier period of 
 the republic, when any popular leader became formidable 
 1 Lecture iv. p. 63. 
 
i6o DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 and had to be crushed ; and even at the close of the 
 republic it is clear from Plutarch that the conspirators 
 against Caesar relied upon this traditional popular aversion. 
 And we can also be sure that the original consuls were 
 much more like kings in the range of their powers than 
 those of more historic times, just as the first magistrates who 
 held ofi&ce for a limited period at Athens were. The early- 
 consuls possessed the judicial function which was after- 
 wards, as I have already said, separated and given to the 
 praetors — the only intervention of the assembly being 
 the right of appeal in the case of capital punishment. They 
 had the revision of the list of the senate, and doubtless 
 considerably greater freedom in the filling up of vacancies 
 than was customarily allowed to the censors of later time ; 
 and they had no tribunes to check them. The only 
 difference in fact between their power and the kingly power 
 was that which inevitably followed from the short duration 
 of the office, which made them effectively responsible after 
 the office was laid down for lawless acts committed during 
 its tenure ; and the check exercised by the " collegiality," 
 as the Germans say — the duality as I have called it — of the 
 consulship. This duality was doubtless introduced with 
 this object. The Eomans did not at first conceive that any 
 outside control could be exercised on the highest magistrate 
 during his tenure of office, without interfering with the 
 effectiveness of government; he might be called to account 
 and severely punished after he had laid down office, but 
 if order was to be preserved, the commands of the consul 
 while consul must be obeyed whether constitutional or 
 unconstitutional. The only way, therefore, of preventing 
 tyrannical acts was to have two consuls, each of whom had 
 the power to intervene and nullify the commands of the 
 other. The danger of divided government — especially at 
 crises — was not overlooked, but it was thought that this was 
 sufficiently avoided by the power reserved to either consul 
 of nominating a dictator for six months. As, however, 
 both consuls belonged to the closed group of old families, 
 during the first century and a half of the republic, the 
 
XI ROME i6i 
 
 check afforded by duality was naturally found insufficient 
 by the plebeians : and hence the tribunate was instituted 
 — with the unlimited right of checking, separated from the 
 right of giving positive commands — to protect the plebs 
 against the consuls. 
 
 Then, as I have already said, other important elements 
 of the kingly power were taken away, piece by piece, and 
 placed under separate management similarly dual or plural. 
 First the censorship was instituted for the management of 
 finance and the periodical revision of the list of citizens, 
 and their arrangement in classes for military and civil 
 purposes, according to the amount of their pecuniary 
 resources. The censors also had, as I have said, the 
 function of filling up vacancies in the list of senators, and 
 an important power of excluding from the higher ranks of 
 senators and knights, on account of scandalous immorality, 
 or even extreme luxury. In the exercise of this delicate 
 function the duality of the censorship was doubtless 
 important, as the influence of private enmities was kept in 
 check by the necessity that both censors should concur in 
 the mark of disgrace. 
 
 Then, further, in the critical year 367 B.C., when one 
 consulship was secured to plebeians, the judicial function — 
 so far as civil jurisdiction went — was separated from the 
 magistracy thus thrown open, and given to a colleague of the 
 consuls — at first only one — called by the old name of praetor. 
 About a century and a half later a second " praetor 
 peregrinus " was added for dealing with suits between 
 foreigners, or citizens and foreigners : then, as the Eoman 
 dominion beyond Italy grew, four more praetors were 
 gradually added — increasing the whole number to six — at 
 first for the administration of the first four transmarine 
 provinces of Eome; but ultimately the establishment of 
 permanent special courts of criminal jurisdiction led to the 
 employment of all six — after Sulla eight — praetors in 
 judicial functions. The provinces were thus definitely 
 handed over to proconsuls and propraetors — i.e. literally 
 *' vice-magistrates " who were normally consuls and praetors 
 
 M 
 
i62 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 with their " imperium " (power over non - citizens and 
 soldiers on service) prolonged for a year after their year of 
 office. The practice of employing these vice -magistrates 
 had gradually become regular and extensive, as the number 
 of provinces increased — praetors being only created for the 
 first four. 
 
 Meanwhile the tribunate had been instituted as above 
 described : and thus we have, while the republic flourishes, 
 the old kingly power — developed and enlarged by the 
 progress of empire and civilisation — exercised in fragments 
 by different magistrates : always on the plan of " collegiality," 
 so far as their civil power over citizens went, though the 
 " imperium " was exercised over non-citizens and soldiers on 
 service by proconsuls and propraetors singly. 
 
 We may note in passing that this splitting up of 
 executive authority naturally tended to increase the practical 
 power of the senate, which supplied the unity that every 
 effective government needs in administration — the unity 
 which in England is supplied by the Cabinet, the control of 
 which over the heads of executive departments has also 
 been developed, like the control of the senate, to meet a 
 practical need, and without any formal constitutional 
 assignment of power. If time allowed, it would be 
 interesting to dwell on the gTadual growth of the senate, 
 from a council with purely advisory functions, customarily 
 asked for advice by the primitive king and afterwards by 
 the early consuls, into the practically supreme organ of 
 ordinary administration with preponderant influence on 
 legislation, which it was — as we have seen — in the third 
 and second centuries B.C., up to the beginning of the 
 revolutionary period. Here I will only say that its power 
 tended naturally to increase as empire grew and civilisation 
 advanced, as the growing amount and variety of the work 
 to be done necessitated a more systematic division and 
 assignment of departments than had been required in 
 earlier days. Thus it was the senate that distributed the 
 different provinces among magistrates and pro-magistrates, 
 and assigned to each his equipment in troops, money, and 
 
XI ROME 163 
 
 staff: and thus ultimately the whole supreme management 
 of public finance, the government of the growing empire, 
 the regulation of foreign affairs, fell practically into its 
 hands. Composed, as it was, largely of ex-ofi&cials on the 
 principle of life membership, it was an excellently con- 
 stituted body for maintaining consistency of policy and 
 preserving and handing on the results of political experience 
 — which the system of annual magistracies rendered it 
 difficult to preserve otherwise. 
 
 § 3. Let us now turn to the transition from an imperial 
 commonwealth to a monarchically ruled empire. I have 
 already indicated that one important cause of this transition 
 is the inadequacy of the form of government adapted to a 
 city-state for the task of imperial rule. This inadequacy 
 has two aspects : (1) in respect of the citizens of the 
 Eoman state ; and (2) in respect of the allies or subjects. 
 
 It was inadequate so far as the citizens were concerned, 
 because of the unwieldy size to which the old city-state had 
 swollen by the process partly of expansion, partly of semi- 
 compulsory absorption of neighbours, which has been 
 described in the preceding lecture. At the same time this 
 enlargement of size was from another point of view necessary 
 to render Kome physically strong enough for the work of 
 conquest and empire. Had the Eoman state kept itself 
 within the limits that seemed to the Greek thinkers 
 desirable — and that were desirable for the satisfactory 
 working of the political institutions of a city-state with 
 supreme power formally vested in an assembly of citizens 
 meeting in the forum — had it kept within these limits, 
 then, however valorous the Eomans might have been man 
 for man, the mere fewness of their numbers would have 
 rendered it impossible for them to hold and keep an empire. 
 Still, though the growth was none too large for the work 
 that Eome was called to accomplish, it inevitably rendered 
 the form of government unsuitable to so expanded a 
 community. At the same time when the century of 
 revolutionary transition was begun by Tiberius Gracchus 
 (133 B.C.), the state was, as we have seen, from another 
 
i64 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 point of view, too restricted, since the Italian allies were 
 still outside, for when Latin civilisation had spread through 
 the peninsula, the political difference in Italy between 
 Koman citizens and others was felt to be a survival without 
 justification. Finally the government was inadequate so 
 far as the provincial subjects of Eome outside Italy were 
 concerned, in consequence of the imperfect control main- 
 tained by the central government over the " vice-magistrates," 
 who exercised almost monarchical powers in their respective 
 provinces and too often used their power unscrupulously 
 as a means of private gain. 
 
 Then, as I explained in the last lecture, under the 
 influence of empire the efficiency of the central government 
 steadily decayed in its two elements, the aristocratic and 
 the democratic, alike. The corruption of the governing 
 nobility, through the plunder of the provinces, brought with 
 it a concomitant demoralisation of the popular assembly by 
 their share of the plunder; and this latter effect was 
 aggravated by the extension of the citizenship beyond the 
 limits within which an effective community of civic senti- 
 ment, and a tolerable representation of the citizens by the 
 assembly in Eome, could be maintained. And the condition 
 was one in which the removal of one defect must tend to 
 aggravate another. 
 
 In short, when Rome with its circumjacent territory, 
 and the network of colonies beyond, counted close on 
 400,000 citizen- soldiers, the city-state was already strained 
 to its utmost limits, though the citizenship of the colonies 
 was recognised as only latent. But when the political 
 inequality between the Eomans and their Italian allies was 
 at length in the main removed, and the latter had forced 
 their way into citizenship, and the Eoman state extended 
 continuously through the peninsula — to the Po, and then 
 up to the Alps — both the pretensions of the metropolitan 
 mob to represent what had now practically become a 
 country-state grew more palpably absurd, and the mob itself 
 got worse. 
 
 Further, a corresponding, fateful change took place in 
 
ROME 165 
 
 the army. Up to the end of the second century B.C., the 
 old idea of military duty imposed on citizens with a certain 
 property qualification retained its force : the citizen-militia 
 felt itself to be the Eoman people in arms, the tie of civic 
 sentiment that united the members to each other was real 
 and strong, and in their corporate sentiment the sense of 
 belonging to the Eoman constitutional state predominated 
 over the sense of being the army of a given general. But 
 in the first century B.C. — after Marius — all this is changed : 
 the extension of citizenship diminishes the civic sentiment ; 
 an increasing part of the army — cavalry, light -troops, 
 slingers — comes to consist of non- citizens; even for the 
 infantry the old property qualification is abandoned, the 
 army is formed by voluntary enlistment from all citizens 
 indiscriminately ; it comes to consist more and more of 
 the more unstable elements of the population, attracted by 
 the hope of plunder and ultimate allotments of land, for 
 which they look to their general : thus the tie that binds 
 the army to the general comes to be stronger than the 
 sentiment of civic duty, and the army has become an 
 appropriate organ of military despotism. 
 
 This is perhaps the most decisive element in the causes 
 of transition. Sulla could restore the old aristocratic 
 system, giving the Senate greater formal power than before ; 
 but he could not restore the predominance of the govern- 
 ment of the city over the masters of the legions. 
 
 When, by the instances of Marius and Sulla, of Pompeius 
 and Caesar, this inevitable predominance of military com- 
 mand, and the impotence of the civic authorities to resist it, 
 were abundantly manifest, the only possible mode of main- 
 taining order and the unity of the empire would seem to be 
 to concentrate the command of the legions permanently in 
 one hand. But in the first period of the empire this is not 
 done by openly creating a monarch, but merely by concentrat- 
 ing in one hand and making permanent the powers which 
 republican proconsuls had always exercised in the provinces. 
 Instead of many proconsuls and propraetors succeeding each 
 other with powers practically almost independent within 
 
i66 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 the limits of their provinces — only under the palpably 
 inadequate control exercised by the danger of a prosecution 
 after their return — and coming with ever-fresh greed to the 
 brief opportunities of plunder, we have a supreme procon- 
 sular power extending over all the provinces and all the 
 legions. And there can be no doubt that, notwithstanding 
 all the troubles caused by the doubtful imperial elections, 
 the provinces gained vastly by the change during the 
 period of the early Empire; for Syria, Egypt, Spain, 
 Gaul, Africa, the early Empire is a time of marked material 
 well-being. 
 
 The primary element, then, of the original imperial 
 authority consisted of the proconsular power concentrated 
 and made permanent. The emperor is not king over 
 Eoman citizens, but he is "master of thirty legions of 
 Eoman soldiers." And it is to be noted that such a change 
 was much less offensive to the traditional constitutional 
 sentiment of Eome than if Augustus had made himself 
 perpetual consul — as he seems to have first intended — or 
 dictator ; because the proconsular power, exercised only over 
 provincials and soldiers on service, had always been con- 
 ceived as more indefinite in extent and duration than the 
 power of any urban magistrate. And, to soften the transi- 
 tion still further, Augustus was careful to leave such 
 provinces as could be administered without any considerable 
 number of soldiers as " senatorial " to be governed by pro- 
 consuls and propraetors just as in Eepublican times. His 
 extended " imperium," indeed, carried with it an unlimited 
 control of foreign affairs, peace, war, treaties, which of old 
 belonged constitutionally to the assembly : still, in domestic 
 affairs, the distinction between Italy and the provinces 
 generally ^ was retained during the first century of the 
 empire : Eome was still formally governed by senate and 
 consuls and praetors, and under Augustus, the election to 
 these offices seems to have been to some extent really 
 
 ^ I say the distinction between Italy and the provinces generally, because 
 — as we know from the Acts of the Apostles — certain favoured provincial 
 cities had special privileges of Roman citizenship. 
 
ROME 167 
 
 independent. In relation to the Eoman citizens the main 
 element of the power normally exercised by the emperor 
 was the tribunitian power. Augustus has other qualifica- 
 tions : he exercises censorial power when necessary ; is 
 chief pontiff permanently ; consul occasionally to dignify 
 the office ; but he primarily presents himself to the Eoman 
 people as holding tribunitian power year after year. The 
 popular associations of the name of tribune, the special 
 sanctity and inviolability attached to it, its traditional 
 unlimitedness at least in the function of restraint, were 
 doubtless the considerations that dictated the choice of this 
 office as the mode of transition. 
 
 But over and above all this the emperor had expressly 
 an extraordinary power of doing whatever was necessary 
 for the honour and welfare of the state ; and doubtless from 
 the first his will was felt to be practically irresistible. 
 Gradually, before very long, the scaffolding of quasi- 
 republican institutions was knocked away, and the un- 
 limited monarch stood revealed, as the legitimate successor 
 of the Eoman people in all supreme legislative, executive, 
 and judicial authority. Then, when under Caracalla, at the 
 beginning of the third century a.d., Eoman citizenship is 
 bestowed on all subjects of Eome, the last relics of the 
 distinction between Italy and the provinces fall away, 
 and the old city - state has finally vanished in the 
 Empire. 
 
LECTUKE XII 
 
 FUNCTIONS OF GOVERNMENT AND RELATION OF LAW TO 
 GOVERNMENT IN GREECE AND ROME 
 
 § 1. I PASS to contemplate the Greco-Eoman polity from 
 a different point of view, considering not the form of govern- 
 ment, and especially the part of the community in which 
 supreme power lies, which is what the ordinary classification 
 — oligarchy, democracy, etc. — considers, but rather the work 
 government does, especially the relation of government to 
 law. 
 
 Now, as regards the general conception of the functions 
 of government in Greco-Eoman polity, there is a view 
 widely current which contains an important element of 
 truth, but, as often stated, is one-sided and misleading. It 
 is said that the " ancient omnipotent governments " unlike 
 " modern constitutional ones," " knew nothing of individual 
 rights as contrasted with the rights of the state," and that 
 *' Greece was not a whit behind Eome in the absoluteness 
 with which she held the subordination of the individual to 
 the state." ^ Observe that in such a comparison we must 
 take " modern constitutional state " to mean not merely a 
 state in which the structure of government is fixed by a 
 constitution providing for the intervention of the people in 
 government, directly or by representatives, but one in which 
 the power of government is limited by certain fundamental 
 rights of individual citizens {e.g. rights of free press, free meet- 
 ing, free exercise of religion, etc.) : — rights expressly recog- 
 nised in the constitution of the United States of America, 
 
 1 Cf. Mr. Woodrow Wilson's book on The State, p. 641. Cf. also Bluntschli, 
 Theory of the State, Book i. chap. vi. 
 
 i68 
 
LECT. XII GOVERNMENT IN GREECE AND ROME 169 
 
 and most of the West European constitutions, though not 
 in the English, in which the power of King, Lords, and 
 Commons has no definitely recognised limits. 
 
 Now, it is quite true that any such definite limitations 
 of the power of the community to regulate the lives of 
 individuals is alien from the idea of the state both in Greece 
 and Eome.^ Not that Plato or Aristotle recognise any end 
 of the state higher than the well-being of individuals ; but 
 they do not conceive government as properly limited in its 
 efforts to promote the well-being of the governed by any 
 fundamental rights of individuals, which it is bound 
 not to infringe. And in the ideal of the philosophers — 
 especially Plato — a very extensive and minute interfer- 
 ence in the private lives of individuals was conceived as 
 desirable. 
 
 But when we turn from theory to fact, and ask what 
 the Greek or the Eoman governments actually did, we find 
 that outside Sparta the practical difference between ancient 
 and modern conceptions of the function of government is 
 very much less. Certainly the regulation of the life of the 
 Spartan citizen is very markedly unlike anything modern; and 
 Sparta, as we have seen, is, in fact, the point of departure which 
 the world of fact supplies for the constructive imagination of 
 the philosopher. At Sparta (e.^.) we learn that a man 
 could be prosecuted for marrying late, and marrying badly, 
 as well as for celibacy ; and Plato {Laws) proposed to 
 inflict fines and disabilities on men who remained unmarried 
 after thirty-five. But Sparta, in historic Greece, has an 
 almost isolated position. If we take Athens the impression 
 is very different ; and we have, already noted Plato's reason 
 for putting democracy as the worst of good and the best 
 of bad governments, namely, that it governs very little.^ 
 This was in contrast to Sparta especially. 
 
 Looking closer we observe, first, that there are two 
 
 ^ Although the conception of natural rights of man as man, on which these 
 limitations are justified, may be partly traced to the influence of Greek 
 philosophy on Roman law, as we shall see presently. 
 
 2 Lect. VII. pp. 113, 114. 
 
I70 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 general differences between ancient and modern states, 
 which account for greater intervention of the state in two 
 ways : — (1) Separation of Church and State is unknown ; 
 therefore regulation of religious ceremonies is naturally 
 regarded as belonging to ordinary government. Thus 
 Aristotle includes priests and other religious officers among 
 state officials as a matter of course. It naturally followed 
 from this that " impiety " was a subject of prosecution as 
 a public offence.^ (2) Predominance of war, and con- 
 sequently of military duty of citizens, especially as com- 
 pared with industry. This is largely due to a lower stage 
 of civilisation, in which greater disasters are liable to be 
 inflicted by failure in war. Still, even so, though the dif- 
 ference is striking when we compare Greek states with 
 England or the United States of America, it is not very 
 material if we compare them with the continental states of 
 Western Europe, especially when — in the fourth century — 
 the coercion on ordinary citizens to fight had come to be 
 relieved by employment of mercenaries. 
 
 If, putting religion and war aside, we consider the 
 intervention of government in the peaceful secular life of 
 the citizens — in respect of the security of person and reputa- 
 tion, in matters of property, contract, and inheritance — no 
 fundamental difference appears ; no kind of socialistic inter- 
 ference with personal freedom, property, or contract. When 
 we look through the list of actions, public and private, or 
 the list of officials at Athens, or the offices treated as normal 
 by Aristotle, we find no sign of any excessive rdglementation. 
 We hear of controllers of markets (ayopavo/jboi) whose 
 business it was to prevent fraud and disorder, of com- 
 missioners of the city (darvvo/jbov) who had to prevent 
 private houses from encroaching on the public streets. But 
 prevention of fraud, disorder, encroachment on public streets, 
 would come within the most strictly individualistic system. 
 The only important kind of interference which we find at 
 Athens markedly opposed to modern individualistic ideas was 
 
 ^ Cf. the prosecution of Socrates — though Aristophanes shows that the 
 duty of reverence was not conceived with puritanical strictness. 
 
XII LAW AND GOVERNMENT IN GREECE AND ROME 171 
 
 in the elaborate and drastic regulations made to secure an 
 artificially abundant supply of the staff of life. Exporta- 
 tion of corn was forbidden ; consignment of corn to any 
 other port than Athens made a capital offence ; of the 
 corn brought in foreign vessels into the Piraeus — the port 
 of Athens — two-thirds had to be sold in Athens. Conspiracies 
 to buy up the corn in the market or raise the price were 
 punishable with death. Ten or twenty " corn-warders " 
 ((TiTo<^v\aKe<i) kept statistics of the corn imported, took care 
 that the grain was sold at a reasonable price, that the price 
 charged by millers for barleymeal corresponded to the price 
 of barley, and the price charged by bakers for loaves to the 
 price of wheat. This regulation was, no doubt, more strict 
 and drastic than anything in modern Europe ; still, the 
 economic view even of modern Europe, until Adam Smith's 
 influence prevailed, entirely supported the general line of 
 policy. 
 
 On the whole, then, the contrast between the practice 
 of so-called "omnipotent" governments of the ancient 
 world and the practice of modern governments does not 
 come to much so far as interference in the ordinary civil 
 life and transactions is concerned. 
 
 § 2. When, however, we turn to consider the general rela- 
 tion of law to government in the ancient and modern views 
 of it, the result of the comparison is rather the other way. 
 The making of law is more important in the modern view 
 of the function of government than in the ancient. The 
 general conception of the relation passes through various 
 phases as the process of civilisation goes on ; it is different 
 and much closer at a later stage of development as com- 
 pared with earlier stages. In our present view of govern- 
 mental functions we commonly distinguish (1) Legislative, (2) 
 Executive,^ (3) Judicial ; and consider the organ answering 
 to (1) as naturally supreme, as determining the rules applied 
 by the judicature and carried into effect by the executive, 
 
 ^ I consider them here in relation to internal functions of government. 
 * * Executive " is a bad word for management of foreign affairs, in which so 
 much less can be regulated by general rules. 
 
172 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 and naturally in constant activity. We do not, of course, 
 suppose that the amount of change which any given 
 legislature will introduce will bear a great proportion to 
 the whole body of law handed down ; but we consider 
 that it is constitutionally competent to change any part of 
 it — i.e., that either the ordinary legislature or the con- 
 stituent body ^ is so competent ; and that the normal 
 function of the ordinary legislature, supplemented by the 
 occasional action of the constituent body, is to be continually 
 introducing such changes as may be required in the 
 progress of society, either in consequence of alterations 
 in outward circumstances, or alterations in ideas and senti- 
 ments. We consider that law which remains unaltered 
 may be properly conceived to remain so because it is 
 approved by the legislature or the constituent body that, 
 having the power to alter it, does not do so. And thus we 
 reach Austin's conception of Positive Law as equivalent to 
 commands of, or rules laid down by whatever individual, 
 body, or combination of bodies is ultimately supreme ; 
 so that the fundamental notions of law and government 
 are intimately and inseparably connected. 
 
 But this view of the intimate connection of law and 
 sovereign or supreme government is not applicable at 
 earlier stages of development. This is well known to 
 readers of Maine. The contrary is implied in the account 
 of the development of law in Ancient Law, ch. i. and ii. ; 
 and it is more expressly asserted in the criticism of Austin 
 in the Early History of Institutions, ch. xii., xiii. Maine 
 points out that in the primitive condition of the Aryan 
 race, " the organ, which in the elementary group corresponds 
 to what we call the legislature ... is the village council, 
 sometimes owning a responsibility to the entire body of 
 villagers, sometimes disclaiming it, sometimes overshadowed 
 by the authority of an hereditary chief, but never entirely 
 
 ^ Observe the distinction, in modern states generally, between certain 
 fundamental rules or principles which form part of the political constitution, 
 and ordinary laws. It requires all the more attention from Englishmen, because 
 their polity is an exceptional one, in which this distinction is not formally 
 introduced. 
 
XII LAW AND GOVERNMENT IN GREECE AND ROME 173 
 
 obscured." ^ But, as he explains, when we look closely we 
 see that these village councils are not really legislative. "The 
 various shades of the power lodged with the village council 
 . . . are not distinguished from one another, nor does the 
 mind see a clear difference between making a law, declar- 
 ing a law, and punishing an offender against a law. If the 
 powers of this body must be described by modern names, 
 that which lies most in the background is legislative power, 
 that which is most distinctly conceived is judicial power. 
 The laws obeyed are regarded as having always existed, and 
 usages really new are confounded with the really old. The 
 village-communities ... do not, therefore, exercise true 
 legislative power so long as they remain under primitive 
 influences." ^ And this last statement is true of the larger 
 bodies formed by the closer cohesion of a number of 
 separate settlements of real or assumed kinsmen, which 
 we find at the outset of the history of the Greek city-state. 
 The general rules that govern the civil conduct of the 
 tribesmen are not the general commands of any ruling 
 individual or assembly. Indeed, in the earliest stage of 
 which we catch a glimpse in the Homeric poems they are 
 hardly as yet definitely conceived as general rules at all. 
 As Maine says, "the only authoritative statement of right 
 and wrong is a judicial sentence after the facts''^ pronounced 
 by the primitive king acting, not as legislator, but as 
 judge. 
 
 This state of things has passed away at the commence- 
 ment of the historic period ; and when, as I described in 
 Lecture IV., the early oligarchy has succeeded primitive 
 kingship in Greece, we have come definitely to what 
 Maine calls the "epoch of Customary Law," — unwritten, 
 but supposed to be definitely known to the ruling class.* 
 And however much the ruling few in their judicial de- 
 cisions, in which this customary law was declared and 
 applied, may have warped it in their class interest, it is 
 clear that neither they nor the subjects over whom they 
 
 ^ Early History of Institutions, p. 388. 2 /j^^ pp^ 388-89. 
 
 ' Ancient Law, p. 8. ■* lUd, p. 12. 
 
174 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 ruled conceived them as having the function of laying it 
 down. 
 
 Then, as I noticed before, discontent with the oligarchical 
 administration of unwritten law and, as Maine adds, the 
 diffusion of the art of writing led to a widespread adoption 
 of written codes in these communities.-^ But it did not 
 follow from this that law was conceived as something which 
 the ordinary government was constitutionally competent to 
 modify indefinitely. Nor does this view ever seem to 
 have been completely reached by the Greek mind. Even 
 in Aristotle's view, legislation does not hold anything like 
 the place that it does in a modern scheme of governmental 
 functions. Aristotle distinguishes governmental functions 
 not as legislative, executive, judicial, but as deliberative, 
 executive or magisterial, judicial, and in his account of the 
 functions of the deliberative body — whether the general 
 assembly of citizens in a democracy, or a limited number in 
 an oligarchy — legislation, though mentioned, has not a 
 prominent place. ^ The deliberative element," he says, " has 
 authority in matters of war and peace, in making and un- 
 making alliances ; it passes laws, inflicts d^th, exile, con- 
 fiscation, audits the accounts of magistrates." ^^ Law-making 
 is here evidently quite subordinate. And Aristotle else- 
 where gives a reason why the power of modifying law, which 
 must reside in the sovereign, should not be brought into 
 continual operation. " Sometimes, and in certain cases," he 
 says, " laws should be changed ; but . . . great caution 
 would seem to be required. For the habit of lightly 
 changing the laws is an evil, and when the advantage is 
 small, some errors of lawgivers . . . had better be left ; the 
 citizen will not gain so much by the change as he will lose 
 by the habit of disobedience to authority. The analogy of 
 the arts is misleading : a change in the law of a state is a 
 very different thing from a change in the rules of an art. 
 
 ^ See Lecture vi., pp. 89, 90. Cf. Maine, Ancient Law, chap. i. — I cannot 
 agree with Maine that codes generally included no new law. We cannot now 
 tell how much {e.g.) Solon innovated ; doubtless his innovations were 
 exaggerated, but there is no reason to suppose that he did not innovate at all. 
 
 2 Pol. VI. (IV.) ch. xiv. 
 
XII LAW AND GOVERNMENT IN GREECE AND ROME 175 
 
 For the force of a law depends upon a habit of obedience, 
 which can only be given by time; so that a readiness to 
 change from old to new laws enfeebles the power of the 
 law." 1 
 
 Observe that altering the law is spoken of by Aristotle 
 as if it were a kind of " disobedience to authority." 
 This, I think, shows impressively the difference between 
 our view of legislation as a normal element of the political 
 life of our society and the view naturally taken by 
 Aristotle's readers. Though laws were continually changed 
 in Athens and other Greek city-states, it still remained 
 alien to the Hellenic view of law to regard it simply as the 
 product of the popular will. His view is, in fact, in an 
 interesting way intermediate between that belonging to the 
 period when law is either ancient unwritten customs, or 
 written rules only altered under the fiction of interpreta- 
 tion, and our modern view of legislation normally modifiable 
 by the supreme government. On the one hand, as we have 
 seen, he recognises that the deliberative body — in demo- 
 cracies a sovereign popular assembly — is Kvpiov Trepl vo/jlcov, 
 supreme in matters of legislation. On the other hand, he 
 emphatically condemns as the worst kind of democracy, 
 that in which the decrees of the popular assembly override 
 the established laws. 
 
 And, in fact, the institutions of Athens in the fourth 
 century — the period of fully - developed democracy — 
 correspond to this view of law as something which must 
 be altered, but which it is dangerous to alter lightly. 
 First, as we saw,^ the Athenian assembly, though it 
 alone could initiate changes in the laws, did not 
 finally decide them : the final decision was given to 
 a select body of legislators appointed for the occasion 
 from the sworn jurymen for the year. Secondly, what 
 is more startling, the bringing forward of an inexpedient 
 law was an indictable offence, for which, for a year 
 after, a man was liable to be prosecuted. This is so 
 strange to the modern mind that a distinguished scholar, 
 1 Politics, II. ch. viii. 2 Lecture vii. p. 106. 
 
176 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 Madvig, held it to be impossible; he thought that the 
 inexpediency of the law must be an irrelevant topic, 
 introduced rhetorically in the loose Greek way to influence 
 the large popular juries that gave the verdict, and that 
 strictly the only ground for prosecution was some failure 
 to conform to the legally prescribed method of legislation. 
 But the recently discovered account of the Athenian con- 
 stitution leaves no doubt that the inexpediency of the law 
 was a formally recognised ground of prosecution.^ 
 
 § 3. Turning now to Rome we can trace more fully the 
 steps of the process by which the idea and fact of govern- 
 ment as normally and constantly legislative were reached. 
 We assume, indeed, rather than historically trace the first 
 stage in which law is a habit rather than a custom ; ^ in 
 which the institutions of the family, property, contract 
 actually exist in a rude form ; the members of the tribe 
 ordinarily fulfil the mutual obligations involved in these 
 institutions, but they are not conscious of being governed 
 by general rules in so doing ; only when any of the 
 latent rules is violated in a marked way, it leads to a 
 quarrel in deciding which recognised custom is appealed to ; 
 and when the violation of rules is felt to be very grave, it 
 leads to condemnation of the violator as an offender against 
 the community. This legal condemnation is doubtless pro- 
 nounced by the king, whose internal functions are probably 
 here as elsewhere at first mainly judicial. Gradually, we 
 may suppose, out of this habit is developed the conscious- 
 ness of express but unwritten customs or laws, which the 
 citizen of Rome regards at once with reverence and with 
 pride as his peculiar possession, his special protection 
 against violent, arbitrary, oppressive conduct on the part 
 of his fellow-citizens. But so long as the law remains 
 unwritten the protection is not found to be adequate, as 
 against the temptation of the magistrate to warp the 
 custoinary law in the interest of the class to which he 
 belongs, or to show bias in favour of an individual 
 oppressive member of the class. Hence the demand for 
 
 1 A^. TToX. 59. ^ Cf. Maine, Ancietit Law, p. 8. 
 
XII LAW AND GOVERNMENT IN GREECE AND ROME 177 
 
 a code which results in the written law of the Twelve 
 Tables (about 450 B.C.), framed by the famous commission 
 of ten decemvirs. 
 
 It is to be observed that this famous code was not 
 exactly a statement in writing of the unwritten law, as 
 Maine might suggest {Ancient Law, pp. 14, 15). It was 
 both something less and something more than this. Some- 
 thing less, because it is clear that many departments of 
 law about which, we may suppose, no serious dispute had 
 arisen, were only dealt with incidentally and partially, — a 
 general knowledge was presumed of {e.g.) the institutions 
 of the family, the fundamental rules of succession, the most 
 important and familiar legal acts, such as the legal conveyance 
 of property {mancipatio), the legal form of contract for loan 
 {nexum). The Twelve Tables had, in short, a practical aim, 
 to restore confidence in such parts of the law as were com- 
 plained of as unequal, defective, or oppressive to plebeians ; 
 and the selection of topics on which legal rules were laid 
 down was determined by this practical aim. But, secondly, 
 though doubtless the Eoman sense of right was far too 
 closely bound by custom and tradition to admit of any 
 great or important changes being introduced from abroad, 
 still, when we are told that the formation of the code was 
 preceded by a mission to Greece and the Greek towns of 
 southern Italy to study their statutes, and when we find 
 that the Twelve Tables contained almost literal transcripts 
 from the legislation of Solon — we can hardly, I think, sup- 
 pose that the object of the mission was merely to learn how 
 to express and arrange a customary law that was con- 
 ceived as unalterable. It is evident that some change was 
 admitted in the previously established law, and that the 
 Eomans were prepared to avail themselves of the wisdom 
 of the Greeks as regards its matter as well as its form. 
 The Commission of Ten that had the function of codif)^ing 
 must have been considered as to a certain extent legis- 
 lating, though doubtless the changes introduced were not 
 large in proportion to the whole. Indeed, it would be 
 hardly conceivable that a community which in (say) 509 B.C. 
 
 N 
 
178 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect 
 
 had made so great a change in their customary public 
 law as to " put the monarchy into commission " as Maine 
 says/ and had thus been launched on a career of con- 
 stitutional change which at the date of the codification had 
 lasted more than fifty years — it is difficult to conceive that 
 such a community could still have regarded its private law 
 (law regulating the relations of citizens to each other) as 
 something altogether unchangeable, like the laws of the 
 Medes and Persians. And, in fact, though legislation in 
 private law was scanty for more than two centuries after 
 the publication of the code it was not non-existent. We 
 read (e.^.) of laws relating to marriage, to usury, and 
 the nexal contract (contract for loan), changes in actions 
 for debt, and for damages for injury to property, etc. 
 
 § 4. Still, though there was some legislation, legislation 
 was not at this period — nor, indeed, for several centuries 
 later — the means by which the development of law, required 
 to meet the changes in social needs and sentiments, was 
 mainly brought about. For more than two centuries the 
 leading method of modifying the law was under the guise of 
 interpretation, by the " answers of the learned " — originally 
 the pontiffs, afterwards professional jurists. Maine compares 
 this process of development to that by which the English 
 common law was modified by judicial decisions — the differ- 
 ence being that in England the judge who really altered 
 the law while feigning to expound it, was himself a legal 
 expert of the first rank, whereas in Rome the magistrate 
 who controlled legal procedure — the consul up to 367 B.C., 
 afterwards the praetor — was rather a politician than a 
 lawyer. Thus in Eome the real modifying influence in this 
 first period was, as Maine says, " the bar, not the bench " — 
 learned counsel, becoming as civilisation and differentiation 
 went on, more and more a professional class of jurists. 
 
 Now it is obvious that this method of altering the law 
 
 under the guise of interpretation tends through its own 
 
 success to be continually restricted to a narrower sphere ; 
 
 for as point after point, originally ambiguous, is made 
 
 ^ Ancient Law, p. 62. 
 
XII LAW AND GOVERNMENT IN GREECE AND ROME 179 
 
 definite by interpretation, it becomes less and less possible 
 to introduce further changes of any magnitude in the same 
 way. Thus though the industry of the jurisconsults went 
 on increasing, and indeed became more and more the work of 
 experts, it also tended more and more to become really a 
 work of interpretation, and no longer modified important 
 points. 
 
 When this point is reached, the obvious resource would 
 seem to be legislation, and towards the close of the repub- 
 lican period the legislation of the popular assembly becomes 
 an active source of new law. But before this — in Eoman 
 as in English law — another method of legal change was 
 actively applied ; — the over-riding of law by equity applied 
 by the magistrate. In Eome, in the latter part of the 
 history of the republic, the chief instrument of this was the 
 praetor's edict, which gave notice annually of the remedies 
 for wrongs that he would allow during his term of office. 
 This edict, which though strictly only in force for a year, 
 was practically handed on from one magistrate to another, 
 was a continual means of modifying the law in the direc- 
 tion demanded by men's common sense of what was right 
 and just. 
 
 And this process was doubtless aided by the develop- 
 ment of the jus gentium in the hands of the "praetor 
 peregrinus " — a magistrate appointed, as we have seen, soon 
 after the middle of the third century B.C., with the special 
 function of settling legal quarrels between aliens or between 
 Komans and aliens. This working out of a regular system 
 of private law applicable to aliens as well as Eomans — 
 something new in the history of these ancient city-states — 
 seems to have reacted importantly on the development of 
 Eoman municipal law as modified by the edict of the 
 " praetor urbanus." 
 
 § 5. It is clear that the development of the kind of law 
 afterwards known Sisjus gentium was entirely due to practical 
 needs ; and we may connect it with the development of 
 Eoman trade. As Eome's power grew by conquest Eoman 
 trade began to develop, increasing in extent and magnitude. 
 
i8o DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 Foreign merchants — Tyrian, Carthaginian, Greek, Sicilian, 
 Massaliot — came to Eome to find a market ; and this access 
 of strangers kept bringing continually more and more 
 numerous foreign elements. Then in the end of the third 
 and in the second century B.C., under Greek influence, a 
 more liberal spirit towards strangers seems to have entered 
 Eome with increasing force. This period, therefore, would 
 be a natural time for the development of a jus gentium, 
 based on principles which, as a matter of fact, were 
 found to be generally accepted by the members of the 
 various nations for whom the law was framed.^ It was not 
 at first regarded as in any way superior to the jus civile of 
 Eome. On the contrary, this latter was a privilege of 
 citizens, which, according to the traditional view, could 
 only be partially shared by treaty by the citizens of other 
 states. 
 
 But just because the law, applied to transactions between 
 persons of different communities, was of necessity devoid of 
 the historic peculiarities of the laws of the different states, 
 it was freed from the survivals of archaic forms and archaic 
 limitations ; it thus represented more simply and com- 
 pletely the stage in the conceptions of natural right and 
 justice which the Eoman mind — and the mind of contem- 
 porary nations — had reached. Hence gradually the jus 
 gentium, as compared with the jus civile, rises from a position 
 of inferiority to one of superiority. First, the Eomans, 
 without reflection on principles, or any abandonment of the 
 
 1 As regards the development of jus gentium, Maine in Ancient Law, 
 chap, iii., suggests rather too much conscious investigation and induction 
 from observation of the different Italian communities. I do not conceive 
 the process thus. For (1) we must take in Greeks and Carthaginians as 
 well as Italians. Rome had a treaty with Carthage long before the appoint- 
 ment of the praetor peregrinus ; and (2) the process was not one of systematic 
 nvestigation and induction ; the effort to do justice led them to the common 
 element in law. The development of jus gentium must not be ascribed too 
 entirely to the sole work of the praetor peregrinus: "a large part of the 
 actions for enforcing jus gentium were civil, not honorary " ; from which it 
 may be inferred that so far it was developed by gradual adaptation from 
 jus civile. Still, the influence of the praetor peregrinus was doubtlesa 
 important. 
 
XII LAW AND GOVERNMENT IN GREECE AND ROME i8i 
 
 older view of the essential connection of jus and respuUica, 
 apply their practical genius for law-making to meet the 
 actually felt needs of their intercourse with foreigners, 
 and make a " ;privatreclitliclies jus gentium " — private law 
 common to nations. Then under the influence of Greek, 
 especially Stoic philosophy, the notion of a law of nature 
 applicable to man as man, higher than the ordinances of 
 particular states, becomes dominant. Then, finally, as 
 Greek thought influences the more practical mind of Eome, 
 forced by its development to a kind of cosmopolitanism, 
 the conceptions of jus naturale and jus gentium unite 
 and produce the great source of the later alterations 
 of the Eoman law.^ This fusion does not seem to begin 
 before the age of Cicero — some way on in the first century 
 B.C. The connection of jus naturale and jus gentium only 
 appears in a rudimentary form in Cicero's treatise; and 
 Cicero seems, in fact, to have been the first to popularise 
 Greek philosophy in Eome. But from his time it went on 
 increasing, and seems to have been the predominant influence 
 in the work of the jurists of the early empire. 
 
 It does not, of course, fall within my limits to give even 
 in outline any complete account of the transforming influ- 
 ence of the jits gentium operating through the praetor's 
 edict. But two main points in its work — illustrated by 
 Maine's later chapters — may be noticed : — 1. " Eegard for 
 blood-relationship " in the distribution of inheritance, which 
 led the praetors — probably early in the imperial period — to 
 place emancipated children on an equality with unemanci- 
 pated, and to admit the claims of collateral kindred through 
 females in opposition to the old principle of agnatic suc- 
 cession. 2. Eegard to the substance of a contract, or other 
 legal transaction — to the real intention of the contracting 
 parties, as distinct from the forms used by them — as 
 
 1 I doubt Maine's view {Ancient Law, chap, iii.) that the Romans were 
 preserved from the defects of Greek law by the notion of a Law of Nature. 
 I think it was more by not having large popular courts. Nor do I see any 
 clear evidence that the theory of Natural Law was important in preventing 
 immobile rigidity. The political instability of the City-State — as evidenced 
 by Roman constitutional history — seems enough to produce this effect. 
 
i82 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 illustrated by Maine in the case both of Will and of Contract. 
 It is easy to see how each of these principles — but especi- 
 ally the latter — would be likely to prevail first in the 
 administration of law for aliens, who would not know or 
 use the Eoman forms of contract and testatio, and might 
 have never had or long since got rid of the archaic rule of 
 agnatic relationship. 
 
 Perhaps it may be thought that I have dwelt too long 
 on matters more important for the student of legal history 
 than for the student of the development of polity. But, in 
 fact, the conception that ultimately governed Eoman equity 
 — the notion of a law of nature and natural rights ^ belong- 
 ing to man as man, and of higher validity than the laws 
 and legal rights which any particular state may have 
 determined for itself — though only of jural importance to 
 the Eomans, becomes of far wider political importance in 
 modern history.^ It becomes, in fact, an important factor in 
 the movement of thought which leads ultimately to the 
 French Eevolution ; for the principles that ' men are by 
 nature free ' and ' men are by nature equal ' are principles 
 of this jus naturce. 
 
 And here I must notice one point in which Maine 
 requires qualifying. He says in his Ancient Law, ch. iii., 
 that jus gentium and jus naturce were practically con- 
 vertible ; and no doubt this is true in almost all cases. 
 But just in the one case with which we as students of 
 political science are specially concerned, the divergence 
 and conflict between the law of nature and the law actually 
 recognised by nations is most distinctly and impressively 
 recognised by Eoman jurists — that is, the principle that 
 
 1 "We have no English word exactly for "jus," "droit," "recht." "Law" 
 will often do, but the terms mean the complex of rights and obligations 
 established by the law. 
 
 2 Speaking summarily, we may say that whereas in the development of 
 Rome its effect is important in the region of civil law, so in modern history 
 it is important in the region of international and constitutional law (see 
 below, Lectures xxiv. to xxvi.). Still, even in ancient thought the con- 
 ception of a law of nature of supreme validity supplies a theoretical balance 
 to the omnipotence of the state to make its own laws. This applies to the 
 early Empire ; after Constantine there is the Church. 
 
xii LAW AND GOVERNMENT IN GREECE AND ROME 183 
 
 all men are by nature free. They all agree that slavery is 
 legitimate jure gentiii7ii ; and I think that they affirm with 
 equal unanimity — and without any attempt to gloss over 
 the contradiction — that it is contrary to the jus naturce} 
 It is true that this * natural freedom ' remains without 
 obvious effect in the Roman jurist's conception of actual 
 rights ; they do not draw from it the inference that slavery 
 ought to be abolished at once or as soon as possible. But 
 its effect on their medieval pupils was very different, and 
 under the powerful co-operation of Christian sentiment this 
 principle became an important influence in the direction of 
 the abolition of slavery long before its influence had passed 
 from civil to constitutional law, and it became one of the 
 principles of 1789. 
 
 1 See Appendix, Note E. 
 
LECTUEE XIII 
 
 TRANSITION TO MEDIEVAL HISTORY 
 
 § 1. In the last lecture I traced briefly the development of 
 the law in Eome ; with the special object of showing for 
 how long a period it is, in the main, independent of the 
 intervention of government. From the stage at which, as 
 Maine says, it is rather a habit than a custom, we traced it 
 into the stage of unwritten custom ; then when this is 
 felt to give too much opportunity for oppression, there comes 
 the famous codification of important portions of it about 450 
 B.C. Then afterwards we saw how for a long period the 
 change in law is largely introduced under the guise of 
 interpretation by " counsel learned in the law " ; how what 
 Maine calls the " Eoman Equity " is developed ; how the 
 commercial development of Eome leads to the working out 
 of a system of law — jus gentium — for decision of suits 
 among aliens, or between aliens and Eomans, on simple 
 principles common to the varying nations ; how later, 
 under the influence of Greek ideas, the conception of 
 a Law of Nature applicable to man as man gains 
 ground ; and how, under the influ&ice of these two 
 conceptions — one practical, one theoretical — which ulti- 
 mately almost blend, the archaic elements in Eoman Law 
 are superseded — largely by the annual edict or "juris- 
 dictorial programme" of the praetor announcing what actions 
 and pleas would be admitted, and what remedies allowed 
 for wrongs. 
 
 In the first period of the Empire — from Augustus to 
 Diocletian — legislation more and more predominates as 
 a source of change in law : legislation which becomes more 
 
 184 
 
LECT. XIII TRANSITION TO MEDIEVAL HISTORY 185 
 
 and more clearly imperial, though for some time the 
 authority of the emperor is veiled under survivals of re- 
 publican forms. The veil is dropped by degrees. The 
 legislation of the popular assembly, which had been active 
 in the last century of the Eepublic, dwindles and vanishes ; 
 it is in fact no longer well adapted to the refinement which 
 Eoman law had now reached. Augustus still submits his 
 legislative proposals to it, but with Tiberius this ceases, and 
 the Senate becomes the ostensible organ of legislation. The 
 " bills " — as we should say — are, however, drafted in the 
 imperial council, and towards the end of the second century 
 A.D. the acceptance of them has become so much a matter 
 of course that men take to quoting the oratio, in which the 
 emperor stated a project of law rather than the resolution 
 of the Senate. Meanwhile the power of modifying the law 
 becomes concentrated in the emperor's hands : his " re- 
 scripts" to requests for guidance on doubtful cases, and 
 " decrees " on cases brought before him judicially — of 
 course the work of professional jurists — become binding 
 precedents for judges. His " edicis " again, as supreme 
 magistrate, though at first only binding after his death if 
 renewed, gradually become indistinguishable from laws, 
 until, after Diocletian (a.d. 305), all legislative authority, 
 as well as supreme executive and judicial authority, is re- 
 cognised as concentrated in his hands. 
 
 Side by side with this the Respon$a Frudentium, 
 answers of the learned, continue — certain jurisconsults 
 being designated by Augustus as authoritative ; later the 
 force of law was given to their agreement. Their action, 
 however, in this period was, as I have said, more purely 
 interpretative and systematising ; distinct changes being 
 made by decrees of the senate and emperor. The praetor's 
 edict too, which had become a somewhat unmanageable and 
 ill-arranged mass of law, ceases to develop. It is revised 
 and arranged by Salvius Julianus in Hadrian's time, after 
 which it undergoes little change. 
 
 Meanwhile the study of the complex body of law 
 thus formed is ardently pursued. Under Hadrian and the 
 
i86 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 Antonines is the golden age of Roman jurisprudence. This 
 period ends with the death of Alexander Severus in A.D. 235. 
 After this come the troubles from which the western part 
 of the Empire never thoroughly recovered, in which all 
 studies, including jurisprudence, fall into decay. In the 
 Eastern Empire it revives again, but now labours under 
 the difficulty of dealing with the mass of material. It is to 
 remedy this that Justinian's great work is planned and 
 executed, which symbolises for all time the fulness and 
 complete concentration of legislative power in the emperor, 
 according to the legal theory of the empire. 
 
 But when we come to Justinian (a.d. 527—565) we 
 have passed through the great change that took place in 
 Western Europe in the fifth century — the conquest of the 
 Empire by barbarians as it is commonly conceived. In 
 all parts of the the Western Empire, the new process is 
 begun which, after a thousand years, is found to have led 
 to the making of European nations. 
 
 § 2. The Eoman Empire is commonly regarded as the 
 transition from ancient to medieval and modern history : 
 and rightly, I think ; but from the point of view taken in 
 this course of lectures, it is only a portion of the transition. 
 
 In studying the development of the forms of political 
 society in Europe, the transition primarily important is that 
 from the period in which the ruling conception of a civilised 
 polity is expressed by the fusion of the ideas of city and 
 state in the Greek word " polls " — a society of which those 
 members who have the full rights of citizens can effectively 
 meet to decide their most important common affairs in one 
 of the open spaces of their central town. And though the 
 Romans did not similarly fuse the notions of city and state, 
 the share of political power which the Roman polity assigned 
 to the citizens at large could only be exercised under a 
 similar condition. But the proper working of such a con- 
 stitution requires, as Aristotle points out, that the aggregate 
 of citizens should not exceed a certain limit ; and when the 
 Roman state has swollen to 400,000 citizens, and still 
 more when it has included the Italian allies, the transition 
 
XIII TRANSITION TO MEDIEVAL HISTORY 187 
 
 to the modern " country-state " has really taken place. 
 And this transition was, as we have seen, a fundamentally 
 important factor in determining the change from republic 
 to empire. The imperial country thus formed, having out- 
 grown the old political form of the city-state, was incapable 
 of developing a new republican form, suitable to its changed 
 conditions. For the difficult task of defending its empire 
 against disordering forces, internal and external, it was 
 necessary to fall back on the simple old method of concen- 
 trating power in the hands of a single man. 
 
 How, in the strong hands of Diocletian and Const an tine, 
 the Empire stands forth a palpable and unqualified despotism: 
 how, partly in consequence of the influence of republican 
 tradition, it never quite succeeds in attaining an orderly 
 and settled origin of rule, — since the claim of the legions 
 to appoint an "imperator" is a continual favouring con- 
 dition of usurpation and source of civil strife : how the task 
 of defending the civilised world round the Mediterranean 
 against the barbarians in the North and the revived Persian 
 empire in the East becomes too much for it, and a division 
 of administration is introduced which gradually settles on 
 the lines dividing Greek from Latin civilisation : how finally 
 in the fifth century the irruptions of the barbarians reduce 
 the Western half of the Empire to disorderly fragments — 
 at all this my limits hardly allow me to glance. This 
 period of European history I pass over, owing to the con- 
 centration of our interest on the more complex forms of 
 polity which we call constitutional polity. Our concern is 
 rather to show how the survival of Eoman-ImperiaL ideas 
 and institutions was a factor in the formation of the 
 country -states of Western Europe which gradually grow 
 into national unity through the long period of dissolution 
 and reconstruction which we call the Middle Ages. 
 
 At this point, then, in our course, we turn from the 
 more rapid development of the old city-state to examine 
 the slower development of the modern country -state — of 
 which we have only seen a part, as it is still actually in 
 process. We shall find not unimportant resemblances 
 
i88 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 between the two series of political developments, but we 
 may conveniently begin by noting a difference which is at 
 once obvious and fundamental, i.e. the much larger place 
 occupied by lawful monarchy in the latter case than in the 
 former. As I have before noted, the only real monarchy 
 that Aristotle knows in Greek city-states, in the present 
 or the recent past, is the irregular, lawless, violent Tyrannis. 
 If we put out of account the Spartan polity, where the 
 so-called kings are a survival, we may say that Aristotle 
 only knows lawful monarchy in the remote past, or among 
 barbarians ; or as an unrealisable ideal — the rule of the 
 individual of unique merit, whom he does not actually find 
 among the men of whom he has experience. But when we 
 look at the history of the country- states of Europe, the 
 case is very different. Lawful monarchy is the rule 
 throughout — purely republican institutions the rare ex- 
 ception. By lawful monarchy I do not of course mean 
 unlimited monarchy ; but a form of government in which 
 at any rate a not unimportant part of the supreme power 
 is in the hands of a single individual, not subject to that 
 condition of alternating rule and obedience which is the 
 essential characteristic of the republican magistrate. It is 
 true that in the greater part of the civilised countries of 
 Europe, during the greater part of their history, the mon- 
 arch's power is more or less limited in theory and practice ; 
 the habit of obedience among his countrymen on which his 
 power rests is not a habit of unconditional obedience : the 
 monarch has to conform to laws which he cannot alter, and 
 to struggle and compromise with other bodies or groups of 
 persons who have a certain constitutional share of govern- 
 mental power. But he has not like the republican magis- 
 trate to step down from his official position and, standing 
 on a level with other citizens, submit to be called to account 
 for his exercise of power. 
 
 And this difference between the development of the city- 
 state and the development of the country-state appears, I 
 think, clearly and instructively in the very analogy which 
 we are still able to draw between the two. We found in 
 
XIII TRANSITION TO MEDIEVAL HISTORY 189 
 
 the history of the Greek city-states a period called the 
 " Age of the Tyrants," which intervenes between the first 
 stage after primitive kingship in which oligarchy is normal, 
 and the stage in which democracies are introduced in many 
 states and a general tendency towards popular government 
 is discernible ; between the two is a stage at which there is 
 a tendency to revert to monarchy of an irregular kind. We 
 cannot say that this tendency is even nearly universal, but 
 it is too widely operative not to be regarded as a normal 
 result under certain conditions. As we saw, according to 
 Aristotle and historians generally, this appearance of Tyrannis 
 is to be regarded as the first form of democratic movement 
 against the ruling nobles ; this earlier Tyrannus is developed 
 out of the demagogue, his power is founded on the need felt 
 by the people — as yet unripe for real democracy — of a 
 leader and protector against their traditional oppressors. 
 Now, in the evolution of the country-state we do not find an 
 Age of Tyrants in the Greek sense ; but we do find a period 
 — varying in time of beginning and in duration in different 
 states — in which there is a tendency to absolute monarchy, 
 or at least great extension of monarchical power ; and we 
 find to some extent that here, as in the Greek parallel, the 
 development of the royal power rests on, and is rendered 
 possible by, popular support. This phenomenon is visible 
 both in cases where the transition to absolutism is very 
 gradual, and where it is swift and sudden. In the leading 
 case of France, the process may be gradually traced, through 
 various interruptions and vicissitudes, from the accession of 
 the house of Capet to an almost nominal throne on to the 
 famous moment when Louis XIV. is represented as uttering 
 the L'Etat, c'est moi ; and historians aU recognise the value 
 to the monarchy of the support of the tiers Uat against the 
 nobles, although the alliance between the monarch and the 
 bourgoisie takes various forms, and is not unbroken. On 
 the other hand, when we examine the cowp d'Uat by which 
 Denmark in a.d. 1660 passed suddenly to absolute monarchy 
 from a form of government which was very near to oligarchy, 
 the alliance of king and commons against the governing 
 
I90 DEVELOPMEMT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 nobles is as palpable and conspicuous as it is at the begin- 
 ning of any of the Greek tyrannies. 
 
 \ On the whole, then, we may find a certain vague analogy 
 
 to the Age of the Tyrants in the stage of absolute monarchy, 
 as we see it in most European states in the seventeenth and 
 eighteenth centuries, coming as it does between a time in 
 which the power of the nobility is the most formidable rival 
 to the crown, and the later period in which we now are, in 
 which representative democracy has everywhere, outside 
 Eussia, obtained at least a large share in government. Eor^ 
 there is this resemblance, again, between the two processes 
 of development, that in each, when the period specially 
 favourable to absolute monarchy is over, and the tendency 
 to constitutional government returns, the new constitutions 
 tend to have a more democratic character than those which 
 preceded the Tyrannis or absolute monarchy. From the 
 facts known to us we may infer that it is usually found 
 impossible, even where it is tried, to revive in full, at least 
 for long, the old predominance of the nobles. Then further, 
 where the democracy is violent and unstable, we have in the 
 modern process as well as in the older, specimens of the 
 later kind of tyrant who comes in after democracy ; and 
 here the resemblance is closer, as this kind of monarch in 
 modern as well as in ancient times usually gains power in 
 a lawless and violent manner — as in France and in South 
 American Kepublics. 
 
 § 3. But if this analogy is to some extent legitimate and 
 instructive, it at the same time shows us the much stronger 
 
 ^ tendency to monarchy in the country - state than in the 
 city-state, since in the former during the oligarchical period, 
 even where oligarchy is most nearly established, the ruling 
 few do not get rid of their king ; they keep him along with 
 at least some fragment or semblance — and generally a sub- 
 stantial portion — of power. In short, while we may almost 
 say of the life of Greek city-states in the really historic 
 period that lawful monarchy is to be found nowhere and at no 
 time, we may almost say of the country-states that have 
 formed themselves in Europe, and have had national life 
 
XIII TRANSITION TO MEDIEVAL HISTORY 191 
 
 since the Eoman Empire, that lawful monarchy is to be 
 found everywhere and at all times. The rule of the minority 
 of wealth and old family, and the rule of the masses, tend 
 to predominate each at its proper stage, but only partially ; 
 they come and go, but monarchy abides. 
 
 What then are the causes of this phenomenon ? I con- 
 ceive the main cause is that which I gave by implication 
 before, in speaking of the transition from primitive kingship 
 in the Greek city-states,^ namely, that in the country-state 
 the personal unity of the monarch is a needed bond and 
 symbol of national unity for a much longer period than in 
 the city-state, where mutual communication and combina- 
 tion of the citizens is so much easier, and we may add which 
 possesses in the walled town with its market-place and 
 temples such a striking and visible sign and bond of corporate 
 existence. We have already noticed that the process of 
 making a country- state — I mean the process of bringing it 
 to real organic national unity — as we see it in the leading 
 West-European States, is a very slow process ; centuries 
 elapse during which the forces tending to cohesion struggle 
 with chequered success against the forces tending to dissolu- 
 tion. Hence as the national consciousness develops, and the 
 demand for unity and order is strongly felt, the necessity of 
 kingship for the realisation of this demand is also felt with 
 equal force ; the alternative is usually not the establishment 
 of republican order, but the disruption of the state between 
 conflicting authorities. Thus — to take one instance — in the 
 early history of France, when the power of the king is 
 actually at its lowest ebb, at the transition from the Carol- 
 ingian to the Capetian dynasty, the result is not that the 
 great nobles try to establish an oligarchy and to govern 
 France as a body ; they rather threaten to become a some- 
 what disorderly group of petty rulers, each " monarchising " 
 in his own district. 
 
 But though this seems to me the main cause of the 
 prominence of kingship, still other causes co-operated, and 
 chief among these is the pre-existence of the Eoman Empire 
 ^ Lecture iv. p. 71. 
 
 V 
 
192 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 itself. The Eoman Empire of the West passes away in the 
 fifth century, but the ideas of the empire have a much 
 longer life, and in various forms and modes influence the 
 subsequent development of Europe down to the period of 
 absolute monarchy. First, when the barbarians begin to 
 overrun the civilised world in the fifth century, this civilised 
 world has been under absolute monarchy during the four 
 centuries in which they have been getting acquainted with 
 it ; hence, when the new barbarian kingdoms are formed out 
 of Eoman provinces, the more civilised portion of the popula- 
 tion composing them hands on the ideas and habits belonging 
 to absolute monarchy. So far as the barbarians submit, as 
 they must to some extent, to the intellectual influence of a 
 superior civilisation, that influence is a monarchical influence. 
 We see this conspicuously in the case of the Prankish 
 monarchy, which takes a leading place in the formation of 
 the political institutions of modern Europe. We see it even 
 in the early times of the earliest Merovingian monarchy 
 in Erance, though here the impulse which conquest gives 
 to the development of kingly power is soon more than 
 counteracted by the inadequacy of the hereditary king for 
 the task of government, greatly increased in difficulty by 
 conquest. It reappears still more strikingly in the monarchy 
 of Charles the Great, who actually assumes the imperial 
 crown. And, observe, the influence of the Eoman Empire 
 thus revived is not limited to the power possessed by the 
 series of potentates who wore the imperial crown. If 
 this were all we should have to admit that the imperial 
 position weakened rather than strengthened the effective 
 power of the German monarchy to which it was attached ; 
 but we have to consider that its influence over ideas is 
 powerful the other way ; ut keeps before the minds of men 
 a monarchy of ancient prestige as the generally accepted 
 highest form of government, r Then after the revival of the 
 study of Eoman law in the twelfth century, the ideas of the 
 empire become effective in a new and important way through 
 the channel of the legal profession. The modern lawyers 
 taught by the Eoman jurists manifest a steady tendency to 
 
XIII TRANSITION TO MEDIEVAL HISTORY 193 
 
 take their view of the relation of law to government, and 
 hence a continual bias towards assimilating so far as possible 
 the position of the modern monarch with that of the ancient 
 emperor. 
 
 To these influences on the side of monarchy, connected 
 with the Eoman Empire, we must, I think, add an important 
 part of the influence of the Christian Church. Here, how- 
 ever, the statement must be carefully guarded, as this 
 influence is of a complicated and varying kind, very different 
 at different periods ; and we have to distinguish, on the one 
 hand, the force exercised by the Church as an organised 
 body with corporate interests to defend, and on the other 
 hand, the political ideas and sentiments that tended to be 
 connected with historical Christianity, and to be propagated 
 by the clergy as preachers of this, — for these two forces were 
 often opposite in direction. Eegarded as an ecclesiastical 
 organisation, the Catholic Church, throughout European 
 history, is often brought into intense conflict with the 
 monarchical governments of different European countries ; 
 and when this happens the Church is naturally led to ally 
 itself with anti- monarchical, or at least anti- absolutist, 
 elements and tendencies in the secular organisation of 
 society, in order better to carry on this conflict. But re- 
 garded apart from its corporate organisation and the senti- 
 ments connected with that. Catholic Christianity normally 
 exercised an influence on the side of order, and therefore of 
 monarchy. It enjoined obedience, in general terms, to the 
 " powers that be," but its traditional conception of such powers 
 was monarchical. It had grown up under an absolute 
 monarchy, and it carried the habits of thought thus generated 
 into the period of dissolution and reconstruction of political 
 order that followed the barbarian invasion, and thus tended 
 to regard the anti -monarchical forces as anarchical and 
 rebellious. 
 
 The ultimate result of all these causes combined, in the 
 West-European nations generally, was that the first period 
 of properly modern history — history of the West-European 
 states completely reduced to civilised order — is a period of 
 
 
 
194 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 what may be called absolute monarchy. The organisation 
 of all governmental agencies under the control of a heredit- 
 ary monarch, whose will at any point at which he chooses 
 to exercise it is undisputed, came to be not only the 
 actually predominant type, but widely accepted as the form 
 of political institution adapted to the maintenance of 
 orderly civilisation. It is in the seventeenth century that 
 this stage is reached, in the development of West-European 
 states generally — after the close of the wars of religion 
 that form so stormy a transition from medieval to modern 
 politics. France leads the van, gives the fashion, spreads 
 the ideas of this modern monarchy ; but the conditions of 
 other countries are sufficiently similar to give it a natural 
 predominance over civilised Europe. 
 
 § 4. In the course of the lectures that follow I propose 
 to trace briefly the process by which this general result was 
 reached. I shall begin by marking its chief stages, and 
 trying to distinguish and characterise the chief elements of 
 the growing societies which were powerful and important 
 at the different periods. 
 
 In dealing with these elements it is important to keep 
 steadily before our minds the far greater complexity of the 
 political phenomena of the European country-state as com- 
 pared with the Greek city-state. In the Greek state, we 
 have a community of which the conditions are at first pre- 
 dominantly rural — an agricultural community in which, 
 after private property in tilled land has been established, 
 the fully privileged citizen is a land-owner who lives on 
 the produce of his own land, whether tilled by himself or 
 by others, and goes to war at his own charges: in which 
 accordingly, as inequalities of property come in, the larger 
 land-owners tend to absorb political power and economically 
 oppress the smaller farmers. But gradually, in the com- 
 munities who live in the full stream of commerce and 
 civilisation, urban conditions prevail over rural ; these 
 wealthy land-owners become the leading inhabitants of the 
 walled town, and afterwards landed property ceases to be 
 a necessary qualification for citizenship : the life of the 
 
XIII TRANSITION TO MEDIEVAL HISTORY 195 
 
 community, religious as well as secular, is unified by its 
 material embodiment in the city. 
 
 In tracing the history of the modern state we have to 
 notice as a main thread (if I may so say) of development — 
 as in the early period of the old city-state — the connection 
 that is so long maintained between political power and land- 
 ownership, and the changes that this connection goes through 
 as the nation passes into what is called the feudal period 
 and then emerges from it. But at the same time we have 
 to note, as another thread of development running alongside 
 of this and variously intertwining with it, the growth within 
 the country -state of towns with a large degree of self- 
 government. And in the same way we have to note, as a 
 characteristic feature of medieval European history, the 
 separate organisation of the clergy as a body having a 
 structure and a corporate life distinct from, though inter- 
 mixed with, the structure of the secular government and 
 the life of the nation as a political organism. In each of 
 these cases the scientific student of history has to trace the 
 political development of the elements separately, and also 
 to trace their varying relations to the development of the 
 nation as a whole. Both Church and cities have contributed, 
 in fundamentally important ways, to the formation of the 
 modern European states : but each element, in certain cases 
 and at certain periods, has become a force antagonistic to 
 the development of national unity : the Church, so far as it 
 has tended to the establishment of a theocracy, and the 
 cities so far as they have aimed, either alone or in federa- 
 tion with other cities, at an independence incompatible with 
 national unity and coherence. 
 
 Hence when just now I characterised European mon- 
 archy as representing national unity and order in opposition 
 to the disruptive and disorderly tendencies of oligarchy, I 
 gave an incomplete view of its position. A similar resist- 
 ance was required, at certain periods, to the Church when 
 its theocratic pretensions, under the control of a foreign 
 potentate, became exorbitant; and to the cities or com- 
 munes, when they pushed too far their claims of inde- 
 
196 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 pendence. The strength of the monarch's position was that 
 he represented national unity and order against each of 
 these different and conflicting elements in turn, when it 
 tended to interfere with the independence and coherence of 
 the nation. 
 
 § 5. The development of the towns in medieval history 
 will be the subject of later lectures. Here I will only observe 
 that where this development is most full and striking, the 
 scope for it is given by another element of complexity in 
 the development of modern European states which must be 
 noticed — the Holy Eoman Empire. I have spoken of the 
 ideas left behind by the old Roman Empire as an intellectual 
 force operating on the side of monarchy ; and I think there 
 is no doubt that the revival of the imperial title assisted in 
 maintaining the general view that the government of one 
 supreme will was natural and normal. But, as I said, it is 
 none the less true that the Holy Roman Empire itself was 
 a source of weakness rather than strength to the monarchy, 
 in each of the two countries in which — from the time of 
 Otto the Great — national kingship was overlaid with the 
 lofty but somewhat hollow pretensions attaching to the 
 imperial title. If there had been no Holy Roman Empire 
 — if the German king had had no further ambition than to 
 be king in Germany, if he had not had his attention con- 
 tinually distracted and his resources continually exhausted 
 by Italian adventures — I see no clear reason why Germany 
 should not have attained national unity under a king, 
 like France and Spain, at the close of the Middle Ages ; 
 and at any rate, it would not have been split up into a 
 bewildering profusion of principalities, great and small, 
 held together by the imperfect bond of a so-called empire, 
 as we find it when modern history begins. The Teutons 
 would surely have been aggregated in states as large 
 as those of their northern kinsmen the Scandinavians. 
 Similarly — though this is more doubtful — there might have 
 been a united Italy, or at least a North Italy and a South, 
 divided perhaps by the Papal territory. And I think we 
 may say that what actually happened instead belongs to 
 
XIII TRANSITION TO MEDIEVAL HISTORY 197 
 
 that large part of the phenomena of history which we are 
 forced to regard as the effect of accident : i.e. we cannot 
 trace any general causes clearly tending, with a force prac- 
 tically irresistible, to produce it. There was no apparent 
 reason for expecting the revival of the Eoman Empire in the 
 West in a.d. 8 if there had not then lived a monarch of so 
 unique and commanding a genius that we must regard him 
 as an accident ; and if the Holy Eoman Empire had not 
 been instituted in the person of Charles the Great, I see no 
 reason to suppose that it would have been established at 
 all. It is true that in the fifth and sixth centuries, 
 when the Eoman Empire of the West has just fallen, the 
 Church makes repeated efforts to resuscitate the empire ; it 
 entreats the barbarian kings to make themselves Eoman 
 Emperors, to assume the rights of Eoman Emperors, to 
 enter into the same relations with the Church in which the 
 Eoman Emperor stood.^ But as the old civilisation was 
 more and more submerged and broken up under the invad- 
 ing tide of barbarism these efforts died away ; the Church 
 itself suffered a partial lapse into barbarism ; and when 
 society and the Church together began to emerge out of 
 this condition at the close of the tenth century, the Eoman 
 Empire of the West belonged to so remote a past that its 
 revival would hardly have appeared practicable, if it had 
 not been for the remarkable extension which the Erankish 
 kingdom had reached in the powerful hand of Charles the 
 Great — and that, too, as the champion of Eoman Catholic 
 orthodoxy. I__conclude, then, that had there been no 
 Charles the Great, Otto aii^^^is successors would only 
 have"been German kings. 
 
 Observe thatThis accident, as I have called it, does not 
 make any difference in the broad general result of monar- 
 chical absolutism attained at the end of the seventeenth 
 century ; only in Germany and North Italy the monarchical 
 powers are exercised by a number of smaller princes, who 
 have attained practical independence in Germany and formal 
 independence in Italy. There are indeed some free city- 
 
 ^ See Guizot, Histoire de la Civilisation en Europe, chap. vi. 
 
198 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 states surviving among them — results of the great medieval 
 development of the city-communities, to which I shall ask 
 your attention in subsequent lectures. But ultimately the 
 result, as regards the prevalent type of government, is 
 essentially the same in Germany and Italy as it is else- 
 where, only the process that leads to the result is funda- 
 mentally different. Outside the empire it is the central 
 power that wins ; the great nobles have to submit to become 
 mere adjuncts of the crown : in Germany they put on 
 crowns — royal or grand-ducal — themselves.^ 
 
 § 6. Bearing in mind, then, the complexity of elements in 
 West-European states generally, as above described, let us 
 examine briefly the stages of the process of change in political 
 institutions as existing in the fragments of the Eoman 
 Empire broken up by the barbarian invasions, and the new 
 countries which — largely through the extension of Chris- 
 tianity — shared in the growing civilisation compounded of 
 old and new elements. It is an assistance in tracing this 
 process among the diverse courses of development — especi- 
 ally of Italy and Germany as compared with France and 
 Spain — to keep in view that the different lines not only come 
 round, broadly speaking, to the same result of absolute 
 monarchy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but 
 they start from the same beginning as regards the main de- 
 positaries of secular power in each nation, namely, from the 
 old Teutonic community which I described in my second 
 lecture. 
 
 As I before reminded you, in this community, when 
 we first know it, supreme power belongs to the tribal 
 assembly of freemen bearing arms : in this peace and 
 war are decided, heinous offences punished, chiefs chosen 
 to preside over local divisions, and commanders in war 
 chosen from among the chiefs. In some cases — in Tacitus' 
 time clearly a minority — the command in war belongs to a 
 
 ^ In the states of North Italy the result is reached through the different 
 process of municipal republicanism, which early predominates over feudalit)'' 
 and then lapses into Tyrannis which develops into hereditary mouarchy 
 without losing its despotic quality. 
 
XIII TRANSITION TO MEDIEVAL HISTORY 199 
 
 king; he, too, is elected, but generally from among the 
 members of one family, and is permanent chief in peace as 
 well as in war. As under the influence of neighbouring 
 Eoman civilisation the Germanic tribes form larger aggre- 
 gates — voluntarily, or under more or less compulsion — 
 kingship extends, as the bond required to hold these aggre- 
 gates together. Then, the Roman armies being more and 
 more formed of barbarians, the Germans are trained for 
 civilised war both within, and in conflict with, the Eoman 
 armies, and the civilised world behind the frontiers of the 
 Roman Empire is more and more adapted to be their prey. 
 At length the barrier is too weak to keep them out, and 
 they spread over the provinces, not at first as conquerors, 
 nor with any settled hostility to the empire, but mostly 
 quite prepared to acknowledge its supremacy, and act as its 
 military auxiliaries, if it will provide for them. At the 
 same time, early in the fifth century it is evident that, in 
 the western provinces of the empire, large bands of them 
 have, as the phrase is, come to stay ; partly by violence, 
 partly by arrangement and compromise, the incomers change 
 — sometimes rather gradually — from auxiliaries comfortably 
 quartered on the provincials to conquerors who allow the 
 provincials a more or less reasonable share of their own 
 property. The process is favoured by the continued usurpa- 
 tions, rebellions, and civil strife that go on in the Eoman 
 government of Western Europe. Gradually it becomes 
 manifest that the preponderance of military force in these 
 regions is overwhelming on the barbarian side ; the prestige 
 of the empire slowly sinks and — at any rate beyond the 
 Alps — completely collapses, and before the end of the fifth 
 century barbarian kings have undertaken the task of 
 governing Romans as well as Germans, from the Rhine to 
 the Atlantic and from the German Ocean to the deserts 
 of Africa. 
 
 Let us fix our attention on the Frankish kingdom ; for 
 this — owing to its subsequent extension into the empire of 
 Charles the Great — takes the lead in determining the politi- 
 cal institutions of medieval Europe. I may observe that 
 
200 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 the Franks, when they have become predominant under 
 Clovis, are less Eomanised than the other barbarians — e.g. 
 Goths and Burgundians — and their constitution shows 
 markedly the characteristics of the primitive polity. The 
 primary result of the formation of the new kingdom is to 
 increase the power and dignity of the king ; he is the one bond 
 of union of different peoples ; to the former Eoman subjects 
 he takes the place of the collapsed Empire ; to many, even 
 of the Germans, he stands in the relation of conqueror. The 
 conquering Franks become politically weaker through disper- 
 sion; and though the army remains conscious that it is an 
 assembly of freemen in arms, and occasionally intervenes 
 effectively at political crises, still, all real participation of 
 ordinary freemen in the management of the affairs of the nation 
 ceases; the rare assemblies of warriors become practically 
 mere military reviews, and the local divisions come to be 
 controlled by royal instead of elected officials. Nor does it 
 appear that the power that is thus lost by the body of 
 common freemen is seized in the main by an old nobility. 
 It rather tends to fall into the hands of the counts and 
 dukes who administer the provinces of the Prankish king- 
 dom under the Merovingian kings, when these kings prove 
 unequal to their task of maintaining order and cohesion. 
 But these counts and dukes appear to be taken from the 
 king's following, and to have rank, at first, only as his repre- 
 sentatives. The administration of the realm is in the hands 
 of the king's household — when the hereditary monarch is 
 too feeble to govern, it is the major domus, the overseer of 
 his household, who naturally supplants him. 
 
 I say " supplants him " ; for though the power of the 
 old Teutonic kingship thus grew to meet the demands made 
 on it by the task of governing the large miscellaneous aggre- 
 gate formed by conquest, it did not become strong enough 
 for the task. Nor could change of dynasty adequately 
 remedy its deficiency. For several centuries — broken only 
 by the brief interval of strong Carolingian rule — civilisa- 
 tion in Western Europe seemed to be struggling painfully 
 with ever-renewed disorder without making any real way. 
 
XIII TRANSITION TO MEDIEVAL HISTORY 201 
 
 This, if we can call it a stage of development, is the second 
 stage. In this time of peril to social order it would seem 
 that neither the habit of obedience to king or magistrate, 
 nor the reverence for religious admonition, nor the sense of 
 common citizenship and the impulse to co-operate for 
 common interests, are forces strong enough to save civilised 
 society from chaos. The bond by which society knits itself 
 together is that peculiar fusion of public and private rights 
 and obligations, that peculiar combination of personal ties 
 with the ties formed by joint ownership of land, which we 
 know as the feudal system. 
 
LECTURE XIV 
 
 FEUDAL AND SEMI-FEUDAL POLITY 
 
 § 1. In the preceding lecture I endeavoured briefly to 
 characterise the course of political change in that portion 
 of Western Europe — specially important for the student 
 of West European polity — which was united under the 
 imperial rule of Charles the Great, up to the point at 
 which it passes into the condition known as feudal. This 
 latter transition and its results we must now proceed to 
 analyse more closely. 
 
 The feudal system may be referred, I think, to a coal- 
 escence of the following tendencies, each of which is 
 traceable before and apart from it: — (1) The tendency of 
 the intenser and closer personal relation of lordship and 
 service to prevail over the relation of free citizen to his 
 fellow-citizens and the community, when this latter tie 
 proved too weak to resist the disruptive forces of disorder. 
 The two different relations — of lord to dependent, and of 
 freeman to freeman — had always existed in the old 
 Teutonic community ; we may perhaps say in the European 
 community, since they are clearly seen at Eome.^ We 
 do not, however, find at Rome the Teutonic custom that, 
 in the tribal state, chiefs at least could have in their 
 service free dependents as well as dependents only half free, 
 i.e. men whose service was free and martial, having no 
 necessary tendency to degrade the follower who rendered 
 it into a lower class. This relation is one of the germs of 
 feudalism. It was natural that in troublous times this re- 
 lation between inferior and superior freemen should be 
 
 ^ Civis — civis, cliens — patronus. 
 
LECT. XIV FEUDAL AND SEMI-FEUDAL POLITY 203 
 
 largely extended by the desire of the weak to seek the pro- 
 tection of the strong, and of the strong to add to their 
 strength by new dependents. 
 
 (2) A second distinct element in feudalism is the grow- 
 ing tendency of the relation of the individual to the land 
 to determine his political relation. In the old Teutonic 
 community the free citizen is entitled to his allotment of 
 land, not so much^fts property, rather as a right involved in 
 full citizenship. At first such allotments are temporary, the 
 lots are periodically re-distributed ; and even when this has 
 ceased, for a time they are not divisible, or strictly alienable 
 or heritable — though a son naturally succeeds his father. 
 Gradually, as available land becomes completely occupied, 
 heritability, divisibility, and consequent inequality come in ; 
 and while the connexion of citizenship with the possession 
 of land remains, cause and effect are inverted ; the landless 
 man loses his privileges as a citizen, and he has to find a 
 lord, if he wants a place in the social system. He therefore 
 enters the service of some large landowner, in some form or 
 other ; he obtains his protection for a return in money or 
 service, and often becomes a cultivator of a part of his land 
 for a rent. We see this tendency definitely in England 
 before feudalism, strictly speaking, is introduced by the 
 Norman Conquest. 
 
 Conceive these two tendencies as separate factors, and 
 then suppose them combined. By their coalescence we get 
 the fusion of personal service and land-tenure, which is 
 essential to^^udallsm." And here I must distinguish the 
 relation of the feudal lord to the inferiors who owe him 
 primarily and chiefly — though not solely — military service, 
 from his relation to the originally free cultivators of his 
 laud whose services are non-military. This latter relation, 
 though an accompaniment of feudalism, is not strictly feudal. 
 The strictly feudal relation is that of vassal to lord. This 
 is — to use legal terms — at once personal and real ; the vassal 
 owes his lord the loyal service of a dependent freeman — and 
 especially service in war — but he owes it on the score of cer- 
 tain joint rights in a portion of land, ultimately called a fief 
 
204 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 But the prominent political character of feudalism is 
 due to a third combination of causes. A further fusion 
 takes place of landholdership, if extensive, with the exercise 
 of important governmental functions over freemen generally 
 residing on the land. This latter fusion, again, is due to 
 the combined effects of two movements : (1) the large ly 
 successful efforts of large landholders to obtain mdependent 
 jurisdiction over persons, free as well as unfree, living on 
 their estates — a movement in which, in the fragments of 
 the Frankish empire in which feudalism proper has its 
 primary home, the churches take the lead and the laymen 
 follow ; and (2) the successful efforts of the dukes and 
 counts who were originally public officials with functions 
 revocable at will, and public sources of revenue — but who 
 succeed in getting their functions regarded as hereditary 
 and in obliterating the distinction between public and 
 private revenue. Thus private landowners assuming, as 
 such, governmental functions, and public officials treating 
 their powers and privileges as a kind of heritable property,^ 
 the fusion of private and public rights and obligations on 
 the basis of land-tenure is pressed on both sides. Suppose, 
 at the same time, that a marked social separation has been 
 established between the dependents of a lord who owe him 
 military service — some of whom may have risen from a 
 semi-servile condition — , and those who cultivate his lands 
 and pay him rent or non-military service — some of whom 
 have been originally free. The general feudal conception 
 of political relations is now complete. 
 
 § 2. Let us now turn from contemplating the process to 
 consider the chief features of the formed result, — the social 
 and political structure of a society in which feudalism is 
 established, omitting for the present the clergy, and dis- 
 regarding the independent structure and self-government of 
 
 ^ The confusion of governmental power with private ownership seems to 
 belong to the Teutonic political ideas, as we find them most simply and 
 strikingly manifested by the Merovingian kings of the Franks. Thus, after 
 the division of the kingdom formed by Clovis' conquests among his four 
 sons, we find that Chilperic, one of the four, gives five towns — of which 
 Bourdeaux is one — to his wife Galswintha as "Morgengabe." 
 
XIV FEUDAL AND SEMI-FEUDAL POLITY 205 
 
 the towns, which in the earlier stage of feudalism is, in 
 most districts, very undeveloped. 
 
 We see a society of which the members are bound 
 together in a scale of different ranks, fixed and kept stable 
 by a scale of relations to land. The most marked division 
 of the scale is that which divides the upper, military portion 
 from the lower, chiefly agricultural portion, — the soldier, 
 " miles " or knight, whatever his grade, from the peasant, 
 whether free or servile. The upper portion of the scale — 
 the military class who live on the produce of the soil which 
 they partly own but do not actually cultivate — owe military 
 service of a fixed amount, fixed by custom, to their im- 
 mediate superiors, to whom they are bound by ties of 
 personal loyalty, established by an oath of fidelity. Besides 
 the general obligations of not injuring the lord in any way 
 in person, family, or fortune, the vassal was specially bound 
 to adhere to his side in war, and to attend his court of 
 justice, take part if called on in the administration of justice 
 and submit to its decisions. He was also bound to certain 
 occasional payments — chiefly " reliefs " paid when the fief 
 passed by descent, " fines " on alienation, and " aids " given 
 on certain occasions of special need of the lord.^ 
 
 The lowest grade of these vassals might have for their 
 immediate lord a king or a duke owning no superior except 
 the emperor; but for the most part the chain of feudal 
 allegiance had several links. Thus the great vassals over 
 whom the king of France had for a long time little more 
 than a nominal sovereignty had to a great extent vassals 
 who were lords in their turn to other vassals. Two con- 
 sequences of this, when feudalism was fully developed, are 
 to be specially noted as fatal to political order: (1) The 
 loyalty of the vassal was held to be due to his immediate 
 superior, and therefore ordinarily only through him — per- 
 haps through more than one link — to the king, who had 
 
 ^ The recognised occasions varied at different periods and places : by 
 Magna Carta in England they were limited to three — when the lord's eldest 
 son was made a knight, when he married his eldest daughter, and when he 
 had himself to be redeemed from prison. 
 
2o6 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect 
 
 not a right to exact an oath of fidelity, except from his own 
 immediate vassals. Consequently, if the king and a great 
 vassal quarrelled, the latter could usually rely on his military 
 dependents following him into rebellion. (2) Originally the 
 design of the system was that a vassal should have only 
 one fief, but this rule was nullified by ambition and 
 cupidity ; so that a noble might at the same time be vassal 
 of two conflicting sovereigns, or an independent sovereign 
 might be at the same time the vassal of another. Such 
 complications obviously tended to make the tie of fidelity 
 illusory. 
 
 The former of these consequences was of most general 
 importance ; and it is specially characteristic of the strong 
 government of our Norman William, that while introducing 
 feudalism into England he excluded this consequence. To 
 quote Stubbs : " At the famous Council of Salisbury of 
 A.D. 1086 we learn from the Chronicle that ' there came unto 
 the king ... all the landholders of substance in England 
 whose vassals soever they were, and they all submitted to 
 him, and became his men, and swore oaths of allegiance 
 that they would be faithful to him against all others.' " ^ 
 According to the old law, even on the Continent, the duty 
 to the king was understood to be reserved in swearing fealty 
 to an inferior lord ; but the reservation was not expressed, 
 and it became evanescent in feudal morality during the 
 dominant period of feudalism in France and Germany. 
 With it the sovereignty of the emperor, and for a time of 
 the king of France, over his great vassals became equally 
 evanescent : war and peace, coinage, justice in all degrees — 
 there was no sovereign right that they did not claim to 
 exercise at their free discretion. 
 
 Let us now contemplate the lower part of the scale, the 
 peasant cultivators. With regard to the rights and status 
 of these, it is difficult to make any generalisation, because 
 they varied and fluctuated much, and at many times and 
 places are obscure. But the general broad fact is this. 
 There are firstly, slaves who have been gradually lifted up 
 
 ^ Constitutional History, JSiL. i., chap, ix. p. 2fifi. 
 
XIV FEUDAL AND SEMI-FEUDAL POLITY 207 
 
 to serfdom — largely by the influence of the Church — and 
 who, though in legal theory subject to taxation and forced 
 labour without limits, gradually come to have rights secured 
 and obligations limited by custom ; and secondly, freemen 
 who have descended in the social scale, who — especially in 
 the troublous times of the ninth and tenth centuries — had 
 placed themselves under the protection, sometimes of secular 
 lords, but usually of some bishop or abbot — sometimes 
 bringing their land with them, — and had accepted the 
 position of tributary dependence on certain fixed terms of 
 payment in return for this protection. Sometimes they 
 may have been forced into this condition ; but usually they 
 seem to have entered it voluntarily, though afterwards they 
 may often have been forced to submit to more oppressive 
 conditions. For there seems to have been a general tend- 
 ency — though varying much in different times and places 
 — to assimilate the two elements of the peasant-cultivator 
 class ; so that while one element rose out of slavery into 
 serfdom, the other element was liable to be depressed 
 towards serfdom. Thus even the free peasant cultivator 
 seems to have been considered, at any rate in some places 
 and times, as attached to the soil no less than the slave ; 
 and they had mostly no legal appeal against the justice 
 administered by the lord.-^ 
 
 Viewing as a whole the system that I have briefly 
 sketched, I may observe that in this system, regarded from 
 
 ^ The relation of the military landowning class to the peasant cultivators 
 might be compared with the relations of Spartans to Helots in Greece. 
 Indeed feudalism is sometimes conceived as having been, in the leading case 
 of France, simply the result of the superposition of a tribe or horde of 
 barbarians on a civilised peaceful people : the conquering barbarians take the 
 land of the conquered and live at ease, while the conquered till the land ; 
 thus the ' noble ' class and the fighting class become identical. And there is 
 much truth in this ; but it simplifies too much. For conquest alone, with 
 appropriation of land by the conquerors, would not necessarily have produced 
 the political result of feudalism. For instance, in the case of Sparta, where we 
 have a less civilised conquering tribe superimposing itself on a part of Greece 
 in a higher state of civilisation and becoming landowners at leisure and 
 fighters, the internal political relations of the tribe are not materially altered 
 by the conquest. As I pointed out, the primitive features of the polity 
 survive remarkably in the Spartan constitution. But this is far from being 
 
/ 
 
 2o8 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 the point of view of Comparative Politics, the characteristic 
 which in some treatments is most prominent — the military 
 tenure — is the least distinctive ; since the connexion of 
 military service and land-tenure is found in states of society 
 very remote from the feudal — as e.g, in Sparta. From our 
 present point of view we are more concerned to lay stress on 
 {a) the substitution of personal loyalty to a superior for the 
 tie of common citizenship, and (5) the fusion of governmental 
 rights with land-tenure on a large scale — the right of 
 private coining and private war, the independence of regular 
 taxation, the exclusive exercise of original jurisdiction, 
 possessed by the great feudal lords. A community in which 
 these governmental powers and privileges are possessed by 
 certain large landholders as such is obviously imperfectly 
 coherent in theory, and consequently likely to be — as in 
 fact it was — very imperfectly orderly in practice. 
 
 The best that can be said for this system is that, with 
 all its theoretical defects and practical incompleteness, it 
 did — by welding together the strong sentiment of personal 
 loyalty and the stable attachments connected with the pos- 
 session of land — provide a temporary scaffolding or frame- 
 work of order on which a truer national life could grow. 
 Its radical defect was that confusion of public and private 
 rights which was yet essential to it. If indeed we imagine 
 the possessors of these blended rights, in their different 
 grades, animated by strict Christian morality, the fusion 
 loses much of its dangers ; the ownership of private pro- 
 perty, to the sincere Christian, is a social function to be 
 exercised for the common good for which he has to render 
 a strict account, as much as the possession of governmental 
 power. It is the impressive manner in which feudal forms 
 suggested this high ideal that has constituted the attraction 
 of the feudal system to romantic admirers. But the ideal was 
 separated by too great a gap from the possibilities of average 
 
 the case in feudalism. Feudalism is not the primitive Teutonic polity super- 
 imposed on Roman civilisation ; the essential features of the old polity are 
 fundamentally altered. The difference is due to the inapplicability of the 
 forms of the old polity for the new situation and to the great influence of 
 the institutions of the Roman Empire. 
 
XIV FEUDAL AND SEMI-FEUDAL POLITY 209 
 
 human nature, at least at this stage of its development ; the 
 actual result was too much like what follows, according to 
 the German proverb, from " making the goat the gardener." 
 And when we speak — as we legitimately may — of a feudal 
 monarchy, we must bear in mind that the strength of king- 
 ship, the secret of its ultimate predominance, lay in the fact 
 that all through this period it was conceived as outside, no 
 less than within, the feudal hierarchy ; as representing, how- 
 ever dimly and ineffectively, the undivided power of the 
 state, the source of a higher and more equal justice, to 
 which the classes at the base of the social system might 
 appeal, and of an authority that might legitimately claim 
 to check the disorderly strife of the intervening ranks of 
 the hierarchy. 
 
 § 3. The feudalism that I am describing had for its 
 primary sphere the countries that had been united under 
 Charles the Great. It appears to have become settled and 
 coherent in France by the tenth century. In Germany its 
 development was somewhat later, owing to the greater 
 strength beyond the Rhine of more primitive institutions 
 and customs. Through the influence of the Empire it 
 spreads into Denmark ; and the Norman Conquest intro- 
 duces an important element of it — the military tenure — in 
 a very complete form into England, while excluding the 
 political disintegration which we have seen to be so dis- 
 astrous a characteristic of continental feudalism. 
 
 And this leads me to notice an objection that may 
 be taken to the general conception of the subject that I 
 have been expounding. It may be said that " Feudalism," 
 or " Feudal Monarchy," and still more the " Frankish 
 Monarchy," in its pre-feudal stages, are notions not suffi- 
 ciently generalised for the purposes of political science, 
 which, as I explained before, aims at getting, by com- 
 parison and induction from particular instances, as precise 
 notions as can be formed of general types and tendencies. 
 Now the Frankish Monarchy — it may be fairly urged — is 
 merely the type of government that preceded feudalism in 
 the particular case of the great kingdom established by the 
 
 P 
 
210 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 conquests of Clovis at the close of the fifth century, and 
 enlarged into an empire by Charles the Great towards the 
 close of the eighth century. But in England, in Spain, in 
 Scandinavia there was no Frankish and especially no 
 Carolingian Monarchy; and what we require in tracing 
 the general process of development are general conceptions 
 which apply more or less — if not in equal degree — to a 
 number of cases. 
 
 In replying to this objection, it must of course be 
 admitted that the Prankish Monarchy is the name of a 
 particular historical form of government, and not of a 
 general type abstracted from a number of examples. But 
 so — it may be replied — is the Eoman Empire itself; and 
 yet the Eoman Empire has necessarily to be presented as 
 a fundamentally important stage in the development of 
 political institutions in Europe. Though only some of 
 the modern West European states are formed out of the 
 fragments of the ancient Eoman Empire, still it is an im- 
 portant factor, though more indirectly, in the causes which 
 have made the others what they are. For, to take one 
 kind of influence only, the fact that throughout medieval 
 history in all West European states the clergy acknowledge 
 a divided allegiance — being only partly under the govern- 
 ment of any particular state, partly under that of an in- 
 dependent sovereign holding court in Eome, who claims to 
 judge and tax the clergy throughout Christendom — this fact 
 cannot be explained without reference to the pre-existing 
 secular empire of Eome. As Hobbes strikingly says, the 
 Papacy is the ghost of the Eoman Empire sitting crowned on 
 its grave. Well — it may be urged — in the same way, though 
 not quite in the same degree, the existence of the Prankish 
 Empire is a leading and central fact in the history of West 
 European states generally; so that its influence is important 
 not only in the subsequent development of the countries 
 into which it broke up — Prance, Germany, and North Italy 
 — but of other countries too. Had it not been for the 
 manner in which Eoman and German elements were 
 brought together in the Prankish Empire, we should not 
 
XIV FEUDAL AND SEMI-FEUDAL POLITY 211 
 
 have had the feudalism which is not confined to France 
 and the Empire, but makes its way through the influence 
 of the Empire into Denmark, and through the Norman 
 Conquest into England and even Scotland, and into Southern 
 Italy. Hence the political institutions of the Franks under 
 Clovis and his successors — and still more under Charles the 
 Great — have a central importance in Europe which does not 
 attach, e.g., to the political institutions of England at as nearly 
 parallel stages as we can get — say under Egbert and Alfred, 
 and Edgar and Canute; since some of the distinctive character- 
 istics of the feudalism that spread over the larger part and 
 the leading part of Western Europe are connected in a special 
 way with the peculiar conditions of the Frankish Empire. 
 
 At the same time, I admit to some extent the force of 
 the objection above stated. Though feudalism is pre- 
 dominant in Western Europe from the tenth century to 
 the thirteenth, still feudalism proper remains a partial 
 phenomenon ; and I think we ought to observe carefully 
 the development of the states outside the limits of feudal- 
 ism proper, in order by comparison of strictly feudal and 
 non-feudal conditions to arrive at a rather broader charac- 
 terisation of the stages of development represented in France 
 and Germany by "Frankish" and "feudal" monarchy. And 
 for this purpose the study of English history is in some 
 respects peculiarly adapted ; since in England, before the 
 Norman Conquest, we are able to contemplate a course of 
 development which is broadly in the same direction as that 
 which ends in feudalism in France and Germany, while yet 
 its result is not exactly feudalism. Indeed, the difference 
 between the old English institutions at the point reached in 
 the eleventh century, and the feudalism introduced by the 
 Normans is, in Stubbs's view, fundamentally important, 
 although the gulf that divides the two is not very deep 
 and wide; since the fact that feudalism proper came to us 
 in a foreign garb caused Englishmen to react against it, and 
 contributed ultimately to reduce its influence, both as regards 
 intensity and duration, to something very different from the 
 feudalism of the Continent. 
 
212 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 § 4. How then shall we try to characterise with greater 
 generality the stages of political development of which 
 " Frankish " and " feudal " monarchy are special cases ? I 
 think that if we try to look beyond the limits of feudalism 
 proper, and include these in a wider generalisation, we can 
 only regard them as phases in one long process, marked by the 
 following tendencies. The popular element of the primitive 
 polity, the supreme control of the assembly of freemen in 
 arms, decays from a combination of causes : partly through 
 the greater power and prestige given to the king by the 
 larger aggregate ; partly through weakening of the bond of 
 fellow-citizenship, when the nation is spread over so large 
 y an area; partly through unfitness of a non-representative 
 assembly for government of so large a body. At first it 
 looks as if the power thus lost by the people would accrue 
 to the monarch. He becomes a personage of greater dignity. 
 The nation's peace becomes the king's peace, and the nation's 
 land becomes the king's land. Still, we cannot say that the 
 movement is definitely towards a strengthening of monarchy. 
 As Stubbs says of the Anglo-Saxon system : " The growth 
 of the royal power was theoretical rather than practical. 
 What it gained on one side it lost on another. The king 
 became the source of justice, the lord and patron of his 
 people, the owner of the public lands ; but he had almost 
 immediately to part with the substantial exercise of the 
 powers so appropriated."^ In order to carry on the work 
 of government, the subordinate chiefs had to be allowed 
 an amount of power which made them formidable rivals. 
 The result is not, on the whole, a strengthening of monarchy, 
 but a fluctuating balance between monarchy and oligarchy; 
 and oligarchy, as I have said, of a disruptive kind, tending 
 to give powerful lords too great individual independence. 
 Monarchy, as I have already said in speaking of the 
 Franks, grows to meet the greater task imposed upon it 
 by the larger size of the nation ; but it does not grow 
 strong enough to perform the task completely ; it has to 
 struggle against the tendency of subordinate governments 
 ^ Constitutional History, vol. i. p. 207. 
 
XIV FEUDAL AND SEMI-FEUDAL POLITY 213 
 
 to become hereditary and semi-independent — little monarchs, 
 each within his own district,^ 
 
 Hence the most general statement of the type of political 
 organisation in this period — extending, let us say, roughly, 
 till the twelfth or thirteenth century — is, not that it tends 
 either to monarchy or to oligarchy, but to a fluctuating r 
 balance between the two. What seems universally true 
 is that the relation of the lord to his servant or re- 
 tainer tends to predominate over the relation of the 
 ordinary citizen or free member of the tribe or nation 
 to his fellow-citizens and to the nation; while, at the 
 same time — as Stubbs says in the case of England — 
 ^'territorial relations are substituted for personal ones. \ 
 Whereas the fundamental maxim of the primitive polity 
 is that every free and fully privileged member of the 
 nation has a right to a share of the national land, 
 so that the individual's political status determines his 
 relation to land, in the later stage that we are now 
 discussing this is reversed — the political position of the 
 individual depends on his relation to land. On the one 
 hand, the landless man has to find a lord ; on the other, 
 an important part of governmental rights — jurisdiction in 
 various degrees — come to be inseparably connected with 
 landowning ; the national courts tend to become more and 
 more the courts of large landowners. 
 
 These tendencies, then, are clearly exhibited outside 
 feudalism proper, though they find, as we before saw, their 
 most conspicuous manifestation in that system. 
 
 I may illustrate this further by examining more closely, 
 in the particular case of England, the difference between the 
 semi-feudal conditions before the Conquest, and the feudalism 
 partially introduced by the Normans. First, as regards 
 military tenure, we see a process towards feudalism going 
 on before the Normans, but the definite legal result not yet 
 attained. Land is not definitely held on terms of military 
 service — as it was after the Conquest when the country was 
 divided up into " knights' fees," i.e. holdings from each of 
 
 ^ The same struggle is found in Scandinavian history. 
 
214 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. xiv 
 
 which one knight was expected to appear when the feudal 
 host was summoned. But much land is practically so held, 
 since dependents of lords have received land, remaining 
 dependents, and small landowners have become dependents, 
 to gain the protection of the chief. All these owe service 
 to their overlord, and appear as his followers when 
 summoned, though such service is not yet a strictly 
 defined condition of their tenure. The old civic obliga- 
 tion on freemen, as such, to fight in defence of their 
 country, still remains ; the army called out to resist an 
 invasion is called out on the basis of this civic obligation; 
 but still it is largely composed of dependents who follow 
 their lords. 
 
 And observe, this civic duty of serving in the national 
 militia was maintained and developed by the Norman kings, 
 and was one important mode by which they largely pre- 
 vented the political effects of feudalism in weakening royal 
 power and national cohesion. Thus the principle that the 
 
 ^ vassal was bound to follow his immediate lord to battle, 
 even against the king, was never admitted in England ; and 
 the evils of private war and baronial castles, which became 
 chronic in France, are only transient disorders in English 
 history. Similarly, private coinage, which comes in under 
 Stephen, is finally crushed by Henry II. So again, as regards 
 judicial arrangements : — grants of land to thegns and to the 
 Church had long before the Conquest been commonly coupled 
 with grants of jurisdiction — " sac and soc " — conveying an 
 exemption from the ordinary court of the hundred, and 
 sometimes even from the court of the shire ; so that, before 
 the Conquest, the " right of justice " had been an insepar- 
 able incident of land-tenure. But the old national courts 
 still remained ; the administration of justice did not become 
 completely feudalised. And this, again, placed a weapon in 
 the hands of the Norman kings which they turned to good 
 account in their struggle with the barons. 
 
LECTUEE XV 
 
 MEDIEVAL THEOCRACY 
 
 § 1. In the last two lectures I traced briefly the steps by 
 which Western Europe — primarily the part of it included 
 in the empire of Charles the Great, France, Western 
 Germany, and North Italy — passed from the conditions of 
 the Eoman Empire to those of feudalism ; remarking that it 
 is from the Carolingian Empire as a nucleus that feudalism 
 extends. Through the Empire it is carried into Eastern 
 Germany and Denmark ; through the influence of Southern 
 France into the Christian Spain gradually won back from 
 the Moors ; through the Norman conquests into Southern 
 Italy and (with limitations) into England. Though all 
 Western Europe was not feudal in a strict sense, we may 
 speak broadly of its feudal period. Feudalism, as we saw, 
 results from an attempt by the barbarian kings, raised in 
 power and prestige by conquest, to work a civilised ad- 
 ministration with a human material having primitive 
 Teutonic ideas and habits, and with the bond of tribal 
 community weakened by the effects of that conquest. The 
 result, as a form of polity, may, as I said, be described as 
 a fluctuating struggle between monarchy and what we may 
 call — in contrast with the early oligarchies of the Greek 
 city-states — a kind of disintegrative oligarchy. In the 
 feudal period we have what we may call the modern 
 country -state in the making; it tends to be imperfectly 
 coherent and imperfectly defined, for the fusion of govern- 
 mental power and landownership interferes both with 
 definite boundaries and with internal order. It tends to 
 be imperfectly coherent, from the absence of a central 
 
 215 
 
2i6 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 power strong enough to overbear and crush any disorderly 
 individual or group in the name of the community ; and it 
 tends to be imperfectly defined owing to the manner in 
 which fragments of the country — feudal fiefs — combine 
 with other fragments of alien countries through marriage 
 and inheritance. 
 
 But, as we further noticed, owing to the greater com- 
 plexity of the political evolution of the modern country- 
 state as compared with the ancient city-state, we have not 
 merely to consider the feudal organisation proper — so far 
 as feudalism prevails — and the relations of the military 
 landowning class to the peasant cultivators. We have also 
 to take note of alien elements in this feudal organisation, 
 which, though when feudalism is strongest they are welded 
 into it and partially feudalised, are yet essentially distinct. 
 These are three. There is (1) the monarch, who, as we 
 saw, has always to be considered in two aspects, partly as 
 the coping-stone of the feudal edifice, feudal suzerain, but 
 partly as having certain relations of right and duty to the 
 rest of the community besides his feudal vassals, which are 
 alien to feudalism, and the development of which ultimately 
 destroys feudalism. He is king of the whole people as well 
 as overlord in the feudal hierarchy ; and though this does 
 not mean much where feudalism is strongest, it always means 
 something, (2) The clergy, who have — till the Eeformation — 
 their own organisation under the headship of an independent 
 sovereign, for whose support they are taxed, and who claims, 
 with more or less success, to be a final court of appeal in 
 ecclesiastical causes. This organisation, on the one hand, 
 extending as it does over Western Europe, tends to unite it 
 into one civilised order, and on the other hand ultimately 
 becomes an obstacle to the coherent organisation of each 
 individual state. I say " ultimately," because (e.^.) in Eng- 
 land before the ISTorman Conquest I conceive that the unity 
 of the Church helped the formation of a single nation out 
 of a number of communities formed by different settlements. 
 (3) The towns, which — though they enter into feudal rela- 
 tions both upwards and downwards, have feudal superiors 
 
XV MEDIEVAL THEOCRACY 217 
 
 and inferiors — are yet, when fully developed, essentially 
 alien to feudalism in their character and organisation. It 
 is in the semi-independent self-government of towns that 
 popular government revives in medieval Europe long before 
 it obtains its partial and mostly transient share in the 
 government of the medieval nation. 
 
 Now if these three alien or semi-alien elements in the 
 feudal organisation of society had always been fully con- 
 scious that they represented — as in a certain sense they did 
 represent — the cause of civilisation as against the imperfect 
 order and coherence of the feudal system, and if in con- 
 sequence they had been continually in alliance against 
 feudalism, the course of development of medieval polity 
 would have been much simpler, and much easier to grasp 
 in a general conception. But this is not the case. The 
 monarch and the church are, especially from the time of 
 Hildebrand onwards, continually falling out ; and when 
 they fall out, each allies itself as occasion offers with the 
 feudal element of society. So again, the monarch, though 
 generally inclined to favour the development of towns, is 
 sometimes led to co-operate with his great feudatories in 
 repressing them. 
 
 Ultimately, as I said, it is the monarchical principle 
 that prevails ; the completer order and unity that dis- 
 tinguishes the modern from the medieval state is formed on 
 a monarchical basis. The central authority which ultimately 
 becomes strong enough to crush the disordering and disin- 
 tegrating tendencies of feudalism is a monarchical authority. 
 But before this happens, a movement to bring the European 
 state-system into more coherent order on the basis of 
 theocracy has developed, culminated, and collapsed ; this I 
 propose briefly to describe in the present lecture. 
 
 § 2. It is customary for modern writers on Politics to 
 include, among the forms of government which they char- 
 acterise and classify, a form called Theocracy. So far it 
 has not come in my way to deal with this ; since in the 
 sense in which it appears to me most convenient to use the 
 term, fully developed Theocracy does not clearly come before 
 
2i8 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 US in the history of the Greek city-states, nor in that part 
 of the history of Eome to which I have directed your atten- 
 tion ; and accordingly it finds no place in the political ideals 
 of Greek and Eoman thinkers. The place of religion in the 
 life of the community, and even in its political organisation, 
 is indeed recognised by the Greek political philosophers — 
 e.g. Aristotle, as I said, reckons priests among officials — but it 
 is religion strictly subordinated to the purposes of the state 
 and the control of the secular government. But in tracing 
 the development of political institutions in medieval Europe, 
 we find at a certain stage what may be properly called theo- 
 cracy established in a portion of Italy, including the great 
 city of Eome, and in a more subordinate way, in the ecclesi- 
 astical states of the Empire in Germany. And we also find 
 a vigorous and sustained attempt to make this theocratic 
 government practically supreme over Western Europe ; — an 
 attempt of which the success, though never more than 
 partial, is at certain times and places very striking. 
 
 Before examining the conditions and stages of this 
 movement towards theocracy, it will be well to begin by 
 defining the term. In the first place, the use of it does not 
 imply any theological proposition. By theocracy we do not 
 mean a State in which God governs, but a State in which 
 persons claiming some special authority to declare the divine 
 will are habitually obeyed on this ground, not only in the 
 ordering of religious worship, but in the administration of 
 secular affairs. Again, I do not think it is enough to con- 
 stitute theocracy that a hereditary monarch is conceived to 
 rule by divine right — or even, in less civilised ages, in 
 virtue of divine descent. Such special relation to the 
 divinity gives additional prestige to the ruler believed to 
 be so favoured, and an additional motive for obeying him ; 
 but it is hardly enough to constitute a specific difference in 
 the form of government ; since it does not necessarily cause 
 any change in the appointment or functions of the monarch 
 round whose head this halo is thrown. The case is some- 
 what different when the king or the nobility have a mono- 
 poly of important priestly and prophetic functions, and a 
 
XV MEDIEVAL THEOCRACY 219 
 
 generally admitted claim to know the rules by observing 
 which Divine anger may be averted or appeased, and can 
 use the influence over opinion and sentiment which they 
 thus gain to repress or elude opposition to their rule. In 
 this case I think we should say that the monarchy or oli- 
 garchy that is thus strengthened and rendered more stable 
 has acquired a theocratic tinge or aspect, though it remains 
 monarchy or oligarchy none the less.^ It seems to me, 
 however, most convenient to use the term theocracy, strictly 
 taken, to imply a social organisation in which the persons 
 who assume a special intimacy with heaven, a special 
 acquaintance with the Divine will, are organised in a pro- 
 fessional body specially devoted to their religious calling, 
 and for the most part distinct and separate from the ordin- 
 ary secular government ; then, in proportion as this separate 
 body acquires power in secular affairs, the government tends 
 to have a distinctly and preponderantly theocratic character ; 
 and when this ecclesiastical body has obtained supreme con- 
 trol, we have Theocracy complete. 
 
 Now in the history of the Greek city-state, this degree 
 of influence of priests — if it ever existed — must be placed 
 before the period historically known. I say " if it ever 
 existed," because it can hardly be doubted that the Greeks 
 have been more religious than they are when we first know 
 them in Homer. The only question is how far this religiosity 
 went. But in the history of the Greek city-states, during 
 the period historically known, the priesthoods never appear 
 to have this kind of independent and predominant position 
 in the political sphere. Eeligion is an indispensable element 
 of political society, but has no discernible general import- 
 ance in determining political changes. It is no doubt 
 occasionally worked with effect in particular cases ; as 
 when the Pisistratids are driven out of Athens partly 
 through the persistent instruction of the oracle of Delphi 
 to the Spartans to liberate Athens — due, it is alleged, to the 
 liberality of certain wealthy Athenian exiles in rebuilding 
 
 ^ This was the position [e.g.) of the patrician oligarchy at Rome in their 
 struggle with the plebeians. 
 
220 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 the temple of the Delphian Apollo. And on the whole 
 religion is in Greece a conservative force ; the philosophers, 
 indeed, attach an importance to it as a means of maintain- 
 ing good political institutions, which rather surprises us when 
 we consider the very little effect it seems actually to have 
 in checking revolutionary movements. But they always 
 assume it to be strictly under the control of the good and 
 wise secular government which the philosophers aim at 
 instituting. 
 
 When we turn to the history of Kome, religion seems to 
 play in early times a more prominent part. What we hear 
 of ISTuma suggests that religious influences had a good deal 
 to do with the unification and development of the State in 
 one stage at least of the legendary period of Eoman history ; 
 and in the historic period it seems to be a really valuable 
 force on the side of the old oligarchy in their struggle with 
 the plebs. It enables them at any rate to delay the move- 
 ment towards extension of political privileges which they 
 cannot prevent. But it does not in Eome, any more than 
 in Greece, lead to the establishment of any ecclesiastical 
 caste or order that seeks power as such ; in fact, one of the 
 most important differences between the Greeco-Italian idea 
 of the State and the medieval and modern idea is, that in 
 the former it is conceived as having the functions which in 
 medieval times were separated and bestowed on the Church, 
 and which modern theories have at any rate not yet re- 
 stored to the State. Thus the ideal of the thinkers naturally 
 gives it the fundamentally important duty of maintaining the 
 virtue of the citizens, by supervising their education through 
 the period of childhood, and correcting their vicious and 
 luxurious habits in adult life. 
 
 Of course the separation of Church and State does not 
 necessarily lead to Theocracy. Indeed, it may be said that 
 Theocracy, when complete, involves a fusion of Church and 
 State. Still, where there is a separate organisation of 
 professional priests, religious ideas and sentiments strongly 
 influential, and a social condition like that of the early 
 Middle Ages, with national unity imperfect, and political 
 
XV MEDIEVAL THEOCRACY 221 
 
 order precarious and unstable, so that any element of 
 society that has any fighting force is driven in self- 
 defence to use that force, we have a condition favourable 
 to theocratic attempts. 
 
 § 3. I propose, then, to begin by tracing the develop- 
 ment of this separate organisation. It had its origin, as is 
 of course familiarly known to all of us, in the Hebrew or 
 Jewish polity, which was, in important periods of its history, 
 completely theocratic. The place occupied by civil law in 
 Grseco-Eoman polity was, in the Jewish nation, filled by the 
 law of God; the normal motives to obey this law being trust 
 in the promises and fear of the judgments of the Divine 
 Lawgiver, who had made a special covenant to protect the 
 Jewish people, on condition that they rendered Him due 
 obedience. And the sources from which knowledge of the 
 law was actually gained had the complexity often exhibited 
 by the jurisprudence of an advanced community. Christianity 
 inherited the notion of a written divine code, acknowledged 
 as such by the "true Israel" — now potentially including 
 the whole of mankind, or at least the chosen of all nations 
 — on the sincere acceptance of which the Christian's share 
 of the divine promises to Israel depended. And though the 
 ceremonial part of the old Hebrew code was altogether re- 
 jected, and with it all the supplementary jurisprudence 
 resting on tradition and erudite commentary, still God's 
 law was believed to be contained in the sacred books of 
 the Jews, supplemented by the records of Christ's teaching 
 and the writings of His apostles. By the recognition of this 
 law the Church was constituted as an ordered community, 
 essentially distinct from the State ; the distinction between 
 the two being sharpened and hardened by the withdrawal of 
 the early Christians from civic life, to avoid the performance 
 of idolatrous ceremonies imposed as official expressions of 
 loyalty ; and by the persecutions which they had to endure, 
 when the spread of an association apparently so hostile to 
 the framework of ancient society had at length caused serious 
 alarm to the imperial government. 
 
 We may say that, through this separateness, the Christian 
 
222 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 society carried within it from the first the germ of theo- 
 cracy; but for a long time the body of men who recognised 
 the authority of this divine law governing all human life, 
 though forming a quasi-political society, lived in the midst 
 of the vast civilised society under Eoman law, keeping aloof 
 from secular organisation, and not attempting to control it 
 and modify the administration of secular law in accordance 
 with the new code. Indeed, in its earlier stage, the Christian 
 community assumes an attitude of alienation from all secular 
 government. In the view of primitive Christians, ordinary 
 human society was a world temporarily surrendered to 
 Satanic rule, over which a swift and sudden destruction 
 was impending ; in such a world the little band who were 
 gathered in the ark of the church could have no part or lot. 
 Thus patriotism and the sense of civic duty tended, under 
 the influence of early Christianity, either to expand into 
 universal philanthropy, or to be concentrated on the ecclesias- 
 tical community. "We recognise but one Commonwealth, 
 the world," says Tertullian. "We know," says Origen, "that 
 we have a fatherland founded by the word of God." ^ 
 
 This attitude was partially, but only partially, changed 
 when the Christian Church became under Constantine the 
 established religious organisation of the Eoman Empire. 
 The Christian priesthood still kept in theory aloof from 
 the world and the things of the world ; and in practice, 
 whatever worldliness might attach to any of its bishops did 
 not yet take the form of an effort to control secular govern- 
 ment in secular things. The Church has its own rulers 
 under the supremacy of the emperor, in the main un- 
 connected with the secular government ; though certain 
 administrative functions of moral or humane import — such as 
 visiting prisons to prevent illegal imprisonment, suppressing 
 gaming, preventing women from being forced on the stage — 
 are given to the bishops by the Justinian Code ; and in the 
 decay of the municipalities in the fourth century, the 
 bishops come to occupy a not unimportant place in 
 municipal administration. This use of ecclesiastics in ad- 
 
 ^ Compare the author's -fTistory 0/ ^^Azcs, pp. Ill, 112, 119, 120. 
 
XV MEDIEVAL THEOCRACY 223 
 
 ministration may perhaps be regarded as a first step towards 
 theocracy, but only a step towards it. In religious and 
 moral questions, no doubt, the clergy claimed the obedience 
 of the laity in whatever rank. A bold and conscientious 
 bishop might admonish an emperor who had failed in his 
 religious or moral duty, impose penance on him, refuse him 
 absolution. But so long as the Eoman Empire lasted in 
 West or East — whatever may be said of ambitious in- 
 dividuals — no attempt was made by the clergy as an 
 organised body to use this means of influence for inter- 
 ference in the appointment of emperors or their tenure of 
 office, or for control of their ordinary administration. 
 
 § 4. In Christianity under the Empire, then, we have 
 the separateness of organisation in which lies the seed of 
 the future theocracy; but the seed is as yet undeveloped. 
 The development of this seed, I conceive, was due primarily 
 not to any movement of theocratic ambition within the 
 Church, but to the force of external circumstances — the 
 collapse and chaos of secular authority that followed the fall 
 of the Western Empire. When the Empire broke up, the 
 Church held together. It was — again to use an ecclesiastical 
 simile — a kind of ark in which civilisation was carried 
 across the disorder of the first five centuries after the 
 barbarian invasions. The unity of Western Christendom 
 was the source of such unity as was maintained in West 
 European society in this chaotic period. The Church, strong 
 in its cohesive organisation, conscious of its complete in- 
 tellectual superiority to the barbarian invaders, possessing in 
 its teaching and ceremonial the one mode of intellectual 
 influence capable of powerfully impressing their rude minds, 
 and gaining fresh vigour from its successful struggle with 
 disorder — made itself a place of the first importance in the 
 barbarian kingdoms formed out of the break-up of the 
 Eoman Empire, and out of the Teutonic nations outside, 
 over which its sway was gradually extended. The fact is 
 manifest in English history, no less than in that of Erance 
 or Germany, and also in Spain between the Gothic and the 
 Moorish conquests ; but it is specially marked in the 
 
224 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 empire of Charles the Great, of which the sacerdotal 
 character is one of the most striking features. It is 
 Charles who mainly founds the institution of the Christian 
 tithe ; and to his policy is to be traced the existence of the 
 great ecclesiastical magnates — the archiepiscopal electors, 
 who for so many centuries in Germany rival the highest 
 secular princes in rank next the emperor. Indeed, we may 
 say that if he subdued and won to medieval civilisation 
 the formerly barbarous east of Germany by the sword, he 
 held and controlled it by the crozier. 
 
 The general result was that bishops became important 
 members in the administration and in the councils that 
 assisted the secular rulers in the work of government ; while 
 the churches and convents retained and increased their 
 endowments of land. And gradually — in the natural re- 
 action of facts on ideas — the clergy began to put forward 
 wide-reaching claims to independence and control in secular 
 matters. Independence of clergy from secular jurisdiction, 
 extension of episcopal and papal jurisdiction over secular 
 matters, assertion of authority to resist and even to depose a 
 wicked and tyrannical prince — these claims are found as 
 early as the ninth century. As yet, however, the internal 
 organisation of the Church had not reached its full unity 
 and coherence. For this a separation of the clergy from the 
 lay feudal system is necessary; and this separation meets 
 with difficulties, by the very reason of the leading part 
 which, especially in France and Germany, the clergy had 
 taken in the building up of society after the period of 
 dissolution and disorganisation. A natural consequence of 
 this was a partial feudalisation, and therefore secularisation 
 of the ecclesiastical offices. 
 
 When, as I said, society in the fragments of Charles 
 the Great's empire begins to reconstruct itself with the help 
 of the feudal system, the local authorities of the churches are 
 found occupying very important positions in the secular 
 feudal hierarchy. Bishops, and even convents, have attained 
 a semi-independence, and exercise semi-governmental powers 
 over wide districts, just like the secular feudal lords ; thus 
 
XV' MEDIEVAL THEOCRACY 225 
 
 introducing, one may say, a sort of sporadic partial theocracy 
 into the feudal polity. But the theocracy thus introduced 
 was of a kind that tended to destroy its own principle, by 
 assimilating the ecclesiastical too much to the secular 
 governor. This is manifested in later times in a most 
 striking form in the Holy Eoman Empire, where, as the 
 central power grows weak, ecclesiastical lords are found 
 possessing a very important share of the principalities 
 formed in the process of dissolution, and both their behaviour 
 to the governed, and the attitude of the minds of the 
 governed to them, is very like the corresponding behaviour of 
 secular princes. But in earlier medieval times, the same 
 phenomenon appears — if not in the same degree — in other 
 West European states. Indeed, in the Frankish Empire 
 the immunities or exemptions from ordinary jurisdiction 
 of the realm, which contributed so importantly to the 
 fusion of governmental functions and landownership, were 
 first granted to clergy, and then afterwards to the great 
 lay nobles. And even an enemy of ecclesiastical domination 
 can hardly deny that their place in the feudal organisation 
 was well merited by the services that the Church had 
 rendered to civilisation, in supplying a strong bond of 
 union and aid to order amid the disorder of the first five 
 centuries after the barbarian invasions. If the Church 
 wanted earthly rewards, it had fairly earned its right to 
 its large share of land and secular governmental power in 
 the feudal system in which the holding of land and 
 governmental power were combined. But the question 
 was not whether it deserved these secular rewards, but 
 whether it could keep them without losing its distinctive 
 character J at least unless an effectively centralised organ- 
 isation, and a stern separate discipline counteracted the 
 tendency to secularisation that these rewards inevitably 
 brought with them. And the historian, I conceive, will 
 be disposed to answer this question as Hildebrand answered 
 it. Without some such vigorous impulse as that which 
 he gave, the temptations of great wealth and great power, 
 together with the influence of parental affection and the 
 
226 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 tendency to hereditariness which the feudal system carried 
 with it, would probably have turned clerical dignities into 
 patrimonies all over Western Europe, and their distinctively 
 ecclesiastical character must have been obscured and cor- 
 rupted more completely than it actually was even in spite of 
 Hildebrand and his successors. 
 
 Well, when the celibacy of the clergy and the effective 
 central organisation under the pope was successfully realised, 
 it was almost inevitable that the power thus formed should 
 attempt a complete and all-embracing rule over the society 
 on which they had already acquired so strong a hold : that 
 they should definitely come to view the division of spiritual 
 and temporal authority as rather a distinction of methods 
 of rule than as a distinction of matters subject to rule ; — 
 for morality as a whole belongs to the spiritual sphere, and 
 what political question may not be claimed as a question 
 of morality ? True, the clergy govern by what are called 
 " spiritual " means — excommunications and interdicts, 
 threats of divine anger and promises of divine favour ; but 
 so far as these are effective at all, they are effective for 
 the attainment of any secular end; and if it had been 
 once admitted that — as the ecclesiastical writers contended 
 — it was for the Church alone to determine the limits of 
 their exercise, it seemed probable that those limits would 
 be drawn so wide as not to leave room for really inde- 
 pendent secular government. And owing to the lamentable 
 hiatus already spoken of between feudal theory and feudal 
 practice, there was crying need of clerical surveillance and 
 admonition to keep secular governors to their duty — if 
 only they could be kept to their duty by such means. 
 Hence Hildebrand's dream of a pope sovereign arbiter 
 of all disputes, holding in his hands the supreme media- 
 tion in questions of war and peace, adjudging contested 
 successions in the kingdoms, deposing tyrants, and, in 
 short, forming instead of king or emperor the real coping- 
 stone of the feudal organisation — this was a dream which 
 the state of thought and feeling in the period of the 
 great crusades and the state of political facts in the 
 
XV MEDIEVAL THEOCRACY 227 
 
 imperfect order of the feudal system, irresistibly pressed the 
 Church to realise. 
 
 § 5. The most important phase of this attempt at com- 
 plete theocracy culminates in the pontificate of Innocent Illr 
 (a.d. 1198—1216); while the whole attempt may be taken 
 to begin and end with two famous and dramatic struggles 
 — beginning with the struggle between Hildebrand (who 
 became Pope Gregory VII. A.D. 1073) and the Emperor 
 Henry lY., and ending with the struggle at the outset of 
 the fourteenth century, between Pope Boniface VIII. and 
 Philip the Pair of Prance, when the king with the support 
 of his whole kingdom bids defiance to the Pope's solemn 
 claim to be " set over the nations and kingdoms to root out 
 and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and 
 to plant," burns his bull in public, and seizes his person. 
 In placing this as the end of the attempt at theocracy, I 
 do not mean that the papacy abandons its claims, I do not 
 think it has ever — even now — formally abandoned any 
 claims, but that it then becomes evident that its power 
 over men's minds had so far diminished as to exclude any 
 prospect of complete theocracy, though it was still strong 
 enough to intervene effectively on occasion in secular affairs 
 in Europe generally, and strong enough to take a regular 
 leading place in the political conflicts of Italy. 
 
 It may be interesting to observe more closely the 
 nature and extent of the theocratic power exercised by 
 Innocent III. over Europe. It was not — as secular power 
 usually is in such times as those we are contemplating — 
 stronger at the centre of the region over which it extended 
 and growing weaker in proportion as it was exercised at a 
 longer distance. On the contrary, remoteness seems to 
 enhance its prestige. It is striking to note the need of 
 careful management and diplomacy which characterises the 
 policy of the papacy in Italy even in Innocent's time, as 
 compared with the lofty tone of command which the pope 
 successfully assumes to secular potentates at a distance. 
 Thus (e.^.) Innocent orders Andreas Duke of Hungary to 
 march to the Holy Land, in order to leave his brother the 
 
228 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 king at peace ; orders this brother to make war on the Ban 
 of Bosnia, as a punishment for having protected heretics ; 
 stirs up the kings of Denmark and Sweden to deprive the 
 king of Norway of his crown ; reduces king after king to 
 declare himself tributary to the Holy See. In a.d. 1198 — 
 as the ecclesiastical annalist claims — the king and the 
 kingdom of Portugal were received under the protection of 
 the blessed Peter, as tributary to the Apostolic See. In 
 1204 the King of Aragon offered his kingdom to Pope 
 Innocent, and constituted it tributary to him and his 
 successors for ever. In 1207 the King of Poland, and in 
 1213, as we all know. King John of England accepted a 
 similar position. 
 
 It is true that these admissions of the pope's suzerainty 
 were not in any of these countries endorsed by the people — 
 in fact, they represent, as we know in England, an effort 
 of monarchy to lean on the Church for support in its 
 struggles with the nobility — but the fact that they are 
 made by king after king is very striking. They show us 
 the pope endeavouring to assume the position which, accord- 
 ing to the older medieval political ideal — which Dante, 
 a century after Innocent III., tries vainly to revive — ought to 
 belong to the emperor, the summit of the feudal hierarchy. 
 And it is important to note, in considering the long- 
 sustained efforts of the papacy to establish a supremacy 
 in things temporal in Western Europe, that it had, if I 
 may so say, two strings to its bow. There was, as Stubbs 
 says, "the general proposition asserted by Gregory YII. 
 and his successors that the pope is supreme over temporal 
 sovereigns ; the spiritual power, of which the pope is on 
 ^artli the supreme depository, being by its very nature 
 supreme over the temporal." ^ But besides this there were, 
 as we have seen, special claims to suzerainty over particular 
 countries founded on particular legal assumptions and 
 particular acts. It is easy to see how by skilful manage- 
 ment the latter special kind of supremacy might seem on 
 occasion to arise naturally out of the general, and to 
 ^ Stubbs, Constitutional History, vol. iii. ch. xix. p. 300. 
 
XV MEDIEVAL THEOCRACY 229 
 
 strengthen it in its turn. Supremacy of this special kind 
 was established or claimed during this period over Scotland 
 and Ireland, as well as England ; and during a long time 
 over Naples, as well as transiently in the cases of Aragon 
 and Portugal just noticed. 
 
 § 6. The precise quasi-legal arguments by which these 
 theocratic claims were supported have to a great extent 
 lost their interest now. They have for the most part 
 more than the usual absurdity, baselessness, and incoherence 
 that characterise medieval reasoning, in spite of its acumen, 
 subtlety, and industry. The claim rests on invented 
 history, forged documents, scriptural texts grotesquely per- 
 verted, irrelevant analogies seriously pressed : the False 
 Decretals of the ninth century containing forged letters 
 of early popes in which obedience was enjoined on secular 
 princes ; the fictitious donation of Constantine — as first 
 mentioned in a.d. 791, but not put forward prominently till 
 the eleventh century — by which that emperor, on retiring 
 to Constantinople, was gravely alleged and believed to 
 have handed over to the blessed Pope Sylvester not only 
 the imperial insignia, robe, sceptre, and palace, but all the 
 provinces and cities, the whole territory of Italy and the 
 West; the perversion into a kind of feudal homage of 
 the oath by which Otto the Great, who revived the Holy 
 Eoman Empire in the tenth century, promised John XII. 
 to protect the Holy See and respect the liberties of Eome ; 
 the monstrous deduction of supremacy in the secular sphere 
 from the gift of the keys to Peter, or from the assumption 
 that the " sun and moon " typify respectively the papacy 
 and the empire I 
 
 Eeading such arguments we are inclined to conclude 
 hastily that the whole force of the theocracy rests on the 
 superstitious credulity of a half-civilised age. But this 
 conclusion would be hasty and one-sided. It is important 
 to dwell on the really weighty considerations that we find 
 mixed with or underlying these grotesquely fallacious 
 assumptions and inferences. Firstly, the separate and 
 semi-independent organisation of the Church rested on the 
 
230 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 conviction that the unity of Christian society depended on 
 the unity of the Church, and that for this latter a strong 
 internal cohesion was required which could not be main- 
 tained without a steady maintenance of priestly inde- 
 pendence ; — hence the claim to withdraw priests from 
 secular jurisdiction and secular taxation. Secondly, a 
 genuine conviction of the constant need of ecclesiastical 
 interference in the interest of right and justice operated to 
 the same result ; since the characteristic of medieval 
 society was a high ideal of the holy and tranquil order 
 that should be maintained in the civitas Dei, which the 
 converted Western world theoretically formed, while at the 
 same time the actual facts showed continued and multiplied 
 violence, oppression, and encroachments by the strong on 
 the rights of the weak. 
 
 Then, as the influence of Aristotle uniting with traditional 
 Christian doctrine gives birth to medieval philosophy, the 
 supremacy of the Church over the State is supported by 
 Aristotelian thought applied to the Christian view of life. 
 What Aristotle had said of the superiority of Becopia over 
 political action as an element of human well-being was 
 turned to support the superiority of religious or spiritual 
 life over secular life ; and therefore of the organisation 
 whose end was spiritual well-being over that which merely 
 aimed at secular well-being. Again medieval thought grasped 
 and dwelt on the old Aristotelian distinction between the 
 true king who governs according to law {Kara vo^ov) for 
 the good of the whole, and the tyrant who violates law for 
 his selfish interest. There must be some remedy for this 
 lawless selfishness ; and the interference of the priestly 
 admonition seemed an obvious available remedy. But if 
 so, the function of applying this remedy must be in the 
 hands of the Vicar of Christ who alone is above kings 
 and princes. Hence the claim to depose princes who dis- 
 obeyed the decrees of the successor of St. Peter. And 
 this naturally led to the further assumption that the 
 authority that can depose can also refuse to institute ; can 
 deny the consecration which the common Christian con- 
 
XV MEDIEVAL THEOCRACY 231 
 
 sciousuess held to be necessary to the proper institution of 
 monarchs. This once admitted, a supremacy is admitted 
 which feudal homage could hardly make more complete. 
 
 Not, observe, that the ecclesiastical hierarchy aims at 
 assuming the functions of secular government; with the 
 subtlety of distinction characteristic of the medieval — 
 especially the scholastic — mind, their advocates are usually 
 careful to point out that though the Church has the " two 
 swords," temporal and spiritual, it does not handle the 
 temporal sword ; the actual exercise of secular power it 
 leaves in other hands, but it claims that it must be exercised 
 under the control and with the consent of the Church. 
 
 Well, as I have said, this claim ceases to be an im- 
 portant obstacle to the independence of secular govern- 
 ments after the end of the thirteenth century ; but there 
 remains the organisation of the clergy under a foreign 
 sovereign, who up to the Eeformation never gives up his 
 right to tax, and habit of taxing, them in some form or 
 other, or his right to hear appeals from ecclesiastical courts, 
 and give dispensations from the rules of ecclesiastical law ; 
 and this remains an obstacle of varying force to national unity 
 and coherence. In the fourteenth century, however, the^ 
 papacy is weakened by the so-called " Babylonian captivity" 
 at Avignon, a.d. 1308-1376, which brings it too much 
 under the influence of France ; then by the Great Schism 
 A.D. 1378-1417 and the attempt to reduce within the 
 Church the monarchical despotism of the pope by effectively 
 subordinating him to general councils. "When its prestige 
 revives through the failure of this attempt in the fifteenth 
 century, the Eenaissance is in full swing, enfeebling the 
 religious beliefs on which the force of the papacy depends ; 
 and the papal monarchy concentrates its effort on strengthen- 
 ing its territorial position in Italy. 
 
LECTUEE XVI 
 
 MEDIEVAL CITIES GENERAL TYPE 
 
 § 1. I NOW turn to another of the three elements in the 
 medieval polity, whose development, even in the feudal 
 period, was alien to the predominant feudalism — the trading 
 and industrial element, represented by the cities. 
 
 Speaking generally, the medieval city may be con- 
 templated in two aspects : on the one hand, it is a part 
 of the larger whole which we call the nation, and its de- 
 velopment has an important effect on the destinies of the 
 nation. To this aspect I shall recur later in the course. 
 On the other hand, the very imperfect order and coherence 
 which the feudal system attained left the medieval city a 
 very considerable degree of independence, varying of course 
 inversely with the degree of coherence of the larger whole 
 of which it was a part ; and it is from this point of view 
 that I wish in this and the next four lectures to trace its 
 evolution. I will treat first of the general type of medieval 
 city. 
 
 In a previous lecture I have laid stress on the general 
 similarity of the political development of the West European 
 nations. I do not mean that we find them all having the 
 same type of government at the same time ; but that if we 
 contemplate them in a group we shall find — as we found in 
 the case of the Greek city-states — that there is a pre- 
 ponderant tendency for them to have a certain type both of 
 social structure and of government at each of the normally 
 successive stages of their development. Thus — as I ex- 
 plained in Lecture xiv. — though feudalism, strictly speak- 
 ing, was only established in a part of Western Europe, 
 
 232 
 
LECT. XVI MEDIEVAL CITIES — GENERAL TYPE 233 
 
 / 
 still it is a large part, and we find what may be called 
 
 quasi-feudal conditions outside the range of feudalism proper. \/^ 
 So, again, as regards the movement towards theocracy : 
 though we cannot say that this movement affects all West 
 European countries alike, — for example the relation of the 
 pope to Italy is always quite peculiar — still its effect is 
 strikingly diffused over Western Europe, as we saw by the 
 list of countries over which the pope claims suzerainty. 
 So, again, as I shall hereafter show, most of the West 
 European countries in the later Middle Ages, from the 
 thirteenth or fourteenth to the sixteenth or seventeenth 
 century, go through a stage in which representative as- 
 semblies of some kind — Meetings of Estates, Diets, or Parlia- "^^ 
 ment — obtain a certain share, though often only a transient 
 share, in the control of national affairs. The same may be 
 said of the preponderance of absolute monarchy in the v 
 seventeenth and eighteenth ceiitury^ It is undoubtedly 
 the prevalent fact, though England — an important excep- 
 tion — is not the only exception. 
 
 A similar statement may be made with regard to the 
 medieval city community, to which I have now to direct 
 attention ; and here it is all the more needful to lay stress 
 on it, because this general uniformity of type is obscured, 
 for the ordinary reader of history, by the great and striking 
 differences in independence, power, and splendour, which the 
 cities attained in different countries. But in spite of these, 
 we can discern a remarkable resemblance in the type as 
 developed in different European countries. In England, 
 France, and Germany, in Sweden and Italy, wherever cities 
 in the Middle Ages become sufficiently important, and have 
 a sufficient degree of independence, for their political life to 
 have full play, they commonly present an industrial organisa- ^ 
 tion unlike anything modern, and also in striking contrast 
 with the phenomena presented in the Hfe of the ancient 
 city-state. This contrast is due to a combination of causes. 
 It is partly to be traced to the most fundamental difference 
 between ancient and modern European civilisation — the 
 fact that the former is based on slavery; and accordingly 
 
234 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 mechanic labour, even when performed by freemen, appears 
 (even to the philosopher) a naturally servile occupation. 
 In the medieval town, on the other hand, mechanic labour 
 is free from the earliest time at which we have definite 
 knowledge of it; while later, mechanic industry as such 
 rises to dignity and power for the first time in European 
 history all over Western Europe. 
 
 But the full contrast between the constitution and life 
 of the medieval city as compared with that of the ancient 
 city-state is partly to be traced to that greater complexity 
 of the political phenomena of the Euro^sac—country- state 
 of which I before spoke, the greater differentiation, as 
 Spencer would say, of its parts, as compared with the 
 Greek city-state. The ancient city-state, as we have 
 seen, is formed by mere con centration of a small 
 agricultural community ; so that the chieT landowners, 
 the men of old ^ family and wealth, become the lead- 
 ing residents ofjtb£.^wn ; wliSreas the medie val to wns 
 grow up witHma community of which the governing class, 
 speaking broadly, remains outside them. The chief feudal 
 landowners retain their'*'^§Tatonic habits and remain ob- 
 stinately rural. They live mostly outside ~th~industrial 
 towns, sometimes in close proximity, sometimes quite in the 
 country, where, as the semi-order of mature feudalism grows, 
 they everywhere on the continent build castles for defence and 
 offence : the towns are left in the main to the at first compara- 
 tively despised part of society that has to live by industry 
 and trade. And the more the town grows in importance and 
 independence, the more, speaking generally, it differentiates 
 itself, in its political structure and life, from the country. 
 The inhabitants of the town — even the leading inhabitants 
 who manage its affairs — come to be recognised as essentially 
 different in their manner of life and predominant interests 
 from the leading members of the community who rule in 
 the rural districts round, and still predominate in the 
 government of the country as a whole. The word " citizen " 
 comes to be used in a new sense to mean, not as the Greek 
 TToXirrj^ and the Latin civis, a member of a state having 
 
XVI MEDIEVAL CITIES — GENERAL TYPE 235 
 
 political privileges and a certain share in the control of the 
 government of the state, increasing as the state moves 
 towards democracy ; but an inhabitant of a city as distinct / 
 from an inhabitant of the country — a " bourgeois," having ' 
 distinctively urban interests and urban ways of life, which j 
 mark off even the leading citizens as a class unlike the rural 
 gentry — with whom, in many cases, they are for a pro- 
 longed period in hostile relations. 
 
 This remains broadly true, in spite of very important 
 differences in the political development of different groups 
 of medieval cities — due to the different relations in which 
 the city and its governing class stand to the government 
 and the governing class of the neighbouring country. Of 
 these differences the most striking are ultimately traceable 
 to the institution of the Holy Eoman Empire, and its effect 
 in weakening the central government in the straggling realm 
 of which the emperor was theoretically sovereign. 
 
 We considered this in a previous lecture,^ but the point 
 that I am now especially concerned to notice is that modern 
 Germany and North Italy, as they last on through the 
 period of monarchical predominance, are not composed / 
 merely of semi-independent principalities. The weakness / 
 of the Empire has been the opportunity of the towns as 
 well as of the princes. In Germany it has enabled a large 
 number of them, partly by. purchase, partly by usurpation, 
 partly by force — in spite of the resistance of their im- 
 mediate lords ecclesiastical and secular, and at one period 
 of the emperor also — to raise themselves to the position of 
 imperial cities, tacitly acknowledged to be as independent 
 and semi -sovereign as the principalities — i.e. owing no 
 allegiance except to the emperor and the imperial diet, in 
 which they have a recognised place from the end of the 
 thirteenth century. And this position they formally main- 
 tain so long as the empire lasts. It must be admitted that 
 in modern history they have not much manifest importance, 
 they keep quiet, and the ordinary historian does not notice 
 them. But in the later Middle Ages it was different ; they 
 1 Lecture xiii. pp. 196-198. 
 
236 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 struggled and fought, at first singly, against the feudal lords 
 in their neighbourhood ; later in leagues and confederacies. 
 
 (When the Hanseatic league of the great commercial cities 
 of North Germany makes war on its own account, and on 
 equal terms, with the Scandinavian kingdoms, the most 
 ordinary historian has to notice them. 
 
 In North Italy the monarchical power of the emperor is 
 on the whole still more shadowy than in Germany. He 
 has a recognised right to wear the Lombard crown, and 
 repeatedly tries to maintain effective sovereignty in Italy, 
 but never with more than transient success. Accordingly 
 in Italy the cities attained a still more brilliant, though 
 mostly briefer, autonomy than in Germany, and even tem- 
 / porarily a practically complete independence — indeed, over 
 't' a considerable part of North Italy, the cities subdue the 
 country, and the land is divided up into city-states with 
 adjacent territory as in the old times of free Greece. Even 
 before the middle of the twelfth century, the Lombard cities 
 — as we shall see — have developed sufficiently and attained 
 sufficient independence to engage in mutual wars of a violent 
 kind. Later on Florence and Siena, Venice and Genoa 
 attract the attention of the reader of history much as do 
 Athens, Sparta, and Thebes ; and the multitude of other 
 cities practically independent for a long period is forced on 
 his notice by the relations of these. Of this rich develop- 
 ment of independent medieval municipal life in Italy little 
 indeed remains in the seventeenth century ; but still there 
 are a few fragments — Lucca, Genoa, and the wonderful 
 Venice, the marvel of oligarchical stability in medieval and 
 modern times. 
 
 V Now, it will easily be understood that the greater the 
 W degree of independence the city attains, the stronger its 
 
 V analogy becomes to the completely independent city-states 
 
 I of ancient Greece. With a view, therefore, to working out 
 
 / this comparison, I shall, in the next four lectures, concen- 
 
 / trate attention on the political structure and phases in the 
 
 / political development of the medie val cit y- communities of 
 
 Germany and Ital^ and especially shall point out in the 
 
XVI MEDIEVAL CITIES — GENERAL TYPE 237 
 
 case of Italy how the very predominance of the cities intro- 
 duced important differences into their political constitution, 
 social life and ultimate destiny, as compared with the 
 medieval cities in other West European countries. For the 
 present, however, I wish to dwell on similarities rather than 
 differences — the common characteristics of the medieval 
 type of city. And to exhibit these, I will now turn to 
 the country which, in respect of the vigorous exercise of 
 control by the central government, is at the other pole from 
 Germany and Italy — I mean England. / 
 
 § 2. The history of the cities in England during the 
 Middle Ages is sadly deficient in the romantic interest which 
 is amply spread over the history of the cities of the Empire. 
 The "irreconcileable warfare" with the possessors of fortified 
 castles which we have in Germany ; the violent campaigns 
 of city against city which are so frequent in Italian history 
 — all this is excluded by the strong central government 
 which is, on the whole, maintained in England after the 
 Norman Conquest, broken only by comparatively brief 
 intervals of civil disorder. This strong central govern- 1 
 ment keeps the development of the towns within narrow \ 
 limits. The right of independent warfare at all is a right ' 
 that they are effectually prevented from claiming, though 
 from time to time their discontent causes a certain amount 
 of transient disorder ; indeed, private wars are effectually k 
 kept down even among the feudal barons, after the " un- [ 
 licensed castles " have been destroyed at the close of the 
 twenty years of anarchy in the reign of Stephen. The 
 development of the English boroughs is, as we shall see, 
 important in the political development of the nation ; but 
 the municipal government of the English towns, through 
 whatever changes it passes, never claims or exercises the 
 more important functions of sovereign government. Its 
 development can never be compared to the development 
 of an independent state ; it is always to be viewed as the 
 development of a part of a larger political whole. 
 
 Yet, notwithstanding this fundamental difference, we 
 may stiU trace a common type in the structure of English, 
 
238 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 German, and Italian medieval towns, a type of which the 
 characteristics come out more fully, the more fully the 
 structure is developed, i.e. when the English towns — while 
 still remaining completely under the control of the national 
 government — have emancipated themselves from the local 
 administrative system and acquired adequate powers of self- 
 government. Not only are both classes of towns essentially 
 industrial communities, of which the ruling members — those 
 in whose hands the municipal government is placed — are 
 engaged in trade or manufacture, and are influential through 
 their industrial occupations and connexions ; but further, 
 their industrial structure — the component elements of the 
 whole body, and the relations among these elements, the 
 manner in which their economic structure influences their form 
 of government, and the manner in which their government 
 exercises the powers that are entrusted to it in matters com- 
 mercial and industrial — are strikingly similar. In the most 
 famous and powerful of the Italian Eepublics — Venice apart 
 — in Florence, no less than in a peaceful English market-town, 
 the citizen proper, the typical citizen, is a person engaged 
 in trade or manufacture ; and when the city is fully 
 developed, the civic body is framed on the principle that 
 the right of citizenship and the right to carry on an inde- 
 pendent trading or industrial occupation are properly in- 
 separable. In either case, the civic body so constituted 
 endeavours, by market regulation and inter -municipal 
 negotiation, to secure every advantage it can over rival 
 towns ; and considers that every leading or important 
 occupation should have its own organisation, its own 
 ofi&cials, expected to carry out a searching system of in- 
 dustrial supervision over its members. And in many cases 
 it comes to be the accepted idea that each of these in- 
 dustrial groups should have its own representation in the 
 governing body of the city.^ 
 
 I wouH* especially note this last feature, by which the 
 medieval civic body becomes a kind of federation of in- 
 dustrial groups — " crafts, mysteries, or arts " of which we 
 ^ Ashley's English Economic History, vol. ii. p. 7. 
 
MEDIEVAL CITIES — GENERAL TYPE 
 
 239 
 
 now see a survival in the London Companies of Drapers, 
 Clothworkers, etc. — each- group having certain independent 
 powers of self-government, of which the main public and 
 avowed object, and at first, we may believe, one of the main 
 real objects, was to bring about such a supervision of 
 each trade and craft as should maintain the quality of 
 wares, and the generally accepted standard of good work. 
 This structure of the civic body for economic and political 
 purposes combined was only reached after a process in- 
 volving a certain amount of struggle and conflict; and 
 though the intensity of the struggle and conflict varies 
 very much — in England it is comparatively slight — there 
 is still much similarity in the stages of the process as we 
 compare it in different countries of Western Europe. 
 
 In the first place, in England no less than on the y 
 Continent, the town only gradually works itself free from 
 the social and political system of the neighbouring country. 
 Accordingly, citizenship is at first confined to those inhabi--c 
 tants of the town who hold land within the town boundaries ; 
 such " burgage tenants " alone are fully qualified members 
 of the town assembly. 
 
 Then, after the industrial character of the town has / 
 become clearly marked, in England no less than on the 
 Continent the mercantile element, as distinct from the^ 
 artisan element, take the lead, and for some time practi- 
 cally monopolise the government of the city. In at least 
 some English towns in the thirteenth century, craftsmen are / 
 formally excluded from the class of " freemen " of the town ; 
 if a craftsman wishes to become a freeman, he must first 
 forswear his craft and get rid of the tools from his house. 
 Even the claim of the crafts to organise themselves for 
 purposes of self-government is sometimes resisted; in' 
 London, in John's reign, the citizens offered to make an 
 annual payment to the exchequer if the weavers' guild 
 were abolished. In time, however, the tables are com- 
 pletely turned ; not only is the partially independent 
 organisation of the crafts tolerated, it becomes a part 
 of the policy of the central government to foster and 
 
240 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 extend it; before the end of Edward the Third's reign, 
 instead of the craftsmen being incapable of citizenship,-^ 
 citizenship in London comes to be bound up with member- 
 ship of one of the companies. Each " craft " or "company" 
 has regular meetings, and elected officers who enforce a 
 certain amount of taxation for common purposes and 
 exercise certain rights of jurisdiction and search. 
 , This gradual advent of members of crafts to equality of 
 y privileges with the merchants may be called the ' movement 
 \ towards democracy' in the medieval city community, corre- 
 sponding, in some degree, with the movement towards de- 
 mocracy in the Graeco-Eoman city-states ; and in both cases 
 the democracyis, regarded ix^m. a modern point of view, 
 palpably incomplete. But the difference between the two 
 movements is very striking. In the Greek city - state, 
 throughout the struggle towards democracy, both oligarchs 
 and demos remain largely agricultural, and though free 
 mechanics ultimately — where democracy wins — become full 
 citizens, still, mechanic labour remains largely servile. '* 
 Whereas, as we have seen, in the medieval town the 
 oligarchs — if I may use the term — are essentially traders, 
 the democracy essentially a democracy of handicraftsmen. 
 Note further, that in the old city-state — as afterwards in the 
 democratic movement, so far, of the modern country-state — 
 the struggle is for an extension of personal privileges ; 
 whereas the crafts in the medieval town are organised . 
 bodies, struggling for corporate privileges. Partly in con-' 
 sequence of this, we have to recognise, as the last stage of 
 development of the medieval city — seen in England again, 
 as well as in Germany and Italy, though in a less degree — 
 a tendency to a new kind of oligarchy, formed within the , 
 crafts when they have attained their privileged position. / 
 A separation takes place between the master-artisans, to 
 whom the privileges of the craft are confined, and an 
 increasing class of journeymen ; and obstacles are put in 
 the way of journeymen becoming masters — such as heavy 
 entrance-fees, and the obligation of providing an expensive 
 breakfast or dinner for the members of the craft. Further, 
 
XVI MEDIEVAL CITIES — GENERAL TYPE 241 
 
 even among the master -craftsmen an oligarchic system of 
 government grows up or becomes intensified; the very- 
 political success of the crafts tends to destroy their demo- 
 cratic character, because — when the rule is established that 
 membership of an organised craft is a necessary condition of 
 possessing the civic franchise — persons superior in wealth 
 and social position to the ordinary artisan become members 
 of the " arts " or " companies," and naturally acquire a 
 leading position in them. Accordingly, we find that the 
 government of the companies, and also of the civic body 
 composed of companies, becomes in many cases highly oli- 
 garchical in its latest stage. 
 
 I have endeavoured to give a typical account of the 
 process of development when allowed to become full. It 
 must be understood that variations and exceptions in detail 
 are numerous ; and especially, it must be understood that 
 both as regards the disengagement of the city-government 
 from that of the country, and the relations of the cities to 
 feudal nobles, and as regards the changing relations between 
 merchants and artisans, there was normally in the leading 
 continental cities a violent and prolonged conflict which 
 has no place in England. Especially in Italy, relations 
 between citizens and nobles are, as we shall see, a perma- 
 nent source of disorder. 
 
 § 3. The times at which the cities obtained more or 
 less independence, as well as the degree of independence 
 attained by them, vary very much in different parts of 
 Western Europe. In the case of Spain an early inde- 
 pendence appears to be the natural accompaniment of the 
 part taken by the cities in the struggle against the Moslems 
 from whom Spain is slowly being won back. Thus Spain 
 in the eleventhj3entury has chartered towns who elect their 
 own magistrates and judges and commanders in war, and 
 pay only fixed moderate rents for their land.^ In Italy, 
 in the beginning of the twelfth century, most of the Lombard 
 
 ^ It is interesting to note— in contrast with Italy — that in Spain, many of 
 the early charters provide expressly that no noble shall accLuire real property 
 or erect a fortress within the community. 
 
 R 
 
242 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 and many of the Tuscan towns have, as we shall see, 
 acquired similar privileges. 
 
 Turning to France, we find a number of types of 
 semi -independent towns and degrees of independence, 
 owing to the different conditions of different parts of 
 the country during the feudal period, and it may be 
 worth while to dwell for a moment on these differences, 
 as an illustration of the rich variety of medieval political 
 phenomena. In the central region where the king's power 
 is real, though the royal policy is to foster the growth of 
 the towns, for the increase of wealth and population, it 
 only extends the civil rights of the inhabitants and does 
 not grant them any portion of sovereign power. From 
 " villeins " the townsmen have become " king's bourgeois " ; 
 and the increase of freedom and security thus obtained is 
 valuable ; the " charter of Lorris " — the model for 
 such towns — is widely demanded and obtained during the 
 twelfth century ; but the militia of such towns are still 
 commanded, their taxes collected, their justice administered 
 by royal officials. The old arbitrariness in the adminis- 
 tration of justice and the imposition of taxes and labour is, 
 however, done away with ; all payments and services are 
 fixed at a definite amount. Of the western part of France, 
 which is under English rule in the twelfth century, much 
 the same may be said, though the charters conceded by 
 Henry II. and Eichard are a little more liberal of political 
 privileges. In the North -East and South -East, on the 
 other hand, some cities attain a political independence 
 practically equal to that of the great feudal nobles ; while 
 remaining under the suzerainty of duke, count, or bishop, 
 they gain complete control over the administration of urban 
 justice, make peace and war and treaties on their own 
 account, elect their own magistrates and govern themselves 
 by their own laws. But the social structure and type of 
 self-government of these semi-sovereign cities are different in 
 the North and South respectively. In the South — especially 
 the old Koman Provincia — where the tide of barbarian 
 conquest has only partially effaced the old Gallo-Eoman 
 
XVI MEDIEVAL CITIES GENERAL TYPE 243 
 
 social organisation, the cities contain an element of old 
 nobility, so that the preponderance of the industrial element 
 is less complete. Here the political institutions more 
 resemble those that we shall observe in Italy when we 
 come to the Italian towns : we find " consuls " with their 
 special and general councils, the Parliament or Assembly 
 of the people at large, and in some cases even the foreign 
 Podesta. On the other hand, it is in the North, in 
 Amiens, Beauvais, Soissons, that we have the most dis-^^ 
 tinctly medieval type of town; here free associations of 
 traders and artisans, who have grown wealthy and strong 
 by industry and trade, band together to " swear the com- 
 mune " and purchase or wrench by force from their 
 neighbouring feudal superiors a substantial amount of in- 
 dependence, i.e. complete original jurisdiction — even to 
 capital punishment — over their own citizens, and the right 
 of making peace and war. Then, as the kingdom of 
 Prance grows towards coherence, the independence of the 
 semi-sovereign cities everywhere diminishes, and ultimately 
 becomes a thing of the past. Still the development of the 
 cities has had an important effect, as we shall see later, on | 
 the development of the government of the nation. [ 
 
LECTUKE XVII 
 
 MEDIEVAL CITIES GERMAN 
 
 § 1. In these lectures on the medieval city-community, I 
 am anxious to bring out clearly at once the most important 
 resemblances that we find when we compare the medieval 
 cities in different European countries, as well as the no 
 less important differences that arise from the different 
 conditions of different countries. I am, however, some- 
 what more concerned to lay stress on the resemblances, 
 because they are apt to be ignored by the ordinary historian. 
 For instance, in Freeman's excellent essay on Ancient Greece 
 and Mediceval Italy, there are many interesting analogies 
 and diversities noted between the development of the 
 simply independent city-state in ancient Greece, and the 
 practically almost independent city-community in medieval 
 Italy ; but in fifty-one pages there are only a few lines, 
 easily overlooked, that even suggest the feature which the 
 famous Florence has in common with other less glorious 
 cities in other parts of Europe, namely, that the civic body 
 proper was composed of commercial or industrial elements, 
 organised in incorporated trades and crafts. 
 
 Well, to bring resemblances and differences clearly and 
 yet briefly before you, I have directed attention to England, 
 where we see the medieval city developing un3erthe 
 effective control of the central government. But, as I said, 
 I wish also to take a look at Germany, as we see in Germany 
 the pure type of medieval city in the highest degree of inde- 
 pendenc^'wliicirthe pure type reaches, and also at North 
 Italy^ where we see the medieval city at its veryjjighest 
 degree of independence, and -predominance, but where its 
 
 244 
 
LECT. XVII MEDIEVAL CITIES — GERMAN 245 
 
 very predominance has impaired the purity of the type, 
 because the feudal nobles, compelled or persuaded to take 
 up their residence in the towns, are a more or less alien 
 element in a predominantly industrial polity, and, as we 
 shall see, grave consequences flow from the intermixture of 
 this alien element. 
 
 Accordingly the subject of the present lecture is the 
 political development of the city-community in Germany, 
 Le. in the regions north of the Alps, under the dominion 
 of the Holy Eo man Em pire. And here it is convenient 
 to notice a distinction between two portions of Western 
 Europe, which is important in tracing its social and political 
 development in the Middle Ages. TJiia is the difference 
 between the part that has been civilised and in which civilisa- 
 tion, the old Eoman civilisation Christianised, is submerged 
 and diminished but not destroyed by the barbarian invasions 
 and conquests ; and the \pajt that has been barbarous and 
 in which the new civilisauon, formed of Teutonic, Eoman, 
 and Christian elements blended, is extended during the 
 early part of the Middle Ages. Speaking broadly, the 
 Ehine and the Danube were the boundary of the old 
 Eoman Empire on this side, though, as the limits of 
 modern languages indicate, the influence of the Eoman 
 civilisation only extended up to the border in an enfeebled 
 form. At any rate Germany beyond the borders has to 
 be entirely civilised under early medieval conditions ; and 
 in this process of carrying civilisation eastward both the 
 Chrircb and thft^j ^itios^ play an important part. And for 
 a long time the civilising action of the two elements — the 
 ecclesiastical and the industrial — works in harmony. We 
 have indeed to begin our survey of municipal development 
 by noticing the very important influence exercised by the 
 Church both in Germany and in Italy on the first stage in 
 the development of the towns. This is partly due to the 
 alliance of Church and Empire, which is the basis of 
 Charles the Great's strongly held dominion. The Church 
 is a great instrument of his policy, as is most strikingly 
 seen in his conquest -conversion of Saxony, with eight 
 
246 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 bishoprics and monasteries from which civilisation spread. 
 The same alliance is maintained in the revived empire of 
 Otto the Great in both Germany and Italy ; only while in 
 Italy the Church was the p rotector of the remains of the 
 old civilisation, in Germany it was the source of new 
 civilisation. 
 
 Accordingly, partly through the policy of the Frankish 
 monarchs, partly through the influence of reKgion on their 
 minds and those of other wealthy landowners, remarkably 
 large tracts of land came — through royal grant, through 
 gift or bequest, sometimes through the surrender of small 
 landowners seeking the protection of the Church in troubled 
 times — to be held by bishops and abbots, who thus entered 
 into the feudal system, and became co-ordinate with the 
 great lay-feudatories ; their military tenants being bound 
 to obey the king's summons to military service, as much 
 as any vassals of lay lords. But though thus semi- 
 feudalised, the Church did not strip off its distinctive 
 character ; and through the special effectiveness of the 
 protection that its religious influence enabled it to give, 
 it took the lead in fostering the growth of cities. This 
 was a part of its general civilising work in the regions 
 beyond the Ehine and the Alps. 
 
 Here I may remark that in one important respect the 
 type of the German town reminds us of the old Greek town 
 more than the town of medieval Italy does, viz. that it 
 is in its wajg;^_j^jCQ lonising_ jbype. It spreads municipal 
 civilisation by land as the Greek town spreads it by sea, 
 extending into Hungary and Poland, into Scandinavia and 
 Eussia; — indeed the eastern part of what we now call 
 Germany was largely won over to Teutonic civilisation by 
 the planting in it of German communities with municipal 
 constitutions, amid an agricultural population mainly of 
 Wendish or other Sclavonic stock. 
 
 As compared with Italy or Spain, the striking develop- 
 ment of the German cities does not come early, but it 
 is remarkably enduring; their external importance is 
 on the increase till the fourteenth century, and is 
 
XVII MEDIEVAL CITIES GERMAN 247 
 
 maintained undiminished for two centuries more. And 
 though the Church, as I have said, takes the lead in 
 fostering their development, they ultimately came to be 
 liberally encouraged by the princes and other lords of the 
 soil in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, largely on 
 the simple economic ground that the rents and dues paid 
 by them to the territorial lord were found to be a valuable 
 source of revenue. It came to be commonly recognised as 
 a first-class improvement of a large landed estate to get 
 up a thriving town upon it. In tracing, however, the 
 normal political development of these town communities we 
 have to remember that they both begin and end at different 
 stages ; towns of a later foundation have often not got to 
 go through the struggles and the earlier grades of emancipa- 
 tion of the older cities : on the other hand, many of them 
 do not fight their way to the position of free cities of the 
 Empire ; they have, after a struggle, to acquiesce in sub- 
 jection to bishops or secular princes. In the latter part of 
 the twelfth and the beginning of the thirteenth century we 
 see the older cities struggling after an independence equal 
 to that which the Italian cities have attained; especially 
 the episcopal cities struggle with their bishops for the 
 complete right of self-taxation, coining, taking tolls, ad- 
 ministering justice-^^^tke'liaiFmony between ecclesiastical and 
 industrial aims being now a thing of the past. The cities 
 are temporarily checked by the opposition of the Emperor 
 Frederick II. (first half of the thirteenth century), but 
 they continue the struggle, and in the end a large number 
 of the towns become — by force or purchase — Imperial 
 Cities, owning no obedience except to the Emperor and 
 the Diet ; and only less independent than the Italian 
 cities, because the Holy Eoman Empire — though too weak 
 for the task of giving unity to Germany — is more of a 
 reality on the north than on the south side of the Alps. 
 
 § 2. Let us look more closely at the stages of the pro- 
 cess. The old episcopal towns, as I have said, take the i^ 
 lead in it. Here the Church, though it early acquires in- 
 dependent jurisdiction over the dependents on its estates, 
 
248 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 has at first no political control over free landowners, or the 
 tenants of the monarch or other secular lord, living in the 
 town. The town, in fact, has not at first any political 
 unity. But as the towns grow, and their inhabitants be- 
 come distinctively urban in their interests and ways of life, 
 then the need the townsmen feel of special rights and privi- 
 leges and a special administration of law and justice, com- 
 bining with the desire of the great ecclesiastics to extend 
 their power, leads to the political unification of the town 
 under the headship of the bishop. And in this first process 
 the distinctively industrial character of the town is already 
 marked. Trade and commerce progress markedly in the 
 tenth and eleventh century in Germany, especially after 
 the predatory inroads of the Hungarians have been finally 
 checked in a.d. 955 by the victorious arms of Otto the Great. 
 Large markets, visited by strangers, are established and 
 thrive in all parts of Germany, and German merchants 
 extend their enterprise to England, Spain, and the Far East. 
 And we note that the peaceful pursuits of religion and 
 trade are naturally combined ; and that regular frequenta- 
 tion of, and special pilgrimages to, great churches render 
 ecclesiastical towns the natural place for the development 
 of a market. Hence when, to foster commerce, the mon- 
 archs grant a special privilege and a special " king's peace " 
 to these towns, that the markets and those who visit them 
 may be protected from disturbance, it is in the cities where 
 ^bishops have their seats that this largely, though not solely, 
 occurs. 
 
 The administration then of the leading cities was unified 
 under the rule of the bishop ; and this had at first a certain 
 tendency to depress the originally free inhabitants of the 
 town towards the social level of the townsmen originally 
 dependents of the bishop. This led to a conflict of aims 
 between bishop and town, which manifests itself when the 
 first great quarrel occurs between Church and Empire in 
 the latter part of the eleventh century, when town after 
 town takes the side of Henry IV. against his rebellious 
 bishops. But as the prosperity and wealth of the towns 
 
XVII MEDIEVAL CITIES GERMAN 249 
 
 grow — and we are told that in Cologne, while still under 
 archiepiscopal rule in the latter half of the eleventh century, 
 there were "600 most wealthy merchants " — they acquire 
 a large degree of self-government. The organ that exercises 
 this government in the name of the citizens is in the older 
 cities usually formed by degrees, its nucleus being a body ^^ 
 of judges — scdbini, schoffen — whose judicial functions are of 
 old standing, handed down from Carolingian times, but 
 who gradually acquire, usually in conjunction with other 
 leading citizens, administrative and even subordinate legis- 
 lative functions, till ultimately a governing Town Council 
 is formed under the presidency of one or more " Burgo- 
 masters." The importance of their administrative functions 
 grows, as the town under their government is gradually 
 obtaining by purchase or conflict, through custom recognised 
 as law or through express contract, the powers previously 
 exercised by episcopal or princely officials. 
 
 This government is originally and for a long period 
 a " natural oligarchy," i.e. the persons who exercise it, I 
 however elected, are exclusively the wealthier citizens. \ 
 Usually, I think, the councillors holding office for a year, 
 the outgoing councillors determine their successors, so that 
 government is practically in the hands of a group of what 
 might be called " senatorial families." We have to observe 
 that, especially in the older towns, the society that thus 
 struggles into independence has not at first the prepojider- 
 antly industrial character which it ultimately assumes ; it 
 originally contained knights as well as free non-military 
 burgesses, and cases occur in which these knights (milites) 
 have a special representation in the municipal government. 
 In time, no doubt, the feudal element becomes so much the 
 weaker that it has either to quit the town or be absorbed 
 by the mercantile element ; still the body of fully qualified 
 citizens that resulted usually held for some time to the 
 possession of town-land of a certain value as a necessary 
 condition of full citizenship. And even in towns of later 
 growth, like Ltibeck and Hamburg, in which there was from 
 the first no feudal element at all, a similar oligarchy of 
 
250 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 merchant-landowners seems to have formed itself. In any 
 case the government of the town soon comes to be in the 
 hands of a preponderantly mercantile minority of the towns- 
 I men, the organ of government being, as I have said, an 
 annually appointed oligarchical council. This council often 
 assumes complicated forms — in earlier times from conflicts 
 between the families monopolising government and other 
 members of the mercantile class, and in some cases 
 partly because certain governmental functions are assumed 
 by a voluntary association of merchants ; afterwards 
 from struggles with the artisans. But it is note- 
 worthy that throughout its history the government of 
 the German town remains in the main conciliar — the chief 
 Administrative organ is a council, or system of councils — 
 /the constitution does not move like the old Greek town 
 towards the plan of administration by general assembly of 
 citizens ; nor does it like the old Greek or medieval Italian 
 town fall under a Tyrannus. 
 
 Not that the general body of free citizens is to be con- 
 ceived as altogether excluded from participation in govern- 
 ment, though its degree of participation varies very much in 
 different places. It is often summoned when new statutes 
 are made, when treaties are entered into or military ex- 
 peditions are decided on, when important new taxes are 
 imposed or debts contracted, etc. ; but its meetings are at 
 the discretion of the council, and they become rarer as time 
 goes on. Sometimes — though not usually — the general 
 body of citizens has the election of councillors. 
 
 Generally, we may say that, in the first stage of develop- 
 ment of the self-governing town, after an important amount 
 of self-government has been achieved, t here is a tend encv 
 for the government to become more oligarchical — something 
 like the tendency which we observed in the Greek city- 
 state from inequality of landed property. Only in the 
 medieval town the oligarchy i s essentially m ercantile ; and 
 it has no sooner been fully. developed than it finds itself 
 face to face with a Demos of artisans, organised in associa- 
 tions of the peculiarly medieval kind described in the last 
 
XVII MEDIEVAL CITIES GERMAN 251 
 
 lecture. They are called in Germany by various names, 
 e.g. " Fraternities " in Cologne, " Gilds " in the Westphalian 
 towns, elsewhere " Unions " {Innungen), etc. For conveni- 
 ence and brevity I will call them crafts. Their resemblance 
 to modern trade-unions is striking; but the difference was 
 as marked as the resemblance. The medieval crafts were 
 not associations of hired labourers, but of master-workmen 
 working on their own account, employing apprent ices and 
 sometimes journeymen who were not, as such, admitted to 
 the association.' 
 
 § 3. This seems a convenient place to discuss the 
 origin of this peculiar economic structure of the medieval 
 city, the organisation of its industrial element into distinct 
 "gilds," "crafts," "arti," or "mestieri" — corporate bodies with 
 certain powers of regulation of the industry and control 
 over its members. Here I am obliged to disagree with the 
 conclusions of a writer to whom I owe much — Professor 
 Ashley. He appears to reject the theory of a Koman origin 
 of the " craft-gilds " or " associations of all the artisans 
 engaged in a particular industry in a particular town, for 
 certain common purposes," ^ because the growth of a separate 
 class of artisans presupposes a comparatively late stage in 
 the development of industry, a stage that was only reached 
 in England in the twelfth century. He says : " No doubt 
 the artisans in the later Koman Empire had an organisation 
 somewhat like that of the later gilds. Moreover, it is pos- 
 sible that in one or two places in Gaul, certain artisan 
 corporations may have had a continuous existence from the 
 fifth to the twelfth century. . . . But when we see that 
 the growth of an artisan class, as distinguished from isolated 
 artisans here and there, was impossible till the twelfth 
 century . . . and that the ideas which governed the craft- 
 gilds were not peculiar to themselves but common to the 
 whole society of the time ; then the elements of organisa- 
 tion which may conceivably have been derived from or 
 suggested by the Roman artisan corporations become of 
 quite secondary importance." 
 
 ^ Ashley, Ihiglish Economic History, Book i. ch. ii. § 8. 
 
252 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 Now we shall all agree that in the English towns which 
 Mr. Ashley has primarily in view, there cannot have been 
 a continuous existence of organisations of artisans from 
 Roman times downward. That is incontrovertible ; but it 
 appears to me hasty to conclude from this that the deriva- 
 tion from Roman artisan corporations is therefore of second- 
 ary importance. Mr. Ashley overlooks, I think, the large 
 place that has to be assigned to imitation in the development 
 of political institutions. Doubtless in towns of recent origin, 
 on the Continent no less than in England, the organisations 
 of artisans cannot have been directly derived from the 
 artisan corporations {scholae) of the later Roman Empire ; 
 but they may still have been so derived indirectly, through 
 imitation of older towns in which this corporate organisation 
 of industry had had a continuous life. And I think that 
 the broad similarity between the economic structure of the 
 Italian town and that of the English or German town 
 renders this conclusion probable. It is true that this 
 structure, in most cases, does not attract the attention of 
 the chronicler till a late date ; but in Venice, as early as 
 the ninth century, we find this organisation both of per- 
 fectly free workers in more dignified industries — such as 
 architecture, mosaic- work, etc., " arti " proper — and humbler 
 workers in "mestieri" (ministeria) who seem to have been 
 not completely free, as they had to perform certain public 
 services gratuitously. Here at least the organisation cannot 
 be of Teutonic origin, and the Roman ^^origin^is obvious ; 
 then, as we compare the structure of other Italian towns 
 when we come to know it, we find it so similar as to sug- 
 gest a similar origin ; it certainly cannot have come from 
 the Lombards, who are admittedly the most barbarous of all 
 the Teutonic invaders. But if we have to accept a Roman 
 origin in Italy, the broad similarity of the structure of the 
 Italian to that of the Teutonic town renders it most prob- 
 able in the case of the latter 
 
 It may be remarked in passing that one reason for dwell- 
 ing on this is, that it is important in a general view of the 
 Italian town not to^ overlook its connexion with the muni- 
 
XVII MEDIEVAL CITIES — GERMAN 253 
 
 cipality of old Eoman civilisation. We are to conceive 
 the relics of the older civilisation as surviving — so far as 
 they did survive — chiefly in the towns ; and we may thus 
 partly explain the antagonism to feudality manifested by 
 the Italian cities when they grow strong and thriving, and 
 the enthusiasm with which, in the twelfth century, the 
 revived study of Eoman law is embraced. 
 
 § 4. In any case, these &,ssociations had doubtless existed 
 and operated long before the corporate control exercised by 
 them over persons engaged in the respective trades was 
 formally granted and recognised as legal. We find them 
 widely established in the latter part of the eleventh and in 
 the twelfth century, though their range was being extended 
 by new grants. But at this time they are still under the 
 control of the municipal authority, and have not always 
 even the full right of electing their own officials ; though, 
 so far as legalised, they have the right of meeting, laying 
 down rules for the practice of their respective handicrafts, 
 and enforcing observance by penalties. 
 
 We are to conceive this "demos of handicrafts" as partly 
 composed of citizens free by extraction but landless, partly 
 of serfs who have gradually freed themselves from servile 
 conditions. For labour — the labour of the town — has two 
 stages to go through in that march upward in the social 
 scale which it effects during the later period of the Middle 
 Ages. It has first to throw off the relics ^of rural serfdo m — 
 a process which we have evidence of early in the twelfth 
 century, and which culminates in the establishment of the 
 principle that any serf who has resided in the town for a 
 year and a day is vp8o facto free. Then, when civil freedom 
 is secured, comes the struggle for co rpora tejndgpandence and 
 for a share of political power. The former is first reached 
 — the crafts mostly obtain complete independence of organ- 
 isation, and such powers of independent self-government as 
 are required for their industrial aims. A share of political 
 power is longer deferred ; the struggle, in its length and 
 obstinacy, reminds us of the Eoman struggle between 
 patricians and plebeians, though in the medieval city the 
 
254 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 barrier to overcome is not formally one of birth, but of 
 calling and status. It is, as I have said, a mercantile oli- 
 garchy contending with a demos of handicrafts ; the struggle 
 begins in the thirteenth, or sometimes even in the twelfth 
 century, but the victory is not generally won till the four- 
 teenth. It has to be gone through in all the old cities, 
 I think, — only in some towns of later foundation are the 
 handicraftsmen full citizens from the first. 
 
 The share of political rights conceded to the artisans is very 
 various, and sometimes rapidly fluctuating — for example, in 
 Strasburg, from A.D. 1334—1482 we may count sixteen 
 different constitutions. When the crafts win, as a rule, 
 they get a share in the power of the Council in some way 
 or other, but the ways are various. Sometimes craftsmen 
 are simply declared admissible as councillors ; sometimes a 
 body of representatives of crafts sit as a separate bench in 
 the old council ; sometimes they form a new governmental 
 organ, with certain powers of control and co-operation, out- 
 side the old council. Mostly, too, they obtain some control 
 over the election of the one or more Burgomasters. Finally, 
 as we saw, in some towns, the victory goes further. The 
 constitution of the town is remodelled on the gild-principle, 
 the merchant-associations, where they exist, being brought 
 down to the level of the newer craft-associations; it becomes 
 governmentally a kind of federation of trades unions, so that 
 every citizen has to be a member of a trade-association, 
 which thus becomes a political division or element of the 
 civic community. I am speaking of Germany, but it will 
 be remembered that in London too, from Edward III.'s 
 time, every citizen has to be a member of some organised 
 trade or " mystery." 
 
 On the whole, whatever special political privileges are 
 retained by the old citizens — and several important towns 
 remain preponderantly oligarchical — still, it is everywhere 
 established as a general rule that citizenship is independ- 
 ent of landowning, and that the class of citizens includes 
 artisans {i.e. master- workmen, working on their own account, 
 having gone through a regular apprenticeship) as well as 
 
XVII MEDIEVAL CITIES — GERMAN 255 
 
 merchants. It is noteworthy that the bulwark of oligarchy 
 in this movement is found in the cities with widely extended 
 foreign trade — naturally, from the predominance of great 
 capitalists in the leading business of the town. And it is 
 a bulwark which gains strength from the power and prestige 
 of the Hanseatic League formed by these cities. Even after 
 the crafts have won either complete political equality or at 
 any rate a share in government almost everywhere in South 
 and Middle Germany, on the Lower Ehine, and in West- 
 phalia, and in many towns of the North and East, they 
 still remain excluded from the councils of the leading towns 
 of the Hanseatic League, though their members are recog- 
 nised as citizens, and the presiding officials of the crafts form 
 a kind of consultative chamber, occasionally called on for 
 advice by the governing council of the town ; and their 
 struggles in these towns to get a share of the councils after 
 the end of the fourteenth century mostly fail. 
 
 We thus have two stages, broadly analogous to those of the 
 Greek city-state : first, as the town grows prosperous, there is 
 a movement from natural oligarchy towards more sharply ex- 
 clusive oligarchy through inequality of wealth ; then there is 
 a movement towards a more popular constitution. Only in the 
 medieval town the oligarchy is an oligarchy of merchants, the 
 demos a body of organised liandicrafts. Further, we may 
 observe that here and there the development of the German 
 cities resembles that of the Greek in exhibiting something 
 that corresponds to the earlier age of the tyrants — so far as, 
 when the political movement begins among the artisans, 
 they appear not as independent combatants for political 
 rights, but ratlier as auxiliaries of the ecclesiastical or 
 secular lord in his struggle with the old citizens. Thus, 
 in Cologne, in the thirteenth century, an archbishop intro- 
 duced artisans into official posts as convenient tools. This, 
 however, is a partial, occasional, and transient phenomenon 
 in the German development, to which too much importance 
 must not be attached ; and as I before said, it is a note- 
 worthy characteristic of the German cities that when they 
 have emancipated themselves from their inferior feudal lords, 
 
256 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 and become imperial towns, they never give themselves over 
 voluntarily to the rule of a single person for a time, as the 
 medieval Italian cities frequently do; or fall under the 
 usurpation of a tyrant, as is the case with both medieval 
 Italian and old Greek cities. This, I suppose, is due partly 
 to their less complete independence, and the consequently 
 subordinate place that foreign war occupies in their existence ; 
 partly to their more purely industrial character. They are 
 not plagued, as the Italians are, with disorderly nobles in 
 fortij&ed palaces ; the disorderly nobles are outside in their 
 robber castles, and the knights within the town have been 
 successfully transformed into peaceful merchants. 
 
 § 5. A considerable number of these cities (ultimately 
 fifty- one), as " Free Imperial Cities " of Germany, retain a 
 large amount of independence amid the larger states that 
 make up the feebly cohering survival of the Holy Eoman 
 Empire, to the close of the eighteenth century. But a 
 vigorous pulse of political life no longer beats in them ; 
 they do not, indeed, manifest any tendency to fall under 
 despotic rule — still, it is noteworthy that the democratic 
 movement has ceased since the fifteenth century, except 
 that there is a brief revival of it during the Eeformation 
 period, followed by a strong reaction ; so far as political 
 change is discernible, the drift is steady towards narrow- 
 ing oligarchy. After the desolating Thirty Years' War, 
 which sadly reduced the prosperity of the German cities, 
 the idea of the governing council being representative of, 
 and responsible to, the citizens at large almost dies out. 
 The general assemblies of citizens cease altogether to 
 be summoned, and the influence of ordinary citizens on 
 the appointment of councillors almost comes to an 
 end. 
 
 I noticed just now the bulwark of oligarchy formed by 
 the towns of the Hanseatic League, which early in the 
 fifteenth century adopts the policy of repressing revolu- 
 tionary movements in any of the towns forming it, by the 
 formidable penalty of exclusion from the markets • of the 
 League. Then, before long, the reaction takes hold of the 
 
{ yWlVt-Rs/TY 5 
 
 ^ or 
 
 XVII MEDIEVAL CITIES^— GERMAN 257 
 
 other towns, in which the artisans had previously gained a 
 footing in the government. Election is replaced by co- 
 optation, or reduced to a mere form ; membership of the 
 council beco mes pract ically permanent, or is alternated back- 
 wards and forwards among members of a limited group of 
 families. This is partly due to the contagion of the mon- 
 archical ideas in the neighbouring country -states. The 
 view that the masses are naturally " subjects " rather than 
 self-governing citizens invades the cities from the country ; 
 only in the cities they become subjects of a council instead of 
 a monarch. Partly, however, the oligarchical change is due 
 to a grad ual b ut profound alteration in the character of the 
 associations thatTave^BeerPfighting the battle of demo- 
 cracy — a change corresponding to what we noticed as a 
 feature of English municipal development. When they 
 first organise themselves, it is with the consciousness of 
 exercising in their corporate capacity a public function, 
 and the rule that every independent worker in the trade 
 must belong to a gild is partly maintained that this 
 function may be properly performed, though no doubt it 
 has also the more selfish aim of preventing inconvenient 
 competition. Though the gilds are normally restricted to 
 master-workmen who have served a certain apprenticeship, 
 the proportion of servants to masters is small, but little 
 capital being generally needed — so no substantial barrier 
 excludes any competent and duly trained worker. But 
 success and extension of markets gradually tend to turn 
 the gilds from practically free association s of labourers 
 into profitable and more or less close monopolies of persons 
 owning some capital. The sons and sons-in-law of members 
 are admitted easily. To outsiders, admission is made diffi- 
 cult in various ways; they have to pay money, to produce a 
 costly masterpiece, to give luxurious inauguratory dinners, 
 to show that they possess capital or a house, are not ille- 
 gitimate, or sons of peasants, and so forth. Thus the number 
 of journeymen outside the gild increases rapidly in proportion 
 to that of masters, and they begin to form special fraterni- 
 ties. The Fourth Estate commences to organise itself, but 
 
 s 
 
258 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. xvii 
 
 it is not strong enough yet to carry the democratic move- 
 ment further. 
 
 It is not surprising that as the gilds have thus come to 
 represent capital in antithesis to labour, their internal con- 
 stitution should practically have become more oligarchical, 
 and that the government should fall more and more into 
 the hands of the wealthier minority. And thus the whole 
 political structure of the city becomes a sort of petrified 
 hierarchy of privileged industrial classes, as much opposed to 
 modern ideas and needs as is the privileged landowning class 
 in the country round, and as certain^ to be swept away 
 when the democratic movement in the nation — ^the larger 
 whole — revives. 
 
LECTUEE XVIII 
 
 MEDIEVAL CITIES ITALIAN : LOMBARDY 
 
 § 1. In my last lecture I traced briefly the development of 
 what I called the pure type of medieval city-community in 
 the country in which we find the pure type in the highest 
 degree of independence which it reaches in Western Europe, 
 namely in Germany, or more strictly, the territories of the 
 Empire north of the Alps. As we saw, in other countries 
 north of the Alps the development of the central govern- 
 ment reduces the self-government and partial independence 
 of the cities; while in Italy, to which we now pass, the 
 distinctively indlistrial character of the city is less obvious 
 and marked on account of the very fact tfiat makes their 
 development more , interesting — that is, on account of their 
 predominance over feudality in large parts of ISTorthern 
 Italy. We saw that the liberties of each city, where 
 feudalism is fully developed, are obtained from the feudal 
 or ecclesiastical chief of its own district, by force and con- 
 flict, or purchase, or gradual encroachment, or by free 
 grant when the economic advantage to the feudal chief of 
 developing trade and population within his territory come 
 to be fully perceived. In many cases the feudal or 
 ecclesiastical chief retained an overlordship over the city ; 
 and even where, as in Germany, the " free imperial 
 cities " acknowledged no political superior but the emperor, 
 whose control after the middle of the thirteenth century 
 grows very shadowy, they still have powerful and formid- 
 able feudal nobles in their immediate neighbourhood. But 
 in Italy where the cities are predominant, they not only 
 bring the neighbouring feudal lords under their authority, 
 
 259 
 
26o DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 but even go further and change them into a civic nobility 
 within the town. Still, on the whole, and speaking generally, 
 even in these cases the Italian city, viewed in its economic 
 and social constitution, is to be conceived as preponderantly 
 industrial ; the typical citizen, even here, is a person 
 engaged in industry ; and in the cities that enjoy the 
 fullest development, when the movement towards democracy 
 begins, the demos that struggles for power is — as in the 
 German cities — a demos composed of organised trades or 
 crafts, arti and mestieri. Moreover, it must be remembered 
 that, as Freeman says, the process of forcing feudality into 
 civic life " was never carried out through the whole extent 
 of the kingdom. In its north-western portion powerful 
 feudal princes went on reigning over Piedmont, Montferrat, 
 and Saluzzo, even elsewhere feudal chieftains of less dignity 
 maintained their wild independence in many mountain 
 holds. In short, the brood of petty rulers, holding nominally 
 of the Emperor, and neither citizens nor Tyrants of any city, 
 was for the most part driven into inaccessible holes and 
 corners, but it was never wholly rooted out." ^ 
 
 It is the antithesis to a feudal or semi-feudal society 
 surrounding them, and more or less colliding with them, 
 that gives the medieval cities their peculiar character of 
 combining resemblances to ancient and to modern polities. 
 They resemble the ancient city-states of Graeco- Italian 
 civilisation in being city-communities ; they anticipate the 
 country-states of modern civilisation in being predominantly 
 industrial. Speaking generally, in the larger whole of the 
 medieval kingdom that is gradually struggling towards the 
 coherent order of the mo'dern nation, the martial land- 
 owning class are still predominant; but as their manner 
 of life is mainly rural and not urban, they do not give 
 the predominant character to the cities, even when they 
 are admitted into them and take a prominent place in 
 them. This contrast between citjr and country and the 
 predominantly industrial character of the city is found 
 essentially the same throughout Western Europe, wherever 
 
 ^ Historical Essays, 2nd series, Ancient Greece and Medieval Italy. 
 
XVIII MEDIEVAL CITIES — LOMBARDY 261 
 
 we examine the medieval city ; for example we find it as 
 strikingly marked in Perth as described in Scott's Fair Maid 
 of Perth, as it is in any German or Italian town. 
 
 § 2. Before we study the phases of development of the 
 Italian cities, it will be well to spend a few moments in a 
 survey of the history of the larger organism of which they 
 formed a part ; since not only is it the peculiarity of this 
 history which gives these cities their special opportunity 
 for independent development; but this peculiarity also 
 accounts for the very diverse conditions under which we 
 find the different cities and groups of cities. 
 
 As I explained more at length in an earlier lecture, a 
 chief key to early medieval history lies in the fact that 
 when the old Empire broke up the Church held together ; 
 the ecclesiastical society which the barbarians found in the 
 civilised world that they conquered had a cohesion and 
 vital force which naturally secured for its governors a 
 prominent place in the new secular order which gradually 
 grew out of disorder. This characteristic manifested itself 
 in Italy in a special way, owing to the special prolongation 
 of the connexion between Italy and the Eoman Empire 
 still surviving in the East. Beyond the Alps what was 
 once wrenched away from the Eoman Empire was never 
 even in part restored to it ; but in Italy this was other- 
 wise. Italy was recovered to the Empire by Justinian in 
 the sixth century ; and though the whole land was imperial 
 only for about fifteen years, from a.d. 553—568, when the 
 greater part of it was wrested away again by the formation 
 of the Lombard kingdom in the north and Lombard duchies 
 further south, still important parts of it remained really or 
 nominally subject to the emperor at Constantinople. 
 
 And here I must ask you to note an important char- 
 acteristic of that central strip of Italy which in modem 
 history we are familiar with as the States of the Church. 
 We are rather apt to connect the formation of this territory 
 with the worldly ambition of the popes, and no doubt 
 worldly ambition had something to do with it ; but it is 
 historically more instructive to conceive it — as in fact it 
 
262 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 was — as a State of which the greater part was never for 
 any long time separated from the old Empire until, through 
 the great compact between the Pope and Charles the Great, 
 it combined itself by the desire of the clergy with the new 
 Empire. In its original condition it was composed of two 
 portions, one on the north-east governed from Eavenna by the 
 " Exarch " of the old Empire, the other the Eoman duchy, 
 which in the struggle against the Lombards became practi- 
 cally independent under papal hegemony before the end of 
 the sixth century, largely through the statesmanship and 
 energy of the very able monk who in A.D. 590 became 
 Pope Gregory I. After the end of the sixth century, 
 though there is still a Duke of Eome, the pope is the 
 really effective head, for secular as well as ecclesiastical 
 purposes, of the territory round Eome that remains free 
 from the barbarian invaders. And even within the 
 Lombard kingdom his influence is important — when the 
 Arian Lombards have been converted to orthodoxy. But 
 though it became semi-independent, the Bucaius Bomanus 
 did not at once break its connexion with the old order ; nor 
 perhaps would it have broken it — even in spite of the religious 
 dispute between Western and Eastern Churches on the 
 question of image-worship in the first half of the eighth 
 century — if the Emperor at Constantinople had been able 
 to protect it. At any rate it is not till the Lombards have 
 conquered Eavenna and the territory governed from it in a.d. 
 750, that the Papacy makes the alliance with the Frankish 
 kings, giving to Pepin (a.d. 753) the title oi Patricius Roman- 
 orum, who in return reconquers the exarchate of Eavenna 
 from the Lombards — after it has been four years in their 
 possession — and gives it to the pope ; a donation confirmed 
 by Charles the Great, when in a.d. 773 he has conquered the 
 Lombard kingdom. But it would seem that even when 
 these donations are made, the Papacy does not at once 
 formally break with the Empire. It is not till a.d. 781 that 
 the pope ceases to use the years of the Eoman emperors 
 as dates. Eor a brief interval Eome then recognises no 
 emperor, but this seems to the Church an unnatural state of 
 
xviii MEDIEVAL CITIES LOMBARDY 263 
 
 things ; it has no wish to stand alone ; accordingly, in A.D. 
 800, it overcomes the real or feigned reluctance of the great 
 Frankish king, and formally restores to Western Christendom 
 its secular head, under whom it exercises a special quasi- 
 secular rule over the old imperial territory — the territory 
 of the old exarchate of Eavenna and that of the Eoman 
 duchy, connected by a narrower strip — thus dividing 
 Northern from Southern Italy. 
 
 This papal rule over territory is a natural effect and 
 recognition of the place taken by the Bishop of Eome at 
 the head of the struggles of civilised Italy against the 
 Teutonic invaders. One result of this is that Italy is cut 
 into two parts for the purposes of our inquiry. In fact, 
 this bisection is really effected at the time of the Lombard 
 invasion in the sixth century ; for though the tide of the 
 Lombard invasion flows nearly to the extreme south through 
 the barrier formed by the successful defence of these 
 central fragments, still this barrier has the effect of separ- 
 ating the Lombards of the southern duchies — Spoleto and 
 Benevento — from the Lombards of the kingdom. Then — 
 which is the important point for us — when the Papacy 
 wedded itself to the new Empire, carrying with it the old 
 Eoman duchy, and receiving the reconquered exarchate of 
 Eavenna, it thereby cut itself off from the other fragments 
 of the old Empire that had kept themselves free from 
 Lombard dominion. Hence the municipalities of Gaeta, 
 Naples, and Amalfi in the south-west, which gained a semi- 
 independence by their success in the struggle with the 
 invaders, grew into that independence as nominal parts of 
 the old Eastern, not — like the Lombard municipalities — as 
 parts of the new Western Empire ; and consequently they 
 grew up into independence much earlier than the muni- 
 cipalities of North Italy, and grew out of the administrative 
 system of the old Empire, uninfluenced by the political con- 
 ditions which the barbarian conquests had brought about 
 in Western Christendom generally. 
 
 The early independence of these municipalities is im- 
 portant), for the stimulus of the example it doubtless gave 
 
 V 
 
264 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 to others; but of their history we know little. But a 
 much more important city — Venice — is also among the 
 fragments of old Eoman dominion, which maintained a 
 nominal adhesion to the old Eastern Empire and never 
 passed under Frankish rule ; and the unique history of 
 Venice, its complete separation for many centuries from 
 the political movements in North Italy generally, may be 
 largely traced to this fact.-^ 
 
 § 3. It may be observed that even if Venice had fallen 
 under Lombard rule, it would probably have begun its career 
 of independent development and commercial enterprise and 
 power earlier than the inland cities, because we see this 
 to have been the case with the commercial rivals of Venice, 
 Genoa, and Pisa. The Lombards not being navigators 
 required to have their maritime commerce done for them. 
 Genoa indeed, in the north-western corner of Italy, between 
 the mountains and the sea, remained for a long while un- 
 conquered by the Lombards, and even after it was conquered 
 it seems to have enjoyed a sort of semi-independence. At 
 what time the practical independence of Pisa in external 
 relations begins, we cannot say ; but we hear of its fighting 
 the Moslems by sea from the middle of the tenth century, 
 and it undertakes along with Genoa the enterprise of 
 conquering the island of Sardinia early in the eleventh 
 
 ^ Venice is the only medieval city developed with complete unbroken 
 independence, outside feudalism, and with no admixture of barbarian con- 
 querors. Refugees from cities of North-Eastern Italy, flying time after time 
 from invasions, gradually come to make a home in the lagoons ; at first they 
 reside there only temporarily, going back after the tide of invasion has 
 subsided. From a.d. 452-568 the population is forming ; after the 
 Lombard invasion of the latter year they have come to stay ; Venice is 
 formed. From this date to the end of the eighteenth century it lives un- 
 conquered — a wonderful life. This long period is divided into two tolerably 
 equal portions. From a.d. 568 to the period of the serrata del maggior 
 consiglio (closing of the great council) a.d. 1297-1318 the State is develop- 
 ing towards oligarchy, which afterwards remains stable. The first period 
 begins with "integration." Originally the separate islands in the lagoon 
 appear to have been governed by separate tribunes ; in a.d. 584 "greater 
 tribunes" were elected as a kind of central committee, and in a.d. 697, for 
 greater strength, a " duke " or "doge " elected, to whom the tribunes became 
 subordinate — peace, war, treaties being decided by a general assembly. 
 
XVIII MEDIEVAL CITIES — LOMBARDY 265 
 
 century ; and from the magnitude of this enterprise carried 
 successfully through, we may reasonably infer a considerable 
 previous period of semi-independence. 
 
 When we turn to the inland cities a further distinction 
 is required between the cities of Tuscany — which form a 
 part, though administratively disconnected, of the Lombard 
 kingdom — and the cities of Lombardy and the valley of 
 the Po, including the region in the north-east called the 
 Trevisan Marches, which afterwards is in the main absorbed 
 by Venice. The leading inland cities of Tuscany — Florence, 
 Lucca, Siena, especially Florence — have a longer and more 
 interesting development than any of the cities of Lombardy, 
 and I propose to trace this in another lecture, as it is 
 chiefly here that the industrial element reaches a decided 
 political predominance. In the cities of Lombardy the political 
 development of this element is cut short by the fact that, 
 in the thirteenth and first part of the fourteenth century, 
 almost everywhere Tyrannis comes in ; but in the earlier 
 part of the history these cities take the lead. This appears 
 to be due to the outlying position oY Tuscany, from the 
 point of view of the Lombard kingdom. When Charles 
 the Great took over this kingdom towards the end of the 
 eighth century, it was his policy not to make the sub- 
 ordinate rulers too strong ; accordingly the main part of 
 the kingdom was divided into districts of not very great 
 size under counts ; but in the outlying' district^, in £he 
 marches, a sofuewhat stronger — and therefore more inde- 
 pendent — government, under " markgraves " or " mar- 
 quises," was required for effective defence. Then, when 
 the German kings, beginning with Otto the Great in the 
 middle of the tenth century, succeeded to the crown of the 
 Lombard kingdom and the imperial title and renewed the 
 compact with the Church, Tuscany formed an exception to 
 their general policy, which was to weaken the markgraves 
 and the more powerful counts, partly by strengthening 
 the Church by benefices and exemption of their lands from 
 the jurisdiction of the counts and marquises, partly by 
 strengthening the lesser nobles against the greater, e.g. 
 
266 DEVELOPMEMT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 making the position of the lesser hereditary, and thus 
 moving towards feudalism. As the latest historian of 
 Florence says/ things went otherwise in Tuscany ; whether 
 owing to the smaller expansive force which feudalism had 
 there, or the greater difficulty of governing the country 
 across the Apennines, or the need of a barrier against 
 the growing power of the Popes, the dukes or marquises 
 of Tuscany grew in force and power, and keeping down 
 the bishops and minor feudatories — in contrast to Lombardy 
 — they at the same time repressed the movement of the 
 cities towards independence, so that it begins later. 
 
 § 4. Let us for the present concentrate attention, then, 
 on the cities north of the Apennines, which take the lead 
 in the movement towards independence. Here we may 
 first observe that the cities, when they begin to develop 
 under the revived Eoman Empire, in the latter part of the 
 tenth century, have already acquired habits of self-defence 
 and independent corporate action in the time of trouble 
 and distress that intervenes between Lewis IL, the latest 
 vigorous Carolingian, and Otto {i.e. from A.D. 875-950). 
 In this " darkest age " in Western Europe generally but 
 especially in Italy, they had — as some compensation for 
 their troubles — been allowed to rebuild their ancient walls, 
 as a necessary defence against the raids of Hungarians and 
 Saracens. The cities become fortresses and the citizens 
 acquire military training and habits. " The cities were 
 divided into four or six quarters, ordinarily taking their name 
 from the nearest gate, because the citizens of each quarter 
 were specially called upon to defend this gate and the 
 neighbouring wall." ^ Each quarter had its own standard, 
 its " company " (or two) of heavy armed horsemen (rich 
 citizens or nobles), a double number of archers and heavy- 
 armed infantry, besides which all citizens between the ages 
 of 18 and 70 had to come armed with swords to the 'place, 
 d'armes of their quarter, when the tocsin sounded. In the 
 war with the Emperor Conrad the Salic (a.d. 1035-1039) 
 
 ^ Villari, Iprimi dice secoli della storia di Firenze, vol. i. p. 74. 
 ^ Sismondi, Histoire des Eipubliques Italiennes du Moyen Age, vol. i. p. 374. 
 
XVIII MEDIEVAL CITIES — LOMBARDY 267 
 
 Heribert, Archbishop of Milan, completed the military 
 system by the introduction of the carroccio (waggon carrying 
 the standard), which raised the importance of the infantry. 
 
 One can see that if the new Empire interferes vexatiously 
 with the self-government of these cities, it will have a diffi- 
 cult task. But for some time the new Empire has no such 
 policy. The Holy Koman Empire, as revived in Otto, is 
 in fact an alliance of the Church, representing the more 
 civilised element of Italian society, with a German king, 
 on whom it confers a title of unique dignity, carrying with 
 it the sovereignty of the now old kingdom of Italy. Con- 
 sequently the policy of the German king is to lean on the 
 Church for support against Lombard feudality. Accordingly 
 Otto " extended the power of the bishops to extend his 
 own." ^ The bishop in every city becomes a rival of the 
 count; and his jurisdiction is largely substituted for that 
 of the count. The Churches gladly give the Emperor the 
 right of nomination to sees, as they regard him as their 
 friend and ally against feudality. Along with the Church 
 the cities rise into power, archiepiscopal and episcopal 
 cities taking the lead. 
 
 In the first stage, then, here as in Germany, the in- 
 dustrial element of the community in the towns grows 
 under the shadow and shield of the Church. At the end 
 of the tenth and in the first part of the eleventh century 
 it has shaken itself free from the feudality that dominates 
 the country ; and in old episcopal or archiepiscopal towns, 
 of which Milan is a leading case, it has done this by 
 marshalling itself behind its bishops, who acquire — under 
 the usually remote and ineffective supremacy of the 
 emperor — practical sovereignty in the towns. Then, as 
 we saw in Germany, the allies — the ecclesiastical chief and 
 the growing industrial element — find their interests and 
 aims divergent, and the industrial element struggles towards 
 independence, at first by quiet encroachment, afterwards 
 
 1 Ferrari, Storia delle Mvoluzione d'ltalia, vol. i. p. 217. 
 German bishops, as we saw, were territorial magnates, Italian bishops 
 were poor and anti-feudal. 
 
268 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 with conflict ; the process being favoured till 1122 by the 
 great struggle between papacy and empire about election 
 and investiture of bishops. 
 
 The prevalent type of constitution formed in the first 
 half of the twelfth century, as the town emancipates itself 
 from episcopal control, is government by a varying number 
 of " consuls " as executive magistrates, who command in war 
 and administer justice in peace. The towns are still under 
 oligarchical control, but the group of ruling families that 
 govern the town becomes larger; behind it we see, not 
 yet claiming equality, but growing in organised strength, 
 the corporations of arts and crafts {corporazioni delle arti e 
 dei mestieri) who take a prominent place in the military 
 organisation, transforming themselves into "companies, 
 battalions, regiments," grouped round the carroccio? The 
 consuls, numerous and frequently renewed, are not a very 
 powerful executive ; for effective government they require to 
 be assisted by a council of trust and secrecy (credentia), 
 chosen from different quarters of the city and summoned 
 by the consuls ; this advises on details of current adminis- 
 tration. Besides this, there is usually a " great council " 
 for more important matters variously constituted, in some 
 places more oligarchical than others, the intervention of 
 the general assembly, doubtless containing members of 
 leading " arti," being reserved for crises of war, siege, etc. 
 The members of these councils are not popularly elected, at 
 least directly, but appointed either by the consuls them- 
 selves, or by specially appointed electors. And this is the 
 ordinary Italian custom, direct election by citizens at large is 
 rare. As the administrative functions of the consuls grow, 
 we find them separated from the judicial ; thus in Genoa, in 
 A.D. 1134, there were three administrative consuls (consules 
 communis), and eight judicial consuls (consules cle placitis). 
 The number of administrative consuls — which varies from 
 three or four up to over twenty — corresponds to or is some 
 multiple of the quarters of the town. 
 
 § 5. Then in the first half of the twelfth century the 
 
 1 Ferrari, op. cit. vol. i. p. 472. 
 
XVIII MEDIEVAL CITIES LOMBARDY 269 
 
 great independence of the cities is shown by their wars with 
 one another, for then first are developed in full force and 
 profusion those violent and continually renewed conflicts 
 of city against city, which distinguish Italian history from 
 the medieval history of any other West European country, 
 and which remind us of ancient Greece. 
 
 The causes of the wars appear to be various. Partly there 
 is a rivalry of long standing between old Eoman cities, whose 
 pre-eminence is retained in the ecclesiastical organisation, 
 and the cities which were the military centres of the 
 Lombard kingdom, e.g. between Milan and Pavia. Partly, 
 again, the rivalry of cities is exacerbated by their taking 
 sides in the quarrel between emperor and pope. Some- 
 times merely ecclesiastical disputes give the occasion for 
 war. But, on the whole, the causes appear to be largely 
 economical ; as the cities grow rich and populous they are 
 irritated by the checks which other cities place to the 
 development of their industry and trade. At first the 
 larger cities attack the smaller — Pavia attacks Tortona; 
 Cremona, Crema; Milan, Lodi. This leads to leagues 
 among the towns, Lodi, for instance, placing itself under 
 the protection of Pavia. Usually the militia of the larger 
 city marches out and destroys or carries off the harvests of 
 the enemy. The war between Milan and Lodi (a.d. 1107— 
 1111) begins thus; but it ends with the destruction 
 of Lodi-vecchio, whose inhabitants are distributed in six 
 villages. The war of Milan against Como, a.d. Ill 8-1 127, 
 which a Comasque poet compares to the Trojan war, begins 
 with trouble between a bishop appointed by the anti-pope 
 Burdino, and Guido the legitimate bishop of Como. The 
 Lombard towns being mainly on the side of the emperor, 
 a number of them aid Milan. The villages of the Italian 
 lakes, subject to Como, partly revolt. Ultimately Como 
 submits ; its inhabitants agree to raze their fortifications, 
 pay taxes to Milan, and serve as allies in its wars. 
 
 In the middle of the twelfth century comes the crisis 
 in the movement towards independence of the towns of 
 North Italy, in a severe struggle between the cities and 
 
270 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 the imperial sovereignty — now represented by the resolute 
 Frederick Barbarossa — who seeks to deprive the cities of 
 their semi-sovereign rights, which from his point of view 
 are usurpations, and to reduce their governments to the 
 position of mere local governments in a coherent and orderly 
 state. At first, the rivalries of the cities favour the em- 
 peror's policy ; his armies appear irresistible, and Milan, the 
 foremost of the rebellious cities, is taken and razed to the 
 ground. But presently the love of independence overcomes 
 the sentiments of old municipal hostility : a league is formed 
 of Lombard cities — including old enemies as well as old 
 friends of Milan — who, in spite of Frederick, rebuild the 
 old archiepiscopal city, make head successfully against the 
 German armies, and inflict a decisive defeat at the battle of 
 Lignano in A.D. 1176. Then, at the treaty of Constance in 
 A.D. 1183, they obtain — by a settlement that is not practic- 
 ally disturbed, so long as the independence of the Lombard 
 cities lasts — the rights of obeying only their own laws, being 
 governed by their own magistrates (the formal assent of 
 the emperor being in some cases required), making peace 
 and war and alliances, administering their own finances 
 (with the exception of certain payments on occasion to the 
 imperial treasury). This legal security of rights that had 
 long been practically assumed, is primarily won by the 
 cities of the league that is fighting the emperor ; but 
 he cannot refuse to his friends what has been granted 
 to his enemies, and the liberties stipulated by the treaty 
 of Constance become common to all the towns of 
 Italy. 
 
 § 6. I now turn to another, fundamentally important, 
 characteristic of the career of the Italian cities, i.e. the 
 antagonism between cities and country. This — like the 
 rivalry between city and city — is mainly economical in 
 its causes. The feudal nobles {castellani) impede com- 
 munication and commerce ; they hamper the roads by 
 tolls, and rob the merchants ; the energies of the cities are 
 distracted from peaceful industry to an intolerable extent 
 by the need of fighting their way through these obstacles. 
 
XVIII MEDIEVAL CITIES LOMBARD Y 271 
 
 The war with the feudal nobles in the country had been 
 going on during the municipal wars of the twelfth century, 
 but the more important part of it was after the Peace of 
 Constance. "Milan, risen from her ashes . . . deprived 
 all the nobles of the country round of their jurisdiction," -^ 
 Genoa is devouring the marquisate of Finale throughout the 
 twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and elsewhere — e.g. Novara, 
 Asti, and in many other cases — the violent conflicts go on 
 through the thirteenth century. The castellani defend 
 themselves by opposing city to city, but they only put off 
 the inevitable destruction. 
 
 If we ask why in Italy alone the cities win their struggle 
 with feudality, the answer is that they were more developed '^ 
 and numerous in Italy, "the imperial country," and that 
 feudality was weaker here in comparison, owing to the policy 
 of the Emperor, as previously described. An additional force 
 on the side of the cities is supplied by the desire of civic 
 freedom spreading into the country.^ 
 
 Then, when the victory is in the main won by the towns, 
 comes the final step which has, for Italian municipal life, 
 the most important and, on the whole, disastrous conse- 
 quences — the forcing of the castellani into the cities. The 
 motive for this, on the side of the town, was to bring the 
 fruits of victory within the limits of legality by getting the 
 noble out of feudal jurisdiction into the jurisdiction of the 
 city. The motive for the noble was to put an end to a 
 conflict in which he was always getting the worst of it. 
 Accordingly he accepted the terms ; he was compelled to build 
 a palazzo within the city, and reside there a certain number 
 of months in the year — often doubled in time of war. If 
 he did not become a citizen in the city with which he had 
 fought, he did so in another with which he had formed an 
 alliance. Presently the nobles took the line of making the 
 best of the situation : " they paid court to the citizens, and 
 from prudence, fashion, caprice or as a pastime entered the 
 
 ^ Ferrari, op. cit. vol. ii. p. 105. 
 
 ■^ E.g. Bologna buys the "rustic! del contado di Bologna" in a.d. 1236. 
 Ferrari, op. cit. vol. ii. p. 111. 
 
272 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 G-reat Councils."^ Thus, as — by natural compensation — 
 new families enriched in industry and commerce also entered 
 the circle of ' conciliar ' families, the ruling oligarchy in the 
 towns was enlarged. 
 
 This is what happens in the cities of the plains of the 
 Po, where the victory of the cities over their feudal 
 neighbours is decisive. But elsewhere, e.g. in the leading 
 cities of the Trevisan march — Verona, Vicenza, Padua, etc. 
 — the feudal element is strong, owing to the more moun- 
 tainous nature of the country ; and though here too the 
 country nobles largely enter the towns, they appear to do so 
 on a superior footing — a superiority which leads to the earlier 
 establishment of Tyrannis here, as compared with Lombardy. 
 
 The aim of the cities in thus using their victory was, as 
 I have said, to bring the feudal nobles effectively under the 
 control of municipal government ; but they had left them 
 too strong and, in a broad sense, too feudal for the possi- 
 bility of that result. They had taken from them " their 
 jurisdictions, their towers, their fortresses, their regular 
 troops," ^ but had left them their lands and wealth, their 
 titles, palaces, and mostly their peasant cultivators — depen- 
 dents, if no longer serfs — their military skill and practice, 
 their social prestige and family ties. Hence the nobles 
 look down on the traders whom they have been forced to 
 accept as fellow-citizens ; the palaces they build in the 
 cities are fortresses ; they arm their dependents and find a 
 fighting clienUle in a part of the populace ; and, in short, 
 carry on their old life as a disturbing element in the grow- 
 ing industrial society. 
 
 We must conceive a certain opposition and antagonism 
 as having always existed between the old nobility in the 
 town and the mercantile element ; but whereas in the 
 German town the mercantile element soon absorbs the old 
 feudal element — which is not there reinforced by the new 
 feudal element forced in from the country — in the Italian 
 town it is thus reinforced, and becomes a permanent source 
 of disorder. 
 
 1 Ferrari, op. cit. vol. ii. p. 126. ^ q^^ g^^. p. 130. 
 
XVIII MEDIEVAL CITIES — LOMBARD Y 273 
 
 It may be asked, why did not the cities confiscate 
 the estates of these disturbers of the peace. The answer 
 is that their independence — almost complete as it seems — 
 was not complete enough for that. The Empire tolerated 
 private war, for man was a fighting animal ; and it might 
 have had to tolerate high-handed robbery of lands; but 
 it would have refused to recognise its consequences as 
 legal. A city that had tried to destroy the feudal nobility 
 would have been manifestly hostile to the imperial-papal 
 system and to feudality generally ; and the existence of the 
 cities seemed to themselves to depend on the maintenance 
 of the former, nor could they venture to defy the latter. 
 
 § 7. The result of this introduction of the feudal element 
 into the towns is ultimately fatal to their prosperous de- 
 velopment as free industrial cities. But the first effect was 
 a very peculiar institution — the annual foreign Podestd. 
 Frederick Barbarossa, in his struggle with the independence 
 of the towns, had tried to maintain the imperial authority 
 by the establishment in each of the important centres of a 
 governor or Podestk. Everywhere the cities had repudiated 
 and struggled against, sometimes ill-treated or expelled — 
 even assassinated — these foreign importations ; and yet 
 after the Peace of Constance has sealed their victory, they 
 one after another adopt an institution nominally the same 
 — a Podest^, a stranger knight, chosen from some other 
 city, and invested with the highest executive power. 
 
 The primary cause of this peculiar Italian institution 
 would seem to be the strongly-felt need — peculiar also, as 
 we have seen, to Italy — of repressing the civil disorder which 
 the forced introduction of the feudal nobles into the cities 
 has so much aggravated and intensified. But the Podesta, 
 at least in the cities of Lombardy, is not merely a judicial 
 functionary, though special stress is laid on his judicial 
 duties ; some of the political as well as the judicial func- 
 tions previously exercised by the consuls devolve upon him. 
 And in some cases at least it would seem that a perception 
 of the advantage of single headship, in external no less than 
 in internal relations, contributed to the adoption of the 
 
 T 
 
274 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 institution. His function was primarily to repress anarchy 
 within the city, by stern impartial maintenance of legal 
 order against the most powerful disturbers of it — the 
 regular selection of a stranger must have been on this 
 ground ; but he also had to direct military expeditions. 
 The armed force of the city was placed at his disposal for 
 both objects. 
 
 Through the institution of the Podestk, the typical 
 government of the Italian city becomes much more com- 
 plicated. For the consuls are not done away with, 
 though the name is often changed ; they are formed into a 
 council, and retain the general administration of the city. 
 While at the same time another council, special council of 
 the Podestk, is formed to advise the new governor ; the 
 members of this council — which appears at Milan in A.D. 1199 
 — are called secretaries, councillors, or " sapientes " of the 
 commune. And there is also of course the " great council " 
 and the occasional Parlamento. The Podest^ swore fidelity 
 to the city and its laws. He had to come with a pre- 
 scribed staff of judges, servants, men-at-arms, etc., and had 
 a fixed salary and furniture provided. Fines determined for 
 his transgressions were subtracted from his salary. He had 
 to remain for a fixed time after his year of office, in order 
 that complaints might be examined and reparation made. 
 He must have no relations in the city, and not accept any 
 entertainments in it. 
 
 The process by which the city, little by little, submitted 
 to give itself a foreign governor can in some chronicles be 
 traced. Thus in a.d. 1190 Genoa finds its consuls inade- 
 quate : " conspiracies, discords, and divisions are intermin- 
 able " ; ^ accordingly a Podest^ is appointed, who razes the 
 palace of one of the most violent partisans and restores 
 order. Two years afterwards they return to the consuls ; 
 but the civil strife breaks out again, and they are obliged 
 to re-establish the Podest^. Next year they still hesitate ; 
 but ultimately reconcile themselves to the permanent insti- 
 tution of a yearly Podest^. 
 
 1 Ferrari, op. cU. vol. ii. p. 172. 
 
XVIII MEDIEVAL CITIES — LOMBARD Y 275 
 
 So Milan has its first annual Podesta in A.D. 1186 ; but 
 then it returns to the consuls with enlarged powers — and 
 this is repeated for three years in succession ; then in 
 1191 two Podestas are tried to content the two parties, 
 but this does not answer, and in the second half-year consuls 
 are re-established. Then in 1193 they have consuls again 
 till 1199, then a Podesta — and the oscillations continue 
 till after 1212. 
 
 In some cases the institution is not established without 
 disturbances, and there are serious risks attached to the 
 office. Thus in Bologna in A.D. 1194 we hear of a Podesta 
 who has to fly; and, being pursued and taken, his teeth are 
 pulled out by the furious nobles, in revenge for the fines 
 he has inflicted on them. In 1208 a Podesta of Lucca is 
 killed ; in 1213a Podesta of Modena has his tongue pulled 
 out. 
 
 The Podesta does his work, well or ill ; but the surges 
 of faction are too strong for him, and in the thirteenth 
 century the tendency to monarchical government in the 
 cities north of the Apennines is overwhelming. I have 
 called this " Tyrannis " to mark the resemblance between 
 Italian and Greek history ; and in fact the despots of the 
 Italian city in many cases deserved to be called rvpavvoi 
 for the manner in which they gained power, and tyrants 
 for the manner in which they used it. But though the 
 Tyrannus often is established by violence, he mostly 
 goes through the form of election. 
 
 As I have before said, there was a greater predominance 
 of the municipal over the feudal element in Lombardy 
 proper than farther eastward ; and in fact it is in the east- 
 ward towns that monarchy first comes in and first becomes 
 regular. The more regular kind begins in A.D. 1209, when 
 Azzo VI., Marquis d'Este, is declared Lord of Ferrara. 
 " Ce fut la premiere fois," says Sismondi, " qu'un peuple, en 
 Italic, abandonna ses droits pour se soumettre au pouvoir 
 d'un seul."^ Then about twenty years later (a.d. 1225) 
 the first famous tyrant, Eccelino da Eomano, establishes his 
 
 ^ Sismondi, op. cit. vol. ii. p. 312. 
 
276 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. xviii 
 
 power at Verona, a city close under the Alps and therefore 
 more dominated by feudality than the cities of the Lombard 
 plain. In his case the prominent factor is the violence of 
 faction, causing a need for a bold leader of military skill. 
 But though Tyrannis first came in in these eastward towns, 
 in Lombardy too, as Hallam says, "before the middle of 
 the fourteenth century, at the latest, all those cities which 
 had spurned at the faintest mark of submission to the 
 emperors, lost even the recollection of self-government, and 
 were bequeathed, like an undoubted patrimony, among the 
 children of their new lords." ^ To trace the political 
 development of the Italian species of medieval city through 
 its full evolution, we have to go to Tuscany. 
 
 ^ Hallam, Middle Ages, vol. i. chap. iii. pt. ii. p. 408. 
 The transient revival of the republic at Milan, 1447-50, should just be 
 noticed as an exception to this statement, but only just noticed. 
 
LECTUEE XIX 
 
 MEDIEVAL CITIES — COMPARISON OF ITALIAN CITY- 
 COMMUNITIES WITH ANCIENT GREECE 
 
 § 1. In a preceding lecture I noticed that Italy, far more than 
 any other part of Europe, suggests to the ordinary historian 
 — I mean the historian who is not specially concerned with 
 what may be called the morphology of states — a comparison 
 with ancient Greece. For North Italy is the only region in 
 medieval Europe where the greater part — though not the 
 whole — of a continuous territory is divided up into the 
 domains of a number of city-states, just as the more civilised 
 portion of ancient Greece was. In Germany, even where 
 the cities flourish most, they are " mere exceptions to princely 
 rule." ^ Also, it may be observed that medieval Italy, during 
 the flourishing period of its practically independent city- 
 communities, outstripped the rest of Europe in intellectual 
 and material civilisation; — though not, of course, so markedly 
 as ancient Greece did in its palmy days. Certainly, in spite 
 of the great differences, to which I shall presently advert, 
 the history of the Italian republics presents a remarkable 
 general resemblance to the history of ancient Greece, which 
 I will try briefly to put together. 
 
 In the first place, the towns in Italy grow strong and 
 prosperous out of the semi-barbarous disorder into which 
 society has lapsed, as the Greek cities out of primitive 
 barbarism : (a) from the military advantage of the walled 
 town at this period of the art of war; and (b) the economic 
 prosperity due to civilised industry and trade within the 
 
 ^ Freeman. 
 277 
 
278 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 walled towns in a society which is taking the lead in 
 European civilisation and industry. 
 
 Secondly, in medieval Italy, the city-communities show 
 the concentrated political life and something like the in- 
 tense patriotism of the Greek city-states ; and in both cases 
 this is largely due to the same cause — the much closer im- 
 plication of the well-being of the individual with the well- 
 being of his community here than in country-states. In 
 both cases, again, this patriotism shines more brightly in 
 the earlier period of their history, when their citizen soldiers 
 combine to repel a powerful invading monarch who seeks to 
 subjugate them. The manner in which enough, though not 
 all, of the Lombard towns combine, in spite of old feuds, to 
 resist Frederick Barbarossa (a.d. 1167-1183), may be com- 
 pared to the manner in which enough, though not all, of 
 the Greek states combine to resist the Persian invasion, in 
 spite of hereditary jealousies and border wars. 
 
 Then in both cases, as time goes on, we find the cities 
 becoming hopelessly divided, not only from each other, but 
 within themselves by the resentments of violent and pro- 
 longed faction. As Sparta and her allies fight Athens and 
 her allies, so the league of Guelf cities fights the league of 
 Ghibelin cities. Again, in the earlier inter municipal wars of 
 both ancient Greece and medieval Italy, city fights city as 
 a united community ; but in the Greek wars of the fourth 
 century B.C. the " exiles " of the city assailed are often a note- 
 worthy element of the assailing force ; and similarly in the 
 Italian intermunicipal wars, chronicled from the latter half 
 of the thirteenth century and later, it is no longer " Parma 
 fights Piacenza," but " Parma with the exiles from Pia- 
 cenza assails Piacenza." ^ 
 
 Again, in both cases, civilisation with the habits of peaceful 
 industry and the luxury thereby obtained, gradually makes 
 the citizens of important towns personally disinclined for war, 
 which they carry on more and more by means of mercen- 
 aries. Thus, partly from incapacity to form a stable union, 
 partly from diminishing capacity for personal service in 
 
 1 Ferrari, op. di. vol. ii. p. 257. 
 
XIX COMPARISON OF ITALIAN AND GREEK CITIES 279 
 
 war, they are ultimately unequal to a contest with the 
 larger country-states in their neighbourhood — in the case 
 of Greece the fragments of Alexander's empire, and in the 
 case of Italy the larger West European states ; and thus 
 their territories become the "battlefields of contending 
 strangers." ^ This state of things is begun for Italy by the 
 invasion of Charles VIII. in a.d. 1492. As Macaulay says : 
 " From the moment that Charles VIII. descended from the 
 Alps, the whole character of Italian politics was changed. 
 The governments of the Peninsula ceased to form an inde- 
 pendent system. Drawn from their old orbit by the attraction 
 of the larger bodies which now approached them, they became 
 mere satellites of France and Spain. All their disputes, 
 internal and external, were decided by foreign influence." ^ 
 
 Turning to their internal development, we find every- 
 where at the outset the administration of government — 
 so far as the city is self-governing — in the hands of the 
 few ; while certain very important decisions are brought 
 before a general assembly of the people for simple 
 acceptance or rejection. The citizens at large — meeting 
 in the "Agora " in old Greece, and the "Parlamento" in 
 medieval Italy — acquiesce in the rule of a few leading 
 families. Then dissensions between the nobles and the 
 people come in, and we see a drift towards democracy. 
 This is most interesting in the Tuscan cities, whose in- 
 ternal history as compared with most of those north of the 
 Apennines, gives fuller instruction as to the development of 
 the medieval type of city, owing to their longer republican 
 independence ; but it occurs also, though in a less developed 
 form, in the Lombard cities. This tendency to widen the 
 area of citizenship may be compared to the similar tendency 
 of Greek city-states in the later period of their history 
 as independent communities. Further, as the movement 
 towards more popular government goes on, the use of the 
 lot as a mode of appointment comes in in medieval Italy as 
 in ancient Greece. And finally, in both cases, we find the 
 liability to lapse under the rule of a single person in times 
 
 ^ Freeman. 2 Essay on Macchiavelli. 
 
28o DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 of disorder and faction — a tendency which becomes stronger 
 after a certain time of republican life, partly from the 
 weariness of republican faction, partly from the already- 
 mentioned growing dislike of personal military service, 
 which civilisation gradually causes, and the consequent 
 employment of mercenaries. 
 
 To carry the comparison down to particular states, 
 we may compare the brilliant position that Athens, the 
 leader in the democratic movement in the Greek city-states, 
 took in the general development of art and literature in 
 ancient Greece, with the similarly brilliant position occupied 
 by Florence in the development of art and literature in 
 medieval Italy ; since Florence also takes a leading part 
 in the movement towards democracy — the medieval demo- 
 cracy of organised crafts, which we observe in the Italian 
 republics in the latter half of the thirteenth and in the 
 fourteenth century. And we may also compare instruct- 
 ively the institutions of Venice, the strikingly stable oli- 
 garchy of medieval and modern Italy, with the institutions 
 of Sparta, the strikingly stable oligarchy of ancient Greece 
 so far as we consider the Spartans as the governing 
 few.i The diminishing powers of the Venetian Doge, 
 confined with increasing strictness and jealousy,^ may be 
 compared to the diminishing powers of the hereditary kings 
 of Sparta. On the other hand, the growth of the power of 
 the Ephors at Sparta with their secret procedure and 
 terrifying judicial homicides, may be compared to the 
 growth of the power of the Council of Ten together 
 with the ultimate creation of the three Inquisitors at 
 Venice. 
 
 § 2. Well, these are striking resemblances ; to put it 
 summarily, in both cases we have, as regards external re- 
 lations, independence successfully defended through union 
 within the city and a transiently effective combination with 
 other cities, and independence lost through disunion and 
 through factions that at once connect and disintegrate the 
 cities ; and in both cases we have, as regards internal 
 
 1 See Lect. v. p. 80. ^ gge Appendix, Note F. 
 
XIX COMPARISON OF ITALIAN AND GREEK CITIES 281 
 
 ^^ 
 
 political development, primitive oligarchy, drift to demo- 
 cracy, and widespread lapse into monarchy or Tyrannis. 
 But each point of resemblance is qualified by very im- 
 portant dissimilarities. The independence is different in 
 degree ; the factions are different in kind ; the oligarchy 
 in Italy is more complex and differently related to the 
 main stock of citizens; the monarchy which suppresses 
 republican constitutional freedom is in Italy to a much 
 greater extent regularised by formal election, and regarded 
 as legitimate by general sentiment ; and the Italian demo- 
 cracy is more partial — at least if we consider not the number 
 of inhabitants, but the number of free men — for it never 
 effectively included all the free native inhabitants of the 
 town, but only a certain number of organised trades and 
 crafts ; and it is more imperfectly developed, as the Italian 
 demos never attempts actually to govern like the Greek. 
 The Parlamento, as Freeman says, is in later times usually 
 called together " to vote away its own liberties." Finally, the 
 medieval democratic movement stops at a certain point ; 
 the organised crafts becoming oligarchical through the in- 
 fluence of capital, the whole constitution, where it does not 
 fall under Tyrannis, tends decidedly in its last stage to 
 settled oligarchy. 
 
 Let us briefly consider each of these points in order. 
 The first two are connected ; for the conditions that render 
 the independence of the Italian municipalities inferior in 
 degree to that of the Greek cities, also I'ender their pre- 
 valent factions — in the period in which faction is most 
 violent and pernicious — essentially different in kind. In- 
 deed, nothing brings out more strikingly the incompleteness, 
 in idea, of the independence of the Italian cities, than the 
 fact that in the great struggle between Guelf and Ghibelin 
 factions, which rages within cities and among cities in the 
 thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the issues for which the 
 two parties nominally fight should be so entirely outside 
 the individual political life of these communities. In the 
 corresponding period of Greek history, when citizens con- 
 tinually slaughter and expel citizens of the opposing party 
 
282 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 and exiles fight against their fatherland even along with its 
 hereditary enemies, the issues at stake are avowedly the 
 fundamental principles of the political constitution, the 
 question whether oligarchy or democracy is to prevail. 
 But in the Italian faction -fights, the names under which 
 the factions fight are the names of two German ducal houses, 
 rival claimants for the imperial crown — whose claims excite 
 civil strife in Germany as early as the second quarter of 
 the twelfth century — the house of Welf or Guelf, of 
 which our own royal house is a branch, and the house 
 of Hohenstaufen, from the name of whose castle, called 
 Waiblingen, the name Ghibelin is formed. It is true that 
 this merely Germanic character of the issue is rather appar- 
 ent than real. The point that interests the Italians is that 
 the actual emperor — from a.d. 1138-1250, after which 
 the Empire is for the Italians virtually a negligible quantity, 
 except for a very brief interval — is almost always a Hohen- 
 staufen, while the pope almost always supports the Guelf 
 claims ; the factions are understood to be imperial and papal. 
 But this again shows how fully the Italian cities recognise 
 their position as parts of a larger political whole constituted 
 by that peculiar alliance of the Eoman Church with the 
 German monarchy, which had given birth to the Holy 
 Eoman Empire. Nor would it be even adequately true to 
 say that as the danger to the independence of the cities 
 comes from the Emperor and not from the Pope, the Guelf 
 party is really fighting for independence. This is, indeed, 
 to a limited extent the case in the later part of the struggle, 
 but only to a limited extent. Firstly, we have to note that in 
 the Papal States, when the Papacy endeavours to make its 
 sovereignty real, it is the foe and not the friend of muni- 
 cipal independence ; while beyond these limits some cities, 
 such as Pisa, are at once proud of their traditions of re- 
 publican independence, and proud of their traditional loyalty 
 to the imperial cause. 
 
 At the same time, there is really more analogy than at 
 first sight appears between the medieval Italian party 
 conflicts and the old Greek, because — though all long-lived 
 
XIX COMPARISON OF ITALIAN AND GREEK CITIES 283 
 
 party watchwords have a mixed and fluctuating import 
 and these are no exception — still it is to a considerable 
 extent true that the Ghibelins represent the feudal element 
 and the Guelfs the industrial element in the cities; not 
 altogether, for there are many noble families on the Guelf 
 side, but still to a considerable extent. 
 
 § 3. This leads me to my third point of comparison — 
 the difference between the oligarchy of the old Greek and 
 that of the medieval Italian city. In the Italian city there 
 are two distinct antagonisms and conflicts, to each of which 
 the familiar antithesis of " oligarchy " and " democracy " 
 might be applied, and indeed actually was applied at the 
 time ; first, the antagonism between the feudal nobility — 
 landowners with military habits which they carry with 
 them into urban life — and the persons engaged in trade 
 and industry who formed the great majority of the well- 
 to-do citizens ; and secondly, the division and struggle 
 between the commercial and professional element, grouped 
 in what were called at Florence the " greater arts," and 
 other industrial groups occupying a lower position in the 
 social scale. 
 
 Now in the history of the Greek cities this double 
 antithesis is not clearly brought out. No doubt so far as 
 oligarchy survives in the later period of free Greece, it to 
 some extent changes its character; from an oligarchy of 
 old families, inheriting not only wealth but ancestral 
 prestige and traditions of ancestral merit, it tends to 
 become an oligarchy of wealth — a mere„^utqcracy. Still 
 we nowhere find the jealousies and dissensions that doubt- 
 less existed between old families and new wealth expressing 
 themselves in a strongly marked way in political institutions 
 and laws. For example, when the drift towards democracy 
 shows itself in Megara in the seventh century B.C., though 
 Megara has for some time been a commercial and colonising 
 state, it is, as we saw, as rich landowners oppressing peasant 
 cultivators that the oligarchs excite resistance.^ 
 
 But in the Italian town the double antithesis is very 
 
 1 Cf. Lect. VI. p. 89, and Appendix, Note C. 
 
284 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 marked ; on the whole, the struggle between the feudal and 
 industrial element comes first, and then the struggle 
 between the popolani grassi and the organised artisans and 
 labourers afterwards ; still the two to some extent overlap. 
 The second struggle is comparatively undeveloped in most 
 of the cities north of the Apennines, with which we were 
 chiefly concerned in the last lecture, because of their general 
 lapse into Tyrannis ; but it is fully exhibited in the history 
 of Florence, the leading city of Tuscany, to which I am 
 about to turn. 
 
 § 4. Finally, 1 ought to say a word on the difference 
 between the despotism of medieval Italy and the Tyrannis 
 of ancient Greece. The most striking difference lies less 
 in the substance either of the power or its mode of acquisi- 
 tion (or even the conditions that favoured it) than in the 
 form. The Greek despot almost always began and ended 
 unconstitutional ; the Greek city, as we saw, does not — 
 in any case historically known to us — submit itself volun- 
 tarily to the lifelong, still less hereditary rule of a lord. 
 Whereas when the towns of Lombardy fall under despotism 
 towards the end of the thirteenth century, it is, as I said, 
 usually with the form of election. This more constitutional 
 character of monarchy in Italian towns and a greater 
 tendency to adopt and acquiesce in it is partly due to the 
 influence of the conditions of neighbouring lands, on which 
 the Italians, recognising as they did the formal supremacy 
 of the Empire, could not look down as the Greeks looked 
 down on the barbarian monarchy of Persia. They saw 
 all around them cities with a civilisation similar to their 
 own under princes and other lords, and a similar destiny 
 could not seem to them so unnatural and odious as it did to 
 the Greek political consciousness. Indeed, even the freest 
 Italian cities, even Florence, find it expedient in crises of 
 foreign danger to give the lordship of their city to some 
 king or prince; though they are careful in doing so to 
 retain substantial self-government in internal affairs. 
 
 We have to observe further that the growing superiority 
 of heavy-armed cavalry from the thirteenth century till gun- 
 
XIX COMPARISON OF ITALIAN AND GREEK CITIES 285 
 
 powder comes into use, and the development of mercenary 
 warfare to a degree quite unparalleled in Greece, were 
 favouring causes of Italian despotism. Thus the tyranny 
 into which Italian republican life lapses corresponds rather 
 to the later age of tyrants in Greece ; its characteristic 
 difference being that its origin and character is in many 
 cases, if not in all, more legal ; it often grows out of the 
 power conferred by the apparently free choice of the 
 town desiring greater strength against foreign or domestic 
 foes. It is owing, I conceive, to the more democratic 
 origin of the Italian cities that we have in their develop- 
 ment so little corresponding to the earlier age of the tyrants 
 in Greece. The industrial civic element, organised in its 
 commercial companies, seems to be politically experienced 
 from the beginning of the movement ; it does not give the 
 opportunity which the first popular movement in the 
 Greek state did, for the popular leader who aims at making 
 himself a tyrant. 
 
LECTUEE XX 
 
 MEDIEVAL CITIES FLORENCE 
 
 § 1. Let us now turn to Florence, which we may take 
 as a type of the movement towards democracy — the 
 *>>> medieval democracy of organised trades and crafts — in 
 the Italian cities. 
 
 The effective independence of Florence, and of Tuscan 
 cities generally, is, as I said, later in commencement 
 than that of the cities north of the Apennines, owing to 
 the stronger rule of the Marquisate of Tuscany, but it is 
 more enduring. Florence is developing her republican 
 polity and bringing its industrial character into fuller 
 manifestation long after almost all the Lombard cities have 
 fallen under despotic rule. In the course of this develop- 
 ment the constitution becomes extremely complex. The 
 chief causes of the changes seem to be (1) the con- 
 tinually renewed efforts to repress the lawlessness of 
 the nobles by fresh governmental organisations; and (2) 
 the increased and extended representation of the trades 
 or Arti in the government. The former characteristic is, 
 as we have seen, peculiar to the Italian city ; the latter, 
 on the other hand, shows its essential affinity to the general 
 type of medieval city. 
 
 The independence of Florence may be taken to begin — 
 if it begins at any point of time — in A.D. 1115 after the 
 death of the Countess Matilda, who had governed alone the 
 Marquisate of Tuscany from A.D. 1076. Under her rule the 
 city had had no theoretical self-government; but practi- 
 cally members of the leading families took part in the 
 administration of justice. Matilda herself presided over the 
 
 286 
 
LECT. XX MEDIEVAL CITIES — FLORENCE 287 
 
 tribunal when able to be present; but in her absence — 
 which political and administrative occupations rendered not 
 infrequent — the decisions were often left to civic judges. 
 Further, in the struggle that was going on between pope 
 and emperor, while the city of Florence along with its 
 feudal superior the Countess embraced the side of the Pope, 
 the feudal nobility around, who conceived themselves 
 oppressed by this feudal superior, were largely on the side 
 of the emperor. Accordingly, the struggle of the cities 
 with the rural nobility — which we followed in the case 
 of the Lombard cities — began in Florence before any formal 
 municipal independence was attained. The transition to 
 independence, therefore, takes place without much of a 
 shock ; the members of the leading families who had 
 carried on the executive government in Matilda's name 
 now carry it on in the name of the city. 
 
 This government before long comes to consist of twelve 
 persons called Consuls, elected annually two from each of 
 the six quarters of the city. They belonged to the class 
 of leading citizens largely consisting of feudal nobles, but 
 they were assisted by a council of a hundred or more, in 
 which the industrial element was included and doubtless 
 had the predominance. We may assume that it included 
 representatives of the organised trades, afterwards known 
 as the "greater arts," or of some of these; since in the 
 last quarter of the twelfth century we find that the heads 
 of the Arti are considered competent to have a function 
 formally assigned to them in the treaties negotiated by the 
 city ; and we may assume that a long period of thriving 
 organised existence has preceded this political recognition. 
 Indeed, the external policy of Florence appears to be 
 governed from the first by its commercial interests. There 
 was also the Parlamento for great occasions ; but its 
 meeting was mostly a pure form, and as it often met 
 in a piazza of very moderate size or in a church, it is 
 evident that the mass of the citizens had no effective share 
 in governmental decisions. 
 . § 2. So far there is no antagonism between the noble and 
 
2S8 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 the industrial elements ; but from a.d. 1129 onwards we 
 read of the destruction of neighbouring castelli and the 
 forcing of the noble owners into the city, which thus 
 increases its feudal element. 
 
 Then in the latter half of the twelfth century comes the 
 struggle with Frederick Barbarossa, who appoints Podest^s in 
 Florence and other cities ; but this imperial system — never 
 very effective — collapses at the end of the century. Neverthe- 
 less, here as in Lombardy, the peculiar institution of having 
 an annually appointed foreign noble as Podesta or head of 
 the government is introduced, and soon after (a.d. 1212) has 
 superseded the consuls, who seem to be transformed into 
 a sort of privy council of the Podestk The transformation 
 here seems to be due partly to the sense of the superior 
 efficiency of the single governor for the wars with castelli 
 and neighbouring towns which Florence is carrying on 
 during this period ; though the choice of a foreigner seems 
 to show that the same need was felt here as in Lom- 
 bardy of an impartial stranger to repress the lawless- 
 ness of the nobles. At any rate, in the first half of the 
 thirteenth century, feuds break out among the nobles, pre- 
 sently merging in the general Guelf - Ghibelin quarrel. 
 There are Guelf nobles as well as Ghibelin nobles ; but 
 the old families are almost all Ghibelin and the industrial 
 element, the organised Arti, is mainly Guelf. 
 
 The antagonism of nobles and industrials grows stronger ; 
 and in a.d. 1250 the people give themselves a separate 
 organisation, both military and political, under the headship 
 of a Capitano del Fopolo. The object of the organisation is 
 to repress effectively the lawless violence of the nobles ; 
 the six quarters are divided into companies, twenty in all, 
 each with its standard, so that the people may all form and 
 unite in military order when the Capitano del Fopolo rings 
 the great bell on the "Torre del Leone." 
 
 The organisation is presently suspended during a tem- 
 porary predominance of the Ghibelins, but it is revived 
 with modifications in A.D.1267. The result is an extremely 
 complicated constitution, because the guiding principle of 
 
XX MEDIEVAL CITIES FLORENCE 289 
 
 the Florentine movement towards popular government is 
 to leave — in the main — the existing government with ^ 
 important functions, and to superadd a new organisation |' 
 for the better protection of popular interests. Thus we »^ 
 get the following constitution from 1267 onward. There 
 is, first, the Podesta as before — an annually elected foreign 
 noble — with a privy council of 90 and a larger council of 
 300 ; these councils are composed of nobles and commons 
 combined. But for the ordinary despatch of administrative 
 business there is a body of twelve, called the Twelve Buoni 
 Uomini, two from each of the six quarters ; they are elected 
 from the people, and are advised by a council of 100, also 
 elected from the people. Then there is the Capitano del 
 Popolo who is, like the Podesta, a foreign noble, selected 
 from a Guelf town ; he also has his special and general 
 councils ; he leads the citizen militia, infantry composed 
 of the people in companies, while the Podestk is the 
 chief representative of the republic in foreign affairs, and 
 often the commander-in-chief of the whole army, but more 
 especially of the cavalry, composed almost entirely of nobles 
 and other professional soldiers.^ The Podestk presided over 
 ordinary civil and criminal justice ; while, as I have said, (\ 
 it was the special function of the Capitano del Popolo to ,^ 
 repress crimes of violence committed by the nobles against 
 popolani. 
 
 The result was that in case of a measure that had to 
 obtain the concurrence of all the deliberative bodies, the 
 process was singularly complicated. A measure proposed 
 by the twelve Buoni Uomini had to be voted (1) by the 
 Council of 100, (2) by the special council of the Capi- 
 tano, (3) by the general council of the Capitano, usually 
 
 1 While from a.d. 1250 the predominance of the industrial element in the life 
 of the city becomes stronger and shows itself in the political organisation more 
 and more, on the other hand, the military superiority of the feudal element 
 becomes greater through the improved heavy armour of the cavalry, as was 
 shown in the battle of Montaperti a.d. 1260. From this came the develop- 
 ment of mercenary warfare ; sons even of noble families become commanders 
 of bands of gens d' amies and acquire reputation in the new art of war. This, 
 as I said, is a fruitful source of tyrannis. 
 
 U 
 
290 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 on one day ; and the next day by (4) the special council of 
 the Podesta, and (5) the general council of the Podestk 
 To avoid intolerable delays the speaking was severely 
 limited, which is perhaps one reason why political oratory 
 seems never to have had a rich development in Florence 
 — or indeed in Italy generally. 
 
 § 3. But this is not all. The idea of Florentine govern- 
 ment, as so constituted, is not complete unless we take 
 into account the organisation of the dominant Guelf party, 
 and the organisation of the trades, or Arti. 
 
 As regards the former, there were appointed at this 
 time six Capitani di Parte Ghielfa — as they were after- 
 wards called — also with councils special and general, to 
 administer the funds of the party derived from confiscated 
 property of Ghibelins. They gradually became an organ of 
 regular government for certain purposes — it being assumed 
 that the Guelf party was always to be in power. This intro- 
 duction of party organisation into regular government is a 
 noteworthy feature of the later medieval political constitu- 
 tion which no modern State has yet imitated. For example, 
 in England, from a.d. 1715-1760, it was an established 
 maxim that the Whigs were always to be in power; but 
 the constitution did not in any way recognise the Whig 
 party. I mentioned just now, in speaking of the parties in 
 Florence, that the struggle between Guelfs and Ghibelins 
 did not completely coincide with the struggle between 
 Grandees and People (Grandi and Popolani), though it did 
 in some measure. The old noble families were almost 
 entirely Ghibelin, and the strength of the Guelf party 
 lay in industrial support ; but there were Guelf nobles as 
 well as Ghibelin nobles ; and in fact of the six Capitani 
 di Parte Guelf a three were Grandi and three Popolani. 
 Later they have a palace of their own and, as I said, 
 certain public functions, the chief being the persecution 
 of Ghibelins. This, as we shall see, is a function which 
 afterwards becomes of decisive importance in determining 
 the character of the government. 
 
 § 4. But the organisation of the trades or Arti is still 
 
XX MEDIEVAL CITIES — FLORENCE 291 
 
 more important — is, in fact, the pivot on whicli the con- 
 stitution of 1267 turned. And as it is in this organisation, 
 and its representation in the government of the city that 
 the distinctively medieval structure of the city first becomes 
 prominent, I will dwell on it at more length. 
 
 The origin of the industrial associations, called in Italy 
 Arti, goes back, as we have seen, to the Eoman times ; and 
 doubtless in Florence they were effectively organised at an 
 early period. Probably all that was done in a.d. 1266—1267 
 was to give legal recognition — and perhaps greater fixity and 
 order — to a constitution which had long been in existence and 
 effective operation: and to give them formally an important, 
 though still subordinate, place in the new governmental 
 structure. The chief governing organs of these trade 
 associations — the Capitudini delle Arti — sat ex-officio in 
 the special or privy council of the Capitano del Popolo, as 
 well as in the general council. 
 
 The Arti thus recognised were seven — known as 
 Maggiori Arti. One of these, the "judges and notaries," 
 stands apart from the others as not being primd facie 
 commercial : — it is to be observed, however, that the pro- 
 vision of good judges and notaries was considered in Italy 
 to be of great importance for commercial prosperity, for 
 the decision of commercial disputes, the framing, revising, 
 and enforcing of the statutes of the corporation, drawing 
 up contracts, etc. The other six Arti represent the leading 
 branches of foreign trade in Florence. The first place, at this 
 time, belonged to the Arte di Calimala, the trade of refining 
 and dyeing foreign cloth, and the Arte delta Lana, which 
 dealt in home-made cloth. Owing to the original inferiority 
 of Italian wool, and the superiority of Italian taste, the pros- 
 perity of the Calimala came first ; afterwards, as successful 
 efforts were made to improve the raw material in Italy, the 
 manufacture of home-made wool became more important. 
 Along with these two, the Arte del Camlio, bankers and 
 exchangers, held the first rank. Next came the Arte delta 
 Seta, dealers in silk, which grew in importance later. The 
 next, Medici, or " physicians," seems at first sight pro- 
 
292 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 fessional rather than commercial ; but in fact the medici 
 were dealers in drugs as well as medical advice, and along 
 with Speziali, dealers in spices, represented a not unimportant 
 branch of oriental trade. The list is closed by dealers in fur. 
 
 These associations taken together — more than one of 
 them comprehending several allied branches of industry — 
 come forward as the natural leaders of the industrial popu- 
 lation of the city; and doubtless at this time are so re- 
 garded by the lesser Arti, which, in the course of the next 
 generation, acquire legal organisation, and later, political 
 recognition. The names of these — linen-drapers, shoemakers, 
 smiths, provision -dealers, butchers, vintners, innkeepers, 
 harness -makers, curriers, armourers, locksmiths, masons, 
 carpenters, bakers — sufficiently explain the distinction. The 
 lesser arts are almost exclusively concerned with the 
 internal retail exchange of commodities and services, and 
 have accordingly a restricted sphere of business interests 
 in contrast with the greater arts. These being engaged in 
 commerce extended widely from West to East, became 
 naturally familiar with, and keenly concerned about, the 
 external political relations of the city, which, of course, 
 they directed largely on commercial principles. 
 
 To give an idea of the organisation of these Arti, I will 
 take the one which at this time held the leading position — 
 the Arte di Calimala. Every six months the heads of ware- 
 houses and shops met and chose electors, who elected four 
 Consoli, who governed the Arte with the aid of a chancellor 
 (camerlingo), a notary who looked after the exact observance 
 of the statutes and often made speeches at the meetings on 
 behalf of the consuls, a special council of twelve, and a 
 somewhat larger general council. The consuls inspected the 
 shops and warehouses, and punished adulteration, bad quality 
 of wares, short measure, and careless book-keeping, with 
 fines, and, as ultimate sanction, exclusion from the Arte} 
 The consuls of the seven greater Arts — called Capitudini 
 
 ^ They had also consoli abroad to look after the interests of members 
 of the Arte — the institution of consuls in modern states is lineally descended 
 from this. 
 
XX MEDIEVAL CITIES FLORENCE 293 
 
 delU Arte — are, as I have said, in 1267 formally included 
 in the special or privy council of the Capitano del Fopolo, 
 which indeed is called consiglio speciale e delle capitudini. 
 
 § 5. It will be seen that in the strangely elaborated con- 
 stitution just described, the nobles have but a small share, 
 and the importance of the heads of the Arti in the councils 
 was doubtless great. In fact, the Arti, greater and lesser, 
 were, for political purposes, the Popolo. But their prepon- 
 derance is markedly increased fifteen years later (a.d. 1282) 
 when the chief executive government is placed in the hands 
 of six Priori, elected for periods of two months, one from 
 each of six greater arts. The seventh, judges and notaries, 
 is omitted as having enough political influence from the 
 nature of their calling; as we saw, the notary is an im- 
 portant official in each Arte. Thus eligibility to the chief 
 executive is made dependent on membership of one of these ^ 
 organised trades ; nobles who wish to be elected have to 
 enrol themselves in one or other of the six Arti. 
 
 We have now, it seems, an industrial oligarchy formally 
 established. But as yet it is a natural oligarchy ; there 
 does not seem to be as yet any complaint of exclusiveness 
 in the greater Arti. They are the natural leaders of the 
 Popolo ; and all the Arti, greater and lesser, appear in the 
 thirteenth century to be still united against the nobles, 
 somewhat as in England the urban capitalist and the 
 artisan were united against the territorial aristocracy, in 
 the struggle against the Corn Laws in the early part of the 
 nineteenth century. This is shown eleven to thirteen years 
 later — in A.D. 1293-1295 — when the tables are turned 
 still further on the nobles, and the most noble families in 
 Florence are formally made ineligible to the office of Prior. 
 We find that the Priori are then elected by the presidents of 
 twelve Arti and other sapientes et honi viri artifices, members 
 of Arti, drawn from different quarters. Indeed, some of the 
 lesser Arti appear to have taken a prominent part in the 
 popular movement of this date ; and all the twenty-one 
 Arti, greater and lesser together, pledged themselves to main- 
 tain the most remarkable innovation of this time, namely 
 
294 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 the " Ordinances of Justice," directed specially against the 
 nobles. On these I propose to dwell for a moment, as they 
 show in a very striking manner the difficulties with which 
 the Italian cities had to contend in their endeavours to 
 accomplish the elementary task of enforcing the observance 
 of law and civil order on a nobility which all the civilisa- 
 tion attained by the end of the thirteenth century, in the 
 centre of European civilisation, had left essentially barbaric. 
 
 It is evident that, even in Florence, where the industrial 
 element had a specially full and prosperous development, even 
 after it had enjoyed for nearly thirty years the political pre- 
 dominance secured in 1267 and increased in 1282, in spite 
 of the Podestd,, of the Gapitano del Pojpolo, of all attempts 
 to organise the industrial element in self-defence — in spite 
 of all — the nobles, with their wealth, their prestige, their 
 family ties and dependents, were able to defy the law to an 
 extent intolerable to peaceful citizens, to overawe witnesses, 
 rescue arrested criminals, and thus secure practical impunity 
 for their habitual outrages. To put an end to this the new 
 Ordinances were instituted and a new machinery for enforcing 
 them. 
 
 The chief features of the Ordinances were: (1) The 
 family tie, which had been a support of lawlessness, was 
 turned into a means of repression. If a member of a noble 
 family — a family that had cavalieri among its members — 
 committed an offence, his relatives were made responsible. 
 It was further established that all Grandi, from the age 
 of fifteen to seventy, had to appear annually before the 
 Podesta, and to give security for good behaviour ; in the 
 case of minor acts of violence, the surety had to pay the 
 fine and recoup himself from the offender's goods. If a 
 jpojpolano should be killed or mortally wounded by a grande, 
 it was the duty of the Podesta to behead the criminal, destroy 
 his houses, and confiscate his goods. (2) But the most 
 startling measure was that adopted to meet the difficulty 
 of getting witnesses to acts of violence to come forward. 
 It was ordained that common rumour, attested by two ^ 
 
 ^ Afterwards raised to three. 
 
XX MEDIEVAL CITIES FLORENCE 295 
 
 credible witnesses, should be sufficient to prove a crime 
 against a noble. It would be difficult to defend this ; 
 but the violence of the remedy proves the obstinacy of the 
 disorder. Its application was limited by the proviso that 
 if popolani take part in the quarrels of grandi, these ex- 
 ceptional 'Ordinances are no longer applicable. 
 
 The new machinery was the appointment of a Gon- 
 falonier of Justice, having at his command a body of 1000 
 yopolani — afterwards increased to 4000 — bound to appear 
 in arms at the palace of the Signoria when called upon, or 
 in case of uproar. The Gonfalonier has to support the 
 Podesta in executing the ordinances ; or if the Podest^ 
 and the Capitanx) del Popolo neglect their duty, he has to 
 act in their place. The Gonfalonier formed, with the six 
 Priors, the Signoria or chief executive government, and 
 ultimately became its chief member. He was elected 
 annually, and like the Priors, by the presidents of twelve 
 Arti and other Artisans, drawn from the different quarters 
 of the city. Only members of Arti were eligible, and nobles 
 were excluded, even if enrolled in a company. 
 
 Even these drastic ordinances did not attain their end at 
 once. For half a century the nobles struggle against them ; 
 and, in the feud between " Whites " and " Blacks " at the 
 beginning of the fourteenth century, the nobles seem to be 
 fighting quite in the old style. But the people stick to 
 the Ordinances, so that they must have had some sub- 
 stantial effect ; indeed, in 1338, Pome asks a copy of them 
 from Florence. 
 
 § 6. Meanwhile, in A.D. 1323, an important change, 
 specially interesting to the student who compares medieval 
 Italian with ancient Greek polities, takes place in the mode of 
 election to magistracies — the partial introduction of the lot. 
 Hitherto the Priori, while changed every two months, had 
 been elected for every six months ; but this was thought 
 to render candidatures, with accompanying intrigues, too 
 frequent, and it was resolved to elect at once all the Priori 
 for forty-two months ahead, i.e. for twenty-one changes, 
 and afterwards determine the succession of the two months' 
 
296 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect, 
 
 tenures by lot, no one being re-eligible until the whole 
 number was exhausted. This also had the advantage — 
 from a democratic point of view — of practically throwing 
 open the post to a larger number of persons. The office of 
 prior, in fact, would necessarily be held within three and a 
 half years by 126 different persons, which must, one would 
 think, be at any rate a considerable part of the whole number 
 of persons who seemed to their fellow-citizens competent to 
 fill it. And as the same method was extended to all the 
 magistracies — which Sismondi estimates at 136 — it would 
 certainly seem that an office of some sort would be almost a 
 certainty to a respectable Florentine citizen, with leisure for 
 public affairs — for no office was paid, except those held 
 by foreigners. Sismondi adds that " almost all the free 
 cities of Italy hastened to adopt this innovation of the 
 Florentines ; " ^ and says that the practice, in the early part 
 of the nineteenth century, still survived in Lucca, and in the 
 municipalities of Tuscany and of the States of the Church. 
 
 In contemplating the number of her magistrates, we 
 must bear in mind that Florence had become a large city 
 in the first half of the fourteenth century. Sismondi 
 estimates that in a.d. 1343 it had 150,000 inhabitants. 
 
 Observe that, though the change in the mode of election 
 thus described is democratic in the sense of opening to a 
 larger number of persons the prospect of office, the persons 
 choosing are still a select few, for the names to be drawn 
 by lot are not elected by the citizens at large. At the 
 same time, elaborate plans were adopted to prevent the 
 exclusion of any really eligible citizen. It may usefully 
 illustrate the character of the fourteenth century polity of 
 Florence, if I follow the chronicler^ in describing the pro- 
 cedure adopted for electing the Priori and Gonfalonieri 
 in 1328, when, after the death of the Duke of Calabria, 
 who had for three years held the " signory " of Florence,^ 
 a serious attempt was made to put the government on as 
 
 ^ Histoire des Ripuhliques Italiennes, vol. v. ch. xxx. 
 
 2 Giov. Villani, lib. x. ch. cviii. 
 
 ^ I may remark incidentally that nothing shows so strikingly the diflS- 
 
XX MEDIEVAL CITIES FLORENCE 297 
 
 broad a basis as possible, consistently with keeping the 
 power in the hands of the Guelf party. The plan was as 
 follows: — (1) The Priori, with the addition of two popolani 
 from each quarter of the city, made a selection of the non- 
 noble citizens of the Guelf party, over thirty years of age, 
 qualified for the priorate. (2) The gonfalonieri delle com- 
 pagnie (captains of militia companies), with two popolani 
 added from each company, did the same. But this was 
 not enough ; the party organisation and the industrial 
 organisation had also to assist in the selection, so (3) the 
 capitani of the Guelf party, with their council, also made 
 their list ; and (4) also the cinque ujiciali della mercatanzia 
 (five trade officials), along with two consoli from each of 
 the greater Arts. It is as if in England we had adopted 
 the policy of having the Liberals always in power — as the 
 Whigs were always in power under the two first Georges 
 — and the ministry was chosen by the Cabinet, aided by a 
 committee of the National Liberal Federation and the 
 delegates of the leading trades-unions. 
 
 When the lists are made out, the final determination of 
 persons eligible for the office of Prior during the next two 
 years is made by secret ballot by a somewhat differently 
 constituted body of persons, namely the Priori, the Twelve 
 Buoni Uomini " with whom they took counsel on important 
 matters," nineteen gonfalonieri delle compagnie, two consoli 
 for each of the twelve greater Arti, and thirty-six persons 
 added by the Priors and Buoni Uomini, six from each of the 
 six quarters of the town. Sixty-eight votes were required 
 for approval. Then the names of these approved persons 
 were put in purses, one purse for each quarter of the town,, 
 from each of which a name was drawn by lot every two 
 months ; each of those whose names were drawn was then 
 Prior for the ensuing two months, subject to the prohibition 
 preventing the same person being Prior within two years, 
 
 culties under which republican independence was maintained in medieval 
 Italy than that even Florence, its leading defender, should be from time to 
 time obliged to accept temporarily a foreign lord. He was only accepted 
 with careful reservation of the rights of municipal self-government ; still, 
 that he should be accepted at all is a striking fact. 
 
298 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 or two members of the same house holding the office within 
 the same six months, and two brothers, or father and son, 
 within a year. The Gonfalonieri and the Twelve Buoni 
 Uomini were elected from similar lists, and each Art elected 
 its consuls in a similar manner. 
 
 It is to be observed that at the same time (a.d. 1328) 
 the before-mentioned complicated system of councils was re- 
 duced to two — the council of the popolo, composed of 300 
 Guelf popolani, and the council of the comune, composed 
 of 250 approved persons, nobles and popolani. The aim 
 was that all the great interests of the state might be 
 somehow represented ; even the nobles having, in the council 
 of the comune, a representation designed to give them sub- 
 stantial protection against class oppression. 
 
 § 7. But constitutions in these troublous times were 
 brief in duration. The union of feeling between the greater 
 Arts representing the commercial element and the lesser 
 Arts containing the artisan element, has been diminishing ; 
 and the double discord, between grandi and leading popolani 
 on the one side, and the richer popolani and the ordinary 
 artisans on the other, gives the opportunity for Tyrannis — 
 to which the cities north of the Apennines have by this time 
 generally succumbed. When in September 1342 Walter de 
 Brienne, Duke of Athens, made himself temporarily master 
 of the city, it was a combination of the ancient nobility and 
 the lower class of artisans, which, in a disorderly Parlamento, 
 acclaimed him lord of the city for his lifetime. 
 
 But in the July following all classes united to free 
 Florence from the tyrant. A brief effort was made to 
 maintain this union by giving the nobles a share of the 
 offices, and the ordinances against them were transiently 
 suspended. But the enemy of the human race, as the 
 chronicler puts it,^ stirred up pride and insolence in the 
 nobles ; the people rebelled against their outrages, and 
 forced them out of the chief magistracy ; a brief armed 
 struggle took place, and the nobility succumbed finally 
 (a.d. 1343). As a class, the old nobility never compete 
 
 1 G. Villani, lib. xii. ch. xix. 
 
XX MEDIEVAL CITIES — FLORENCE 299 
 
 again for power. The Ordinances are permanently re- 
 established, but in a more equitable form ; the responsibility 
 of kinsmen for a noble criminal was restricted to his nearest 
 relatives. Also the notion of grande is changed ; a popolano 
 guilty of certain crimes is declared a grande — with his 
 family and kin unless they deliver him up to justice ; on 
 the other hand, a number of old noble families or individuals 
 are as a favour declared popolani by public decree. 
 
 A similar plan under different names was adopted by 
 other free republics of Tuscany — Siena, Pistoia, Lucca ; and 
 generally in the cities that remain free the nobility is 
 excluded from all the magistracies ; and in more than one 
 a register of nobles is opened as at Florence, on which to 
 inscribe by way of punishment the names of disturbers of 
 the public peace. This is one of the most remarkable in- 
 stitutions which medieval history shows us. 
 
 To go back to Florence. The old nobility having finally 
 lost power, the question remains how, in an exclusively 
 industrial government, power is to be divided between 
 the plebeian oligarchs and the artisans organised in the 
 lesser crafts. At first, after a.d. 1343, it seems as if the 
 latter would preponderate. Between a.d. 1328 and 1343 — 
 especially in the struggles of a.d. 1342 and 1343 — a great 
 stride has been made towards democracy. As the chron- 
 icler says : " The people, having won its victory over the 
 grandees . . . rose to great position and boldness and, 
 mastery especially the middle class and the smaller artisans." ^ 
 On the whole, the government of the city fell to the executives 
 of the twenty-one Arti. The old division into six districts 
 having become antiquated, the city was now divided into 
 four quarters, and the number of Priori increased from six 
 to eight, two from each quarter, making — with the Gon- 
 falonier of Justice, now regarded as head of the government 
 — an executive of nine ; and it was arranged that three out 
 of the nine should be taken from the lesser Arts. As a 
 matter of fact — as the chronicler goes on to say — the im- 
 mediate result was that they got more than this proportion, 
 
 ^ G. Villani, lib. xir. ch. xxii. 
 
30O DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 especially as the prohibition against two members of the 
 same family being Prior within six months pressed harder 
 on old families, whose ties of kin were known to remote 
 degrees, than on new people who kept no account of cousin- 
 ship. 
 
 § 8. But oligarchy, as we have before observed, usually 
 dies hard. When it was found, as we are told, that 
 " mean and ignorant persons obtained the office of prior," ^ 
 a reaction took place towards practical oligarchy, effected 
 in a rather peculiar way. I have described how the 
 predominant Guelf party was organised as a Guelf society 
 with council and captains, and how later its captains con- 
 stitutionally took part in framing the list of eligible citizens 
 from whom magistrates were elected by lot. They had also 
 an officer for the accusation of suspected imperialists ; and 
 under their influence Ghibelins had been practically excluded 
 from office for three-quarters of a century (a,d. 1266— 1343). 
 Soon after the change of 1343, however, it was believed or 
 pretended that a lax selection of eligibles had admitted 
 Ghibelins ; and under cover of zeal against this generally 
 proscribed party, the Guelf society — in which such of the 
 old nobles as were Guelf retained considerable influence, 
 and coalesced with leading ndbili popolani, somewhat as 
 in ancient Eome, to form a new group of oligarchical 
 tendency — contrived to keep power in its hands for 
 twenty years. They got a law passed which rendered every 
 Ghibelin who held office liable to punishment — capital 
 or pecuniary, at the discretion of the magistrates ; while 
 it gave the leaders of the Guelf society the function of 
 " warning " suspected Ghibelins. By this imputation of 
 Ghibelinism they managed, from a.d. 1358-1378, to scare 
 from the offices not only Ghibelins but any person opposed 
 to the governing group. 
 
 Hence discontent, leading to what is perhaps the most 
 famous revolution of Florence, the revolution of the Ciompi 
 (a.d. 1378), which has a double historical interest — (1) be- 
 cause it is the high-water mark of the democratic movement 
 
 ^ Hallam, Middle Ages, chap. iii. part ii. p. 429. 
 
XX MEDIEVAL CITIES — FLORENCE 301 
 
 in Florence, and (2) because here for the first time the move- 
 ment goes beyond the limits of the regularly organised 
 trades or crafts, and temporarily gives a share in govern- 
 ment to a still lower stratum of the people. This stratum 
 consists partly of groups of workers who had not obtained 
 independent incorporation, but were in a dependent re- 
 lation to one or other of the greater arts. For example, the 
 Arte di Lana, which I may perhaps translate by the familiar 
 term " Drapers' Company," had wool-combers, dyers, and 
 weavers in this way dependent on it, but included also 
 unskilled labourers, ciompi. 
 
 It would take too long to follow the phases of the 
 revolution. It is effected by a combination of the per- 
 secuted Ghibelins real or suspected, the lesser Arts and 
 this lower stratum ; at a certain point the lower stratum 
 gets the bit between its teeth and seems to carry all before 
 it in a rush of popular excitement which reminds one of 
 the 4meutes of the period after A.D. 1789. It temporarily 
 gains the right of furnishing one-third of the executive of 
 nine (the eight Priors and the Gonfalonier of Justice) ; but 
 the wave of sedition dashes further; there is a reaction, 
 and the result is a constitution in which the lesser Arts pre- 
 dominate. But this only lasts for three years ; in a.d. 1382 
 the nobili popolani regain power — the effective democratic 
 movement is over.^ The minori Arti retain, it is true, 
 one-fourth share of the magistracies ; but they cease to be 
 genuine " craft-guilds " ; rich young men enter them, and 
 they become passive instruments in the hands of a ruling 
 oligarchy of capital. Indeed, fifty years later, the transi- 
 tion by which the republic gradually passes into the 
 practical monarchy of the Medici has popular support, just 
 as the transition at the end of the Eoman republic has. 
 
 1 I have dwelt on Florence alone, to give as much clearness as possible 
 to a brief narrative ; but similar temporary triumphs of the democracy of 
 organised but inferior crafts appear in other cities — e.g. Siena— about the 
 same time. 
 
LECTUKE XXI 
 
 MEDIEVAL REPRESENTATIVE INSTITUTIONS 
 
 § 1. I now pass to describe briefly the origin and 
 decline of the type of polity which tended to prevail in 
 Western Europe in the later Middle Ages, intervening 
 between the feudal or quasi -feudal conditions of the 
 earlier Middle Ages — which, overlooking minor variations, 
 we may take as lasting from the tenth to the thirteenth 
 century — and the predominance of pure monarchy in the 
 sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. We may call it 
 " monarchy controlled by assemblies of estates," bearing 
 in mind, as an essential characteristic, that these assemblies 
 include, besides nobles and clergy, representatives of the 
 cities. 
 
 But before I enter on this description, I should like to 
 draw attention to an important difference between ancient 
 and modern political ideas, on which what I have to say 
 will throw light. Aristotle, in the passage already quoted, 
 describing the functions of the deliberative body,^ says 
 nothing about taxation. The function of raising the funds 
 necessary for public objects seems to be regarded by him as 
 so clearly secondary and subordinate that nothing is said 
 about it. On the other hand, in Locke's famous Treatise 
 on Civil Government (a.d. 1690) the question who is to de- 
 termine taxation seems to be even more fundamental than 
 the question who is to determine legislation. Locke is 
 willing to admit that a people may hand over to an 
 absolute monarch the function of making laws, subject only 
 to the vague condition that the laws must be designed for 
 
 ^ See Lecture xii. p. 174. 
 302 
 
LECT. XXI MEDIEVAL REPRESENTATIVE INSTITUTIONS 303 
 
 the good of the people ; but he will not admit that they 
 can ever be held to have similarly handed over to any 
 government the right to "raise taxes on the property of 
 the people, without the consent of the people, given by 
 themselves, or their deputies." -^ And this view — startling 
 as it is from the point of view of recent, no less than of 
 ancient political theory — corresponds to the prominence 
 which the question of finance historically occupies in the 
 constitutional struggles of the seventeenth century. 
 
 This difference between ancient and modern political 
 ideas is due, I think, to the manner in which modern 
 polity grew gradually out of feudal conditions. In the 
 feudal polity taxation proper has no place ; the king is 
 conceived to defray the expenses of his kingdom from 
 the resources of his domain, and the feudal services, dues, 
 and occasional " aids " rendered by his vassals. Then, as 
 the expenditure of the Crown increases, especially from 
 the superior utility of paid professional soldiers in war, the 
 monarch's need of getting money conflicts with the estab- 
 lished habit among his vassals of paying as a matter of 
 right and duty only fixed rents and dues, or commuta- 
 tions for services. As Hallam says of the King of France, 
 when the period of assemblies begins : " There was one 
 essential privilege which " the monarch, in spite of in- 
 creased power, " could not hope to overturn by force, the 
 immunity from taxation enjoyed by his barons ; " ^ and, we 
 may add, that the security from arbitrary increase of annual 
 payments, given by their charters to the enfranchised towns, 
 could not be simply ignored. From the monarch's point 
 of view, then, the institution of general assemblies was 
 important as a means of overcoming the obstacles thus 
 placed in the way of his finance. 
 
 § 2. It is fundamentally important that the stage of 
 medieval political development in which assemblies partly 
 representative become important organs of governmental 
 control, was preceded and partly caused by the development 
 
 1 Treatise on Civil Government, ch. xi. § 142. 
 2 Middle Ages, ch. 11. pt. ii. p. 223. 
 
304 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 within the country -state of city -communities with an 
 independence rivalling that of the feudal lords, but in- 
 ternally organised, as we have seen, on principles quite 
 unlike the feudal — essentially industrial — with more or less 
 tendency for some time to a semi-democratic constitution. 
 It is owing to this development that the assemblies when 
 formed are not merely assemblies of nobles — fighters and 
 clergy — but include representatives of the growing industrial 
 element of society ; and it is this inclusion of an industrial 
 element that most definitely marks these assemblies as 
 expressing a new stage in the development of the nation. 
 
 Tor the feudal element of these assemblies is not novel ; 
 it is only a later form of the assembly of the monarch's 
 immediate vassals which, under the name of " royal court " 
 or " council," is a known and familiar organ of government 
 in the feudal period, though the degree of regularity with 
 which it performs its functions is very various. It repre- 
 sents the council of chiefs in the primitive polity; it is 
 called together to advise the king on questions of peace 
 and war, give important judicial decisions, and regulate 
 the occasional war taxes (" aids ") which in feudal times 
 were almost the only distinctly public form of taxation. 
 If this alone had continued to give advice to the 
 monarch and consent to the laws and the taxes, even 
 if such councils had become more regular, they would 
 merely have continued the struggle between monarchy and 
 oligarchy of which I have already spoken as characterising 
 the earlier Middle Ages. But by the introduction of the 
 cities a more democratic element comes in to the " meetings 
 of estates " which partly aid, partly control monarchy from 
 the end of the thirteenth century onwards. 
 
 The formation of these assemblies is a sign and ex- 
 pression of the growing coherence of the nation ; this is 
 a statement that may be made about them all. But as 
 to the causes that mainly led to them, it is, I think, 
 difficult to make any statement that is clearly applicable 
 to all cases. Sometimes the impulse to their formation 
 seems to proceed entirely or mainly from above, and to 
 
XXI MEDIEVAL REPRESENTATIVE INSTITUTIONS 305 
 
 be due to considerations of policy, mainly of finance, on 
 the part of the monarch ; sometimes, again, it seems to 
 come from below, and to be a more comprehensive and 
 impressive result of a spontaneous movement of voluntary 
 association among persons and bodies in the same social 
 condition which characterises the later period of the Middle 
 Ages ; often, of course, both causes blend. 
 
 Now one might perhaps have expected that where the 
 movement that gives deputies of the third estate seats 
 beside barons and prelates comes from below rather than 
 from above, it would be most likely to develop into stable 
 and permanent constitutional government. But the fact 
 is otherwise. It is in Germany that we see the force of 
 spontaneous association working most clearly and im- 
 pressively ; it is {e.g.) in Germany that the famous voluntary 
 leagues of cities are formed — especially the Hanseatic league, 
 a most striking instance of the strength and practical in- 
 dependence given by the spontaneous confederation of 
 elements that individually remain in formal political de- 
 pendence. Taking its rise in the unions formed by German 
 traders in foreign countries — England, Flanders, Scandinavia, 
 Kussia — for the protection of their common interests, and 
 in smaller unions for different objects among the trading 
 cities of Korth Germany, we find at length, in the middle 
 of the fourteenth century, a great union of North German 
 towns, under the name of Ransa, governed by the resolu- 
 tions passed at meetings of the deputies of the several 
 towns, and having for its primary aims the security of 
 the sea and land routes, the settlement by arbitration of 
 disputes between cities that are members of it, and the 
 acquirement and maintenance of trading privileges in foreign 
 lands. In a.d. 1367-1370 it wages war successfully and 
 gloriously against the Scandinavian kingdoms ; and it main- 
 tains a vigorous life for a long subsequent period, controls 
 the internal polity of the cities composing it, and even — 
 when the Eeformation comes — concerns itself with religious 
 interests. And this is only one among several instances 
 of confederation of German cities in the later Middle Ages, 
 
 X 
 
306 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 after the decline of Imperial power had set in. Nor is it 
 only in the case of cities that this spontaneous tendency to 
 unite for the defence of common interests is exhibited in 
 Germany ; the nobility, especially the lesser nobility, 
 similarly unite in brotherhoods for the defence of their 
 rights and privileges ; the movement even Reached the 
 peasants, though only imperfectly and transiently except 
 in the famous case of the Swiss. Finally, it is especially 
 in Germany that in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries 
 — the period of medieval parliaments — the force of 
 voluntary combination is manifested, uniting nobles and 
 clergy, knights and citizens into more comprehensive unions 
 for protection against the oppression of the princes. Yet 
 in Germany this medieval system of meetings of estates 
 loses force, and even when it survives in the seventeenth 
 and eighteenth centuries, can offer no effective resistance 
 to the predominant absolutism.-^ 
 
 In England, on the other hand, where the transition 
 from the medieval to the modern parliament is gradual 
 and unbroken, there is no such spontaneous impulse to 
 association manifested by the cities ; they are at first 
 called in irregularly by the baronage, chiefly it would 
 seem for moral support, and in order to give the barons' 
 struggle with the king a more impressive air of being a 
 national struggle; and they are afterwards summoned 
 regularly, chiefly for the greater convenience of getting 
 money for the financial needs of the king by negotiating 
 with the cities in the aggregate, through their delegates, 
 rather than negotiating with them separately. In Spain, 
 where these assemblies appear earlier, Prescott says that it 
 is now too late to inquire " whether the convocation of the 
 third estate to the national councils proceeded from politic 
 calculation in the sovereign, or was in a manner forced on 
 him by the growing power and importance of the cities." ^ 
 But in France, as in England, it is evident that the im- 
 pulse proceeds primarily from above ; though the assembly 
 
 1 See below, Lecture xxiii. p. 336. 
 ^ History of Ferdinand and Isabella (in a footnote to the Introduction). 
 
XXI MEDIEVAL REPRESENTATIVE INSTITUTIONS 307 
 
 thus called into being in France shows before long a dis- 
 position to grasp the reins of power when the monarch's 
 rule appears feeble and unsuccessful. 
 
 § 3. Before I go on to analyse the exceptional conditions 
 which led to the completer and more successful develop- 
 ments of these medieval representative institutions in 
 England, let us examine — by way of contrast — the case of 
 France ; partly because, when the period of pure monarchy 
 succeeds this generally transient period of representative 
 institutions, it is in France that it appears most splendid 
 and impressive. _ _ . _ 
 
 We may begin by noting that, as Guizot points out,^ 
 when the tiers-dtat begins to play an important part in 
 the medieval history of France, the independence of the 
 towns is no longer what it was ; as the power of the 
 Crown grows, extensively and intensively — the lawyers 
 aiding it — and with it the internal order and coherence of 
 the realm, the administrative independence, and especially 
 the semi -sovereign powers acquired by some cities, are 
 gradually reduced or abolished as incompatible with the 
 coherent order which is the lawyer's ideal and which is 
 also, so long as it is established by establishing the pre- 
 dominance of the Crown, naturally the aim of the monarch's 
 ambition. This process is going on during a great part of 
 the thirteenth century, though it continues for two centuries 
 more; but it is not till the beginning of the fourteenth 
 century that the representatives of the cities are summoned 
 to form a " third order " in the assembly of the " estates- 
 general," and it is not till the middle of the same century 
 that this third order becomes self-assertive and aggressive. 
 The explanation is, I conceive, that the Crown, though it 
 aimed steadily at stripping the towns of quasi -sovereign 
 powers, was not afraid of them, not in conscious rivalry with 
 them, as it was with feudal nobles and clergy ; and it was 
 an important gain for the Crown, in its general anti-feudal 
 policy, to enter into direct relations with the towns not 
 only in the royal domain, but in the realm at large. 
 
 ^ Histoire de la Civilisation en France, Lect. xix. 
 
3o8 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 In the first meeting of the estates-general in a.d. 1302, 
 the king's object seems to have been primarily to demon- 
 strate that he had the support of his whole kingdom in 
 his contest with the pope. But, as I have said, another 
 very important motive — and on the whole, I think, the 
 most important motive in France as in England, though 
 its importance may not have been recognised at the time — 
 was the desire to get money more easily. The general 
 assembly facilitated the financial arrangements which the 
 king would otherwise have had to make with his vassals 
 individually; he probably expected, as he actually found, 
 that the deputies of the towns would be more easily induced 
 to lend him pecuniary aid, so that their presence along 
 with the feudal nobles would render the whole process of 
 getting money less difficult. But this expedient, however 
 attractive, could not be tried without a certain danger to 
 monarchy ; the danger that the greater opportunity of 
 combination thus given to the representatives would lead 
 them to assume governmental power, and interfere in legis- 
 lation and administration, whenever the monarchy was weak. 
 And this in fact took place in France in a.d. 1357, in the 
 dark hour of disaster after the battle of Poitiers ; when it 
 is to be noted that the movement of reform, or one may 
 say of revolution, is made by the citizens chiefly, led by 
 the representatives of the merchants of Paris. A similar 
 movement — also led by the urban element — was made in 
 A.D. 1413 when the country was torn by the violence of 
 conflicting factions. 
 
 But the want of union among the different estates — 
 especially between citizens and nobles — sufficed to prevent 
 these spasmodic attempts at popular control from having 
 permanent effects. One cause of this want of union lay 
 in the exemption of the nobles and clergy from the taille 
 or land tax imposed on the non-nobles. The principle was 
 adopted that " the clergy pay with their prayers, the nobility 
 with their swords, and the people with their money " — at 
 any rate so far as the normal burdens of taxation were 
 concerned. The privileged classes being thus in the main 
 
XXI MEDIEVAL REPRESENTATIVE INSTITUTIONS 309 
 
 detached from interest in the financial question discussed 
 with the estates -general, the hourgeoisie were in the long 
 run too weak to struggle singlehanded with the monarchy. 
 The turning-point of this struggle — considering the funda- 
 mental importance of finance — came in a.d. 1439 when the 
 estates consented, or were successfully understood to consent 
 to the taille perydtuelle. The principle that the consent of 
 the estates was necessary to legitimate taxation was not 
 indeed expressly given up ; indeed, it is asserted half a 
 century later in a.d. 1484, and more regular assemblies 
 every two years are demanded. The Crown promises what 
 is asked — and calls no more assemblies but collects the 
 taxes as before ! 
 
 It would take too long to follow the history of the 
 various assemblies of estates-general, and estates-provincial, 
 in France. They constitute an important and influential 
 organ for the expression of popular wishes, from which the 
 government when wise obtains valuable advice and suggestion. 
 But one may say generally that the want of union among 
 the different classes represented is the main cause that pre- 
 vents the composite assembly from obtaining an important 
 and permanent share of governmental power. This fateful 
 disunion between nobles and commoners was strikingly 
 manifested at the meeting of estates-general in a.d. 1614, 
 when the nobles make formal complaint to the king that an 
 orator of the third estate has compared the three orders — 
 nobles, clergy, and commons — to three brothers of the same 
 family. The third estate only claimed to be a younger 
 brother ; but the nobles would not admit even that degree 
 of fraternity. When the three estates next met in a.d. 1789 
 — a century and three-quarters later — the youngest brother, 
 as sometimes happens in families, had grown to be the 
 strongest, and he made his strength felt. 
 
 A similar cause produced similar effects in Spain, 
 where the representation of cities in the national assemblies 
 had been introduced as early as the twelfth century, and 
 where — both in Aragon and in Castile — the control of these 
 assemblies over the Crown appeared for a long time much 
 
310 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 more firmly established and regular than in France, and 
 seemed up to the fifteenth century, to have more prospect 
 of developing into regular, constitutional government. But 
 here too the strength of the monarchy lay in the absence 
 of union among its competitors for power, and the willing- 
 ness of these competitors to accept privileges at the expense 
 of their fellows. Thus the force of the representation of 
 the towns of Castile was weakened by the bold diminution 
 in its numbers which the Crown effected in the fourteenth 
 century, when the number of cities returning deputies was re- 
 duced to eighteen ; at which number it remained with slight 
 variations — the privileged cities resisting any attempt to 
 increase it. Here too the nobility claim that their personal 
 military service exempts them from taxation ; and it is 
 the division thus established between nobles and citizens 
 that makes the transition to absolutism so easy in the 
 sixteenth century. 
 
 The Parliaments of the Scandinavian kingdoms had a 
 more solid popular structure — including representatives of 
 peasants as well as of nobles and cities ; indeed, Sweden 
 furnishes an instance of effective parliamentary power even 
 in the eighteenth century. Still, we may observe that the 
 cou'p d'etat wliich turns the government of Denmark into a 
 pure monarchy in A.D. 1660 turns on the same separation 
 of financial interest; the burghers are irritated by the 
 refusal of the nobles to be taxed when they reside on their 
 estates, and their irritation, skilfully fanned by the king, pro- 
 duces a popular revolution that has as its result absolute 
 monarchy. 
 
 § 4. If, then, we ask why in England alone among the 
 larger states of "Western Europe the medieval assemblies of 
 estates have led by a continuous process to modern parlia- 
 mentary government, the main answer, I think, must be that 
 the cause which produced failure elsewhere — the want of 
 union among different sections and classes — was far less 
 operative in England. I do not say that the England of 
 the fifteenth century is free from provincial jealousies or 
 class jealousies, but they have far less effect here than else- 
 
XXI MEDIEVAL REPRESENTATIVE INSTITUTIONS 311 
 
 wliere. Of this I think there were two chief causes : the 
 insularity of England and the strong government of the 
 Norman kings. 
 
 I incline to believe that insularity, with its marked 
 boundaries, rendered unity of national sentiment easier 
 from its direct effect on the imagination, people outside 
 the island being palpably foreigners. Hence the remark- 
 ably complete-^ — and under the circumstances rapid — fusion 
 between the Norman conquerors and the conquered English. 
 If we may trust the Dialogus de Seaccario, it was practi- 
 cally complete in one and a half centuries. Another perhaps 
 more important effect of insularity lay in the comparatively 
 peaceful conditions it secured, through the long absence of 
 serious fear of invasion. From this cause " militancy," as 
 Mr. Herbert Spencer would say, was less preponderant than 
 on the Continent. There had always been in England, to 
 an important extent, land held on non-military tenure, 
 "free socage," side by side with land held on military 
 tenure ; and through the comparatively peaceful conditions 
 due to insularity, the more peaceful element of the landed 
 proprietary tended to absorb the other. The Crown had 
 to defend its possessions on the Continent, but the duty 
 of serving beyond sea in these wars gradually came to be 
 felt as a burden — knights were glad to escape it by 
 " scutage." But when this transformation of the burden 
 into a pecuniary one has been effected, the pecuniary 
 obligations of knighthood are felt to be oppressive, and we 
 find in the thirteenth century that it has to be imposed 
 compulsorily. Thus the distinction between the military 
 and the non -military element among the smaller landed 
 proprietors naturally tends to be effaced ; and the union 
 of the rural gentry and the city -merchants into a strong 
 and spirited body of " commons " becomes easier. 
 
 The other important cause of the greater internal 
 cohesion of English society is the predominance and vigour 
 of the monarchy founded by William the Conqueror. 
 Feudalism in a sense was introduced by William, but the 
 main political effects of feudalism — the disintegration of 
 
312 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 governmental power — were carefully excluded. His strong 
 hand and skilful policy prevented the followers with whom 
 he divided the spoil from attaining anything like the 
 independence of French and German feudatories. Thus 
 we saw ^ that in England the principle was maintained, at 
 any rate in theory and form, that direct allegiance to the 
 king was due not only from his immediate vassals, but 
 from the vassals of those vassals. And in liberally dis- 
 tributing the plunder of English land, William took care 
 to give it in a scattered form, so that, as far as possible, no 
 powerful noble should have too great a preponderance 
 in any one region. Except in the counties palatine of 
 Chester and Durham, charged with military defence against 
 the Welsh and Scotch, the administrative system prevented 
 large power from being placed in the hands of any great 
 nobles. 
 
 Again, effective control over the local administration of 
 justice is maintained in England from the twelfth century 
 by itinerant justices ; and this royal justice by subordinating 
 local customs increases the homogeneity of the people, which, 
 it must be remembered, had been great in pre-Norman 
 times compared to the Continent. From Henry II. on- 
 ward, with inconsiderable exceptions, England has only 
 one common law. And further, when representative in- 
 stitutions begin, there is nothing in England corresponding 
 to "provincial estates," only one parliament. 
 
 Again, the cohesion of classes in England was aided by 
 the peculiar English view of nobility as a quality which 
 did not descend to younger sons. This seems to be partly 
 due to the fact that the House of Lords ^ — the " great council 
 
 1 Lecture xiv. p. 206. 
 
 2 Under the influence of feudalism, introduced by William, the IS'ational 
 Council — of which the democratic element had vanished long before the 
 Norman Conquest — was almost insensibly changed from the assembl}'- of the 
 wise men into the king's court of feudal vassals (Stubbs, Select Charters, 
 p. 15) and practically of the greater barons, though all military tenants-in- 
 chief had a constitutional right to attend. Thus, so far as parliamentary 
 development is continuous, it is the House of Lords that represents the old 
 National Council. 
 
XXI MEDIEVAL REPRESENTATIVE INSTITUTIONS 313 
 
 of the realm " — is in use as a normal element of our strong 
 centralised Norman government, in a degree unparalleled 
 in continental states. The Norman king is not afraid of 
 opposition to his measures from his council of lords ; what 
 he does fear is local resistance to them ; and that the assent 
 of the council tends to prevent. Hence the distinction 
 between barons individually summoned to the council and 
 those not summoned becomes more marked in England than 
 elsewhere, and those not summoned blend with the smaller 
 vassals of the Crown ultimately into gentry. 
 
 Thus we have a strong monarchy, a relatively feeble 
 nobility, and a homogeneous and united people. Hence the 
 nobility, when driven to resist the tyranny of the Crown, 
 is naturally led to strengthen itself by alliance with other 
 classes that feel this oppression.^ And the union is facilitated 
 by the fact that the development of cities in England shows 
 no such struggles between citizens and feudal nobles as we 
 often meet with in continental history. It is to be borne in 
 mind that England was preponderantly an agricultural and 
 pastoral country in this age — but such large towns as there 
 were, mostly depending directly from the king, had not in 
 their history any such memories of long, bitter, violent 
 quarrels with the nobility such as elsewhere tended to pre- 
 vent union. And the vigorous centralised administration, 
 subjecting, as it did, the inhabitants of the smaller towns to 
 the county authorities for various purposes, accustomed the 
 rural and urban elements to common action. 
 
 Thus the exceptional vigour of the monarchy in the 
 century and a half after the Norman Conquest, co-operating 
 with other causes to produce an exceptional capacity for 
 combination among the elements of English society, is a 
 main cause of the exceptional strength of the Parliament that 
 becomes a regular part of the government at the beginning 
 
 ^ Thus it was the barons who extorted Magna Carta from Jolin in a.d. 
 1215. But the barons lean on the people, and Magna Carta is not framed in 
 the interests of an oligarchy in a bad sense. It aims at securing freedom 
 from arbitrary taxation, at least for all free landholders, and from arbitrary 
 imprisonment and punishment for all freemen 
 
314 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 of the fourteenth century. Here, as elsewhere, the oppor- 
 tunity of Parliament lies in the financial need of the Crown; 
 but through the firmer cohesion of the representative ele- 
 ments in Parliament ^ the opportunity is used here with 
 more steady resolution than in most other countries ; and 
 before the end of the fourteenth century the weighty prin- 
 ciples are established that new taxation ^ is illegal without 
 the consent of Parliament; that legislation requires the 
 concurrence of the two Houses ; ^ that the Commons may 
 inquire into and claim amendment of the abuses of the 
 administration. It was also established, though less clearly 
 and completely, that the rights and liberties of Englishmen 
 could not be legitimately invaded or altered by any mere 
 command or ordinance of the monarch. 
 
 These principles strike root deeply in the political con- 
 sciousness of England, so that even when after the Wars of 
 the Eoses the spirit of Parliament temporarily declines and 
 the Crown becomes practically predominant, it does not 
 openly dispute and override the traditional rights of Par- 
 
 ^ The principle of representation is not to be found in Magna Carta, but, 
 so far as free landholders go, it was gradually introduced, largely, I suppose, 
 with Hallam and Freeman, as a convenient way of obtaining money. It was 
 not indeed for financial reasons that representatives of the cities were first 
 summoned to Parliament by Simon de Montfort in a.d. 1265. Still financial 
 reasons operated to make this regular, and to bring about the first complete 
 representation of three estates in Edward I.'s reign in a.d. 1295 ; soon after 
 which (a.d. 1297) the necessity of the assent of Parliament to the imposition 
 of new taxation is formally acknowledged. At first Parliament has three 
 estates, and knights vote and tax themselves separately from burgesses ; but 
 the clergy cease to attend in the fouiteenth century — preferring to assemble 
 separately in convocation — and knights blend with burgesses. But we may 
 note that in the fifteenth century the electorate becomes less popular — the 
 limitation of "forty-shilling" freeholders in a.d. 1429 disfranchising a con- 
 siderable number. Also in many boroughs the municipal governing body 
 becomes co- optative and usurps the right of electing representatives. This 
 phenomenon is similar to what we have noticed in the more independent 
 city-communities of Germany and Italy. 
 
 ^ With some doubt as to customs, which becomes very important after- 
 wards, till finally settled by the Long Parliament. 
 
 ^ At first the usage is that new laws are made *'at the request of the 
 Commons and with the assent of the Lords " ; then gradually the petitions 
 assume the form of complete statutes under the name of bills, it being found 
 that the Crown did not always really grant what was petitioned. 
 
XX r MEDIEVAL REPRESENTATIVE INSTITUTIONS 315 
 
 liament. The Tudor monarchs have their way, and in 
 certain directions encroach seriously on the traditional 
 rights of Englishmen: but they have their way usually 
 through the complaisance of Parliament, not by violating 
 its constitutional rights. 
 
LECTUEE XXII 
 
 MOVEMENT TO ABSOLUTE MONARCHY 
 
 § 1. Earlier in the course/ in comparing broadly the de- 
 velopment of the country -state of Western Europe with 
 that of the city-state of ancient Greece, I drew attention 
 to one strongly- marked difference of this later evolution, 
 when we view it in its strictly political aspect, concentrat- 
 ing our attention on government and its form. This is 
 the permanence of monarchy. Hereditary monarchy lives 
 on through the stages of development, in which, never- 
 theless, we can trace analogies to the different forms of 
 government which succeed one another in the development 
 of the city-state. It lives on through the stage that corre- 
 sponds to that of the early oligarchies — the oligarchies of 
 old families, in the city-states. Even in that period of the 
 Middle Ages in which the "turbulent nobles," as the historians 
 call them, obscure the splendour and reduce the power of 
 the monarchy ; in which we hear of dukes and counts or 
 earls vying in power with the monarchs to whom they 
 pay nominal obedience; they never succeed in destroying, 
 hardly ever desire to destroy the institution of hereditary 
 monarchy. And monarchy lives still, in most European 
 countries, in the democratic period through which we are 
 now passing; when in almost every civilised country at 
 least a large share of legislative power is in the hands of 
 representatives of the people, and in most such countries 
 they have acquired an important amount of control over 
 the administration of current affairs. And thus — as I 
 pointed out — the period of approximately absolute mon- 
 
 ^ Lecture xiii. p. 188. 
 316 
 
LECT. XXII MOVEMENT TO ABSOLUTE MONARCHY 317 
 
 archy which intervenes between the two, and which is 
 predominant in most important European countries in the 
 latter part of the seventeenth and till near the close of the 
 eighteenth century, this period — though it has perhaps a 
 certain analogy to the earlier age of the tyrants in Greek 
 history — is not a period of irregular and lawless reversion 
 to the rule of one, but of the predominance, gradual or 
 sudden, of one element over others in the old established 
 government. 
 
 As I said, the main cause of this phenomenon is, in my 
 view, the greater need in a country-state of the unity and 
 concentration of power given by life-long headship, owing 
 to the greater difficulty of maintaining national unity and 
 political order in a people dispersed over so large a space. 
 We see from the history of France and Germany that 
 increase of the power of the leading nobles against the king 
 may tend ultimately, not so much to the formation of a 
 concentrated oligarchical constitution, as to the breaking up 
 of the state into parts ; and to the lawless oppression and 
 disorderly feuds of individual nobles, as contrasted with 
 the organised and quasi-legal oppression of class by class 
 which the early oligarchy in Greece and Eome shows us. 
 Hence so far as a national consciousness is developed in the 
 country, it sustains the monarchy as a necessary bulwark 
 against this disruption, and as civilisation grows, the in- 
 creasing number of persons who wish to live in peaceful 
 legal relations with their neighbours demand the aid of the 
 king, and are prepared to render him their support, against 
 lawlessness and disorder. 
 
 But though this is the main cause, we also had to take 
 into account the influence of ideas derived from the Eoman 
 Empire, transmitted in various ways — at first through the 
 habits of obedience of the people conquered, then through 
 the dignity and prestige of the ancient title when revived 
 by Charles the Great A.D. 800, then through the influence of 
 the Church — though, as we have seen, this is of a chequered 
 kind ; finally, through the influence of the lawyers. 
 
 Through the influence of these causes combined, mon- 
 
3i8 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 archy holds its own through the various shocks and vicissi- 
 tudes which it encounters during the long process of the 
 Middle Ages and the period of religious strife that followed, 
 and by the beginning of the eighteenth century has ulti- 
 mately prevailed on the whole, though not everywhere. 
 In the ancient oligarchy of Venice, in the modern con- 
 federacies of Holland and Switzerland the republican form 
 of government is maintained. In England since a.d. 1689 
 the monarchy has to govern face to face with a parliament 
 — representing, in the main, a broad-bottomed oligarchy — 
 whose supremacy in legislation and finance it had finally 
 admitted ; and it only maintains its effective control of 
 administration by the method which polite people call in- 
 fluence, and rude people corruption by places and pensions. 
 In Sweden in the north, after a brief period of practically 
 absolute monarchy, from a.d. 1693-1718, the extravagant 
 strain which had been put on the resources of the nation 
 by the martial adventures of Charles XII. had caused a 
 reaction towards the control of an assembly, which, as in 
 England, was predominantly oligarchical, and which lasted 
 more than fifty years (a.d. 1720-1773); while in the east 
 the Polish nobility had secured their practical independence 
 at once of monarchy and of order, and offered to the con- 
 temporary observer an interesting example of the worst 
 kind of oligarchy known to history. Still, these were 
 all exceptions. Elsewhere in Eomance and Germanic 
 nations alike, in France, Spain, Portugal, the two Sicilies, 
 in Denmark including Norway, in Austria and most 
 of the smaller states in Germany and North Italy into 
 which the Holy Eoman Empire had practically resolved 
 itself, the monarchical form of government is victorious. 
 
 Accordingly, if in the middle of the eighteenth century 
 an impartial continental observer had retraced briefly the 
 course of European history from the point of view from 
 which I have tried to sketch it in these lectures, he would 
 probably have regarded monarchy of the type called absolute^ 
 
 ^ I have allowed myself to use this term for brevity though as we shall see 
 it requires qualification (see pp. 336-339). 
 
XXII MOVEMENT TO ABSOLUTE MONARCHY 319 
 
 as the final form of government to which the long process 
 of formation of orderly country-states had led up ; and by 
 which the task of establishing and maintaining a civilised 
 political order had been, on the whole, successfully accom- 
 plished, after other modes of political construction had failed 
 to realise it. 
 
 Then just when this monarchy seems most completely 
 established, in the very country where it has been most 
 splendid and triumphant — in France — there begins a move- 
 ment of thought and opinion which gradually generates a 
 passionate demand for liberty, equality and popular 
 government, which first powerfully co-operates in the 
 formation and determination of the destinies of the great 
 federal republic in North America ; then, gaining strength 
 with this success, overthrows the monarchy in France; 
 then further — in spite of the disillusionment caused by the 
 sanguinary disasters that attend this overthrow, and the 
 subsequent lapse into the military despotism of Napoleon, in 
 spite of the reaction in other countries, supported by strong 
 patriotic sentiment, against this aggressive Napoleonic des- 
 potism and its revolutionary antecedents — the movement 
 towards popular government revives, grows, and to a great 
 extent attains its end all over the countries sharing West 
 European civilisation. So that now, after the interval of a 
 century and a half, absolute monarchy, instead of being the 
 normal form of government in a civilised country-state, is 
 commonly regarded as suited only for semi-civilised Eussia, 
 and unworthy of the advanced communities of Western 
 Europe. 
 
 In this and the following lectures I propose to consider 
 these two movements towards so-called absolute monarchy, 
 and from this to constitutional monarchy or republic. From 
 one point of view — which is the ordinary one — they seem 
 diametrically opposed to each other ; the one, speaking 
 broadly, from liberty to despotism, and the other from 
 despotism to liberty. But this is only from one point of 
 view ; from another point of view they are only two stages 
 in a continuous process tending in one direction, namely, to the 
 
320 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 realisation of the modern conception of political society as 
 contrasted with the medieval conception. For a complete 
 and duly balanced view of the whole process it is necessary 
 to consider it from both points of view. 
 
 § 2. But here, perhaps, I may instructively digress to answer 
 a simple question suggested by what I have just said — to 
 which, however, it is not easy to give a simple answer. I 
 have spoken of medieval and modern conceptions of political 
 society ; but where, it may be asked, does modern history 
 begin ? It is difficult to answer the question decisively, 
 because the process of change from medieval to modern ideas 
 and facts is gradual and continuous ; and there is a great 
 difference of opinion as to where this date should be fixed. 
 
 For example, Bluntschli^ fixes it as late as a.d. 1740. 
 From the Eeformation to about 1740, he says, we see in 
 Europe generally the old age and decay of medievalism 
 rather than the youthful characteristics of a modern era ; 
 and it is not till about 1740 that we feel that a new time 
 is coming. And I think there is some truth in this, and 
 that it is only towards the middle of the eighteenth century 
 that the West European monarch completes his change from 
 an overgrown feudal lord to a modern absolute king. 
 
 For it is noteworthy that, on the one hand, during the 
 feudal and quasi -feudal period, the monarchy, as I have 
 before said, is only half-feudal. On the other hand, relics 
 of the feudal ideas appear to cling to monarchy after it has 
 effectually suppressed feudalism. On the one hand, during 
 the feudal period, the king, while the highest feudal lord, 
 has, at the same time, relations other than feudal to the 
 community as a whole and all its members — relations due 
 to a blending of old German and Eoman imperial ideas — 
 with perhaps a tinge of Asiatic monarchy derived from the 
 Old Testament. On the other hand, when the feudal and 
 quasi-feudal institutions have given way before the growth 
 of the modern State, relics of the feudal confusion between 
 public and private rights still cling round the monarch. He 
 conceives himself to have a sort of ownership of the land 
 
 ^ Theory of the State, bk. i. chap. v. 
 
XXII MOVEMENT TO ABSOLUTE MONARCHY 321 
 
 and its inhabitants, and to be something more than an 
 official appointed to promote their well-being. France, for 
 Louis XIV., has become in its entirety the king's domain. 
 When, in a.d. 1710, he has a transient scruple about taxing 
 his subjects, he is reassured by the reflection that he is the real 
 owner of all their property. So again, though states cannot 
 be divided like properties among the children of the ruler, it 
 still seems right that they should be united like properties 
 through marriage. So England gets plagued with Hanover. 
 The idea that a monarch was doing nothing wrong by sending 
 his subjects to fight in quarrels in which they had no 
 interest belongs to the same survival. The change is 
 gradual ; but, speaking broadly, I think we may put it, as 
 Bluntschli puts it, at about the middle of the eighteenth 
 century. It is about then that the leading West European 
 monarchs begin to be generally regarded, and to definitely 
 regard themselves, as public functionaries in whose hands 
 the power of the State is conceived to be concentrated for 
 public ends. 
 
 Still, I cannot regard this change in ideas and sentiments 
 as so important as Bluntschli regards it; it does not alter 
 the distribution, nor materially affect the ordinary exercise, 
 of political power. Bluntschli's date, then, seems to me 
 eccentrically late. 
 
 On the other hand, it is rather common to make modern 
 history begin with the fall of Constantinople in a.d. 1453 ; and 
 no doubt the year that saw the substitution of the Turks, as a 
 first-class European power, for the ancient Eoman Empire of 
 the East, and at the same time, through the emigration of 
 Greeks from Constantinople, saw a powerful impulse given 
 to the revival of learning in Western Europe — this is a 
 specially critical year in more than one way. And in fact 
 the beginning of modern history may be properly put at 
 different dates, according to the different points of view taken. 
 
 But for the purpose of the present course, the date just 
 mentioned seems to me as much too early as Bluntschli's is 
 too late. Monarchy is at this time still struggling with 
 feudality, still hampered by medieval parliamentary insti- 
 
 Y 
 
322 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 tutions — assemblies of estates. In France, indeed, it is 
 clearly gaining ground, and before the end of the fifteenth 
 century its predominance is temporarily complete. And 
 we observe a marked emergence of effective monarchs, a 
 marked movement towards the predominance of monarchy, 
 at the end of the fifteenth century, in France, England, 
 and Spain alike. But the process is still incomplete. In 
 France the power of the monarchy is reduced again by the 
 struggle of the Eeformation period — in the civil strife that 
 repeatedly breaks out in the latter part of the sixteenth and 
 first part of the seventeenth century we have not merely 
 Protestantism struggling with Catholicism, but also the 
 nobles struggling with the Crown ; the estates-general too 
 again become transiently important. In England the Tudor 
 rule carefully avoids the appearance of absolutism, preserving 
 the formal control of Parliament over legislation. In Spain, 
 too, the parliamentary traditions are still strong ; and it is by 
 skill rather than force that Ferdinand gets his way. Absolut- 
 ism in Spain is not established till Philip 11. (a.d. ISSe- 
 lSQS) ; and in France, the finally decisive work in establish- 
 ing it has to be done in the seventeenth century by the great 
 Eichelieu, and, after him by Mazarin. The final settlement of 
 monarchy as completely victorious was after the struggles of 
 the Fronde. This would bring it to the middle of the seven- 
 teenth century, and this is the time in which, taking Europe 
 as a whole, the most decisive drift in this direction is felt. 
 
 Thus it is in a.d. 1660, as I said before, that the most 
 dramatic transition to absolutism that European history 
 affords takes place in Denmark. The king overcomes the 
 nobility by the aid of the burghers and the clergy, who 
 are irritated by the refusal of the nobility to bear their 
 due share of taxation ; and in a.d. 1665 he establishes 
 a fundamental law, giving him and his heirs unlimited 
 sovereignty. In Portugal, again, the final meeting of the 
 Cortes — the medieval representative assembly — is in A.D. 
 1674. And it is in the third quarter of the same century 
 (a.d. 1650—1675) that the process is going on by which, in 
 the rudiments of what is afterwards to be Prussia — in 
 
XXII MOVEMENT TO ABSOLUTE MONARCHY 323 
 
 Brandenburg, and Cleve, and Preussen — the " Great Elector " 
 is breaking the power of the assemblies of estates and shaking 
 his kingly power free from their financial control, in spite of 
 stubborn resistance, at least in the case of Preussen. 
 
 Accordingly, I am disposed, from the point of view of 
 our present study, to answer the disputed question, 'Where 
 modern history begins,' by placing its beginning in the 
 middle of the seventeenth century — treating the period of 
 the Kenaissance, and the period of the Eeformation and the 
 religious strife that followed, as constituting a long transi- 
 tion between medieval and modern thought. By the 
 middle of the seventeenth century the treaty of West- 
 phalia (a.d. 1648) has closed the period of religious wars; 
 and then, or not long after, it is clear that in most West 
 European states, monarchy is predominant over elements 
 in the state that have struggled with it. It is decisively 
 predominant over the successors of the great nobles, who in 
 feudal ages had so often rivalled the monarch in power and 
 dignity. It is also finally predominant over the weakened 
 ecclesiastical power of a divided Christendom — that power 
 which, when Western Christendom was united, had put 
 forward such high-reaching claims ; and which, in the great 
 thirteenth century, seemed so near establishing the throne of 
 the vicar of Christ above those of all secular kings and 
 princes, with authority to depose them at its will. It has, 
 to a great extent, absorbed under its rule the cities which 
 had, in various parts of Western Europe, achieved so high a 
 degree of independence. And finally, it has in most cases 
 become completely predominant over those representative 
 assemblies which checked and balanced its power in the 
 centuries of transition, when the West European states were 
 growing out of the disintegration of feudalism, and growing 
 towards the completer unity and order of the modern state. 
 And thus, through the predominance of monarchy, states are 
 finally constituted all over Western Europe, whose internal 
 coherence, unity, and order contrasts strikingly with the 
 divided authority, doubtful cohesion, and imperfect order 
 that characterise medieval institutions. 
 
324 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 § 3. Let US look more closely at the transition. When we 
 compare the political and social relations of man in the 
 Middle Ages either with those that Graeco-Eoman history 
 shows us, or with those of the period that I distinguish as 
 modern, we find them characterised by a singular combination 
 of legality and illegality. They are characterised by formal 
 legality because every one has rights ; this is the great 
 advance that has been made on the civilisation of the ancient 
 republics, with its large class of slaves, legally their masters' 
 chattels ; from the king on his throne to the serf who 
 turns the clod every medieval class has important rights 
 secured by law and custom. But again, the medieval state 
 is characterised by actual illegality, because no one can be 
 adequately sure of getting his rights. When a dispute 
 arises as to rights — which, from their bewildering variety, 
 complexity, and fluctuation, is a highly probable event, — or 
 when they are openly overridden by high-handed aggression, 
 there is no central supreme power in the State which can 
 determine the dispute with absolute decisiveness, and can 
 bring the organised physical force of the community with 
 irresistible weight to crush any openly recalcitrant indi- 
 vidual or group of individuals. 
 
 Now, a power of this kind is assumed as essential in the 
 generally accepted theory of the modern state. It is, in- 
 deed, implied in the very definition of a political community 
 commonly received. In all modern discussion as to the best 
 manner of determining the appointment, functions, mutual 
 relations of legislative, executive, and judicial organs of 
 government, it is assumed that, whatever difference there 
 may be between different forms of government, there will 
 be some power somewhere that can finally determine what 
 the law is, can get it decisively applied to the settlement of 
 any particular dispute that may arise, and can effectively 
 enforce it. This assumption is not, indeed, completely 
 realised throughout the whole system of West European 
 states ; but though it is not realised completely, it is so 
 approximately. The element of romantic interest which 
 medieval society derives from the fact that individuals and 
 
XXII MOVEMENT TO ABSOLUTE MONARCHY 325 
 
 classes must be prepared to fight for their own rights if 
 they wish to enjoy them, is, speaking broadly, absent from 
 modern political society in its ordinary condition. 
 
 It is from this point of view that the transition to 
 absolute monarchy is, when we now look back upon it, seen 
 to be a stage in the direction in which the constitutional 
 monarchy of the nineteenth century is a further stage. The 
 triumph of monarchy represents the first introduction of 
 approximately complete unity and order, by the effective 
 subordination of all other authority in the state to the 
 authority of the monarch. And the fact that this is so is, 
 as I have said, a main part of the explanation why the 
 change comes about. As the slow process of civilisation 
 goes on, the need of more perfect order is keenly felt, and the 
 completer repression of the anarchical resistance of powerful 
 individuals or groups has consequently more and more the 
 support of public opinion. The sentiment of national unity 
 grows, and with it a sense of the importance of making this 
 unity more complete, with a view not only to internal order, 
 but to strength in struggles with foreign nations. Hence, 
 anything that tends to keep up imperium in imperio 
 within the nation, is viewed with aversion and distrust by 
 this patriotic sentiment, which, consequently, gives power- 
 ful support to the monarch in his conflict with all such 
 anarchical forces and tendencies. 
 
 These forces are various and changeful, and hence the 
 struggle towards completer order on the basis of monarchy 
 is prolonged, and in most cases has marked fluctuations. 
 Monarchy gains ground under a strong king, mostly by slow 
 degrees, and then seems to lose it again under a weak one, some- 
 times with a sudden collapse. Nor is it always the monarch 
 who wins in the struggle — for example, in the Eomano- 
 Germanic Empire. But though the monarch does not him- 
 self triumph, the monarchical form does, in the main, even in 
 Germany, the princes becoming practically monarchs. The 
 monarch, as we have seen, has to struggle in turn with each 
 of the different elements of the nation : sometimes with 
 nobles, sometimes with towns, sometimes with religious 
 
326 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 bodies ; and in each case the struggle takes varying forms 
 in different ages and countries. Sometimes the powerful 
 nobles represent other families of ancient prestige and large 
 domains rivalling the monarch's. Then, when these are 
 brought under, the struggle sometimes recommences — e.g. in 
 the case of France — with the younger branches of the royal 
 family itself, whom the hereditary monarchs have made rich 
 and powerful. In the earlier feudal times the struggle is 
 usually with powerful individual feudatories, then later, 
 when the tendency to combination has grown, it is with 
 leagues and associations of nobles, or perhaps, as in Germany, 
 leagues of towns. So, again, the conflict with ecclesias- 
 tical organisations takes different forms. In the twelfth 
 and thirteenth centuries it is a struggle with the one Church 
 of western Christendom, united under a foreign sovereign 
 in Rome who aims at theocratic supremacy. While in the 
 religious dissensions that fill the period immediately preceding 
 the final predominance of monarchy — say, from Luther's attack 
 on indulgences to the peace of Westphalia — it is the frag- 
 ments into which the Church has broken up that threaten to 
 disorganise the political order of Western Europe, as their 
 lines of division cut across those that separate nations. But 
 amid all these vicissitudes and variations, the preponderance 
 of the general tendencies that are carrying monarchy to 
 victory is all the more strikingly manifested. The winds 
 and the waves of civilisation are in its favour, since the 
 growth of monarchical power is practically bound up with 
 the growth of poKtical order. 
 
 § 4. And the same fact — that monarchy represents the 
 unity of the nation — gives us, when contemplated on its 
 negative side, the answer to the question why the more 
 perfect order that the modern state requires could not at 
 first be established on the constitutional basis that it has 
 actually attained in the nineteenth century. The answer 
 is broadly, as we have seen, that the classes with which 
 the medieval monarch has to reckon in the latter part of 
 the Middle Ages, and whose consent has somehow to be 
 gained if the work of government is to be carried on, — these 
 
XXII MOVEMENT TO ABSOLUTE MONARCHY 327 
 
 classes appear, even when brought together in assemblies 
 of estates, to be usually incapable of attaining such a full 
 and stable union as might gradually have converted re- 
 presentation of classes into representation of the nation. 
 England is an exception — I have tried to explain why and how 
 — but in most cases the representatives of different classes 
 in the medieval assemblies considered in the preceding 
 lecture remain merely and palpably representatives and 
 defenders of sectional interests, which gives them a double 
 weakness in any struggle with the Crown — the weakness 
 arising from mutual disunion, and the weakness arising 
 from the fact that each group of representatives is or 
 appears to be maintaining the interests of a part against 
 the interests of the whole, the privileges of a section against 
 the common interests of the nation. And, as we have 
 already seen, while it is on the side of finance that their 
 opportunity of gaining a share of governmental power arises, 
 it is also on the side of finance that the separation of interests 
 tends to be strongly marked. 
 
 But even apart from the weakness we have noted in 
 the assemblies which, as we look back, appear in the later 
 medieval period as actual or probable competitors with the 
 Crown for supreme power, it is easy to see why pure 
 monarchy should supply the first form in which the con- 
 ception of supreme power adequate to the maintenance 
 of order actually embodied itself. We have indeed only 
 to apply to this special case the reason given in my first 
 lecture ^ for the general predominance of monarchy, as com- 
 pared with other forms of government, in civilised societies ; 
 namely that it is so much the simplest and most 
 obviously effective mode of attaining the consistency of 
 resolution and action which belongs to our ideal of govern- 
 ment generally, however constructed. To put it in the 
 scholastic manner of the later medieval thinkers : the 
 " unity " which should be characteristic of an ordered state 
 is most easily attained by placing it under the rule of that 
 which is intrinsically and 'per se one. 
 ^ Lecture i. p. 10. 
 
328 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 And this tendency of thought may, I think, be strik- 
 ingly illustrated if we examine the modern doctrine of 
 sovereignty when it first makes its appearance in the 
 history of European political thought. Jean Bodin or 
 Bodinus is the writer to whom is due the first clear and 
 full enunciation of this doctrine, and when we examine 
 his exposition of it in his great treatise De, Repullicd (a.d. 
 1576),^ we find that while it is theoretically applicable 
 to aristocracy and democracy no less than to monarchy, 
 yet that Bodin himself is, as Sir F. Pollock says, " prone 
 to identify the theoretical sovereign with the actual king 
 in States where a king exists." ^ He holds indeed (as 
 Austin) that in every independent community governed by 
 law there must be a power from which laws proceed and 
 by which they are maintained — since it is idle and 
 chimerical to assume absolutely immutable and irrevocable 
 laws — whether the power resides in one person or in many ; 
 and that this power, being the source of law, must itself 
 be above the law and therefore not legally limited.^ 
 Theoretically, I say, he finds this unlimited power in all 
 governments worthy of the name ; he holds it to be 
 necessary to the very existence of an independent state; 
 in fact, we have in his book the fundamental general con- 
 ception of the modern state put forward in opposition to 
 the medieval ideas. And in classifying actual govern- 
 ments he theoretically intends to be guided entirely by the 
 facts. But practically, when he comes to apply the doctrine 
 to concrete political facts, he has a strong disposition to 
 identify the theoretical sovereign with the reigning monarch 
 if he can, where the facts at all admit of it. In the case 
 of the German Empire of his time, it would be flying 
 palpably in the face of the facts to do this ; he therefore 
 classes the government of the Empire as an aristocracy. 
 But he has no doubt that in France the king has 
 
 ^ Bodin's book might be regarded as the first onodern systematic work on 
 political science ; but it is better to take it as transitional. 
 
 ^ History of the Science of Politics, p. 49. 
 
 ' I,e. not limited by positive laws ; for it did not enter into Bodin's view 
 to deny that sovereigns were limited by the law of nature. 
 
xxir MOVEMENT TO ABSOLUTE MONARCHY 329 
 
 the unlimited power he attributes to his theoretical 
 sovereign. 
 
 And as I shall show in a subsequent lecture, almost 
 the same may be said of Hobbes in the next century. His 
 absolutist doctrine is avowedly neutral as between monarchy, 
 aristocracy, and democracy, but its tendency is palpably 
 monarchical. What his general theory demands is absolute 
 power somewhere ; but he prefers to place it in a king. 
 
LECTUKE XXIII 
 
 MOVEMENT TO ABSOLUTE MONARCHY continued 
 
 § 1. The correspondent movement of facts and ideas which 
 in the last lecture I tried briefly to characterise gives, 
 I think, the main line of causation that leads gradually 
 and with fluctuations, but decisively on the whole, to the 
 pure monarchy of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. 
 But, as I said, we must also take into account the special 
 influence of Christian theology and also that of Eoman 
 law. I have before observed that in both these cases to 
 some extent, but especially in the case of Eoman juris- 
 prudence, we have the indirect influence of the extinct 
 Eoman Empire. Let us examine each of these, taking first 
 the theological influence, which requires careful treatment, 
 because it is really complex, and different elements of it 
 operate in different ways. 
 
 It is sometimes said that the doctrine of the " divine right 
 of kings," as preached by the clergy on the side of the 
 monarch in {e.g.) the seventeenth century is a medieval 
 doctrine. And this is partially true, but only partially. 
 This doctrine of orthodox seventeenth- century Christianity 
 is doubtless a survival or bequest from the medieval view of 
 the universe and human society ; but it is a survival of which 
 the political effect is entirely altered by the changed condi- 
 tions of its continued existence. A medieval thinker would 
 no doubt hold that legitimate kings reigned by divine right ; 
 but this proposition would no more determine the limits 
 of their regal powers than the scriptural proposition that 
 " the powers that be are ordained of God " would, in the 
 view of a modern orthodox Christian, determine the dis- 
 
 330 
 
LECT. XXIII MOVEMENT TO ABSOLUTE MONARCHY 331 
 
 tribution of governmental functions in the British con- 
 stitution. According to the medieval view, all power, all 
 lordship was ordered by and derived from God ; the state- 
 ment was not more true of, let us say, the King of France 
 than it was of the great nobles who held fiefs under him by 
 hereditary right which he could not diminish or take away. 
 
 At the same time, it remains true that the medieval 
 thinkers were led by their theology to a decided preference 
 for monarchy ; the best form of government in their view — 
 as is argued in a treatise on the Eule of Princes, attributed 
 to Thomas Aquinas — is that which most closely resembles 
 the government of the whole universe by one supreme God. 
 As Christianity had grown up under a monarchy, the 
 Church's natural conception of political order was mon- 
 archical. Also its claim to control by consecrating the 
 supreme secular governor is more naturally applicable to 
 monarchy ; it is difficult to conceive the consecration or 
 anointment of a Council or Popular Assembly as an im- 
 pressive ceremonial. The Christian ideal, then, was 
 primarily monarchical ; but it is to be observed that this 
 ideal — at least in its earliest and most strictly medieval 
 form — does not lead the thinker to recognise in theory, in 
 his ideal view of Christendom, the absolutely independent 
 sovereignty of the monarchs of the separate nations into 
 which Western Christendom comes gradually to be definitely 
 organised ; it rather led him to aspire after a monarchical 
 organisation uniting the whole Christian world under one 
 headship. Human society, in its ideal condition as con- 
 ceived by the medieval thinker, would constitute not only 
 a universal Church, but a universal secular community 
 (civitas Dei), the Church monarchically organised under one 
 pope, the secular polity under one emperor, wielding re- 
 spectively the " two swords " of the Gospel narrative, by 
 which spiritual and secular government were symbolised. 
 
 As regards the manner in which, with this essential 
 dualism of two swords and two governments, ecclesiastical 
 and secular, the essential unity of the Christian polity was 
 to be maintained — on this question there was, as we have 
 
332 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 seen, a fundamental controversy running through the whole 
 period of medieval thought, at least since Hildebrand. 
 According to the ecclesiastical party that supported the 
 claims of Innocent III. and Boniface YIII., the unity was 
 to be attained by simple subordination of the secular sword 
 to the spiritual : the pope was appointed by God as supreme 
 arbiter of questions of morals; all questions of politics 
 were questions of morals ; hence the pope — as Boniface 
 claimed — was " seated by God on the throne of justice above 
 all kings and kingdoms." But these claims (which would, 
 if realised, have converted Western Christendom into a 
 thoroughly theocratic polity, which it never actually 
 became even for a time) were disputed by an important 
 section of the medieval thinkers, who interpreted the 
 superior rank of the spiritual government as meaning only 
 the superior importance of the spiritual welfare of mankind 
 with which it was concerned, and not at all as carrying 
 with it a right to overrule secular governors in their own 
 department; and who accordingly found the ideal unity 
 of Christendom in the Divine Head, represented in the 
 spiritual and secular spheres by pope and secular monarch 
 respectively. 
 
 Then, when the growing weakness of the Empire rendered 
 the idea of a secular unity under the emperor more and 
 more clearly impossible, ecclesiastical writers on politics 
 did not at once give undivided support to monarchy in the 
 separate nations, because their conflicts with the secular 
 power led them to lay stress on the natural — only remotely 
 divine — origin of the state, as contrasted with the directly 
 divine origin of ecclesiastical rule. Indeed, in the later 
 Middle Ages, from the end of the thirteenth century onward, 
 it is the most accepted doctrine that secular government 
 rests on the consent of the people, who have an original 
 right to choose their own form of government ; so that, 
 though the proposition '' that the ruler is the vicegerent 
 of God," is not formally abandoned, it becomes practically 
 insignificant and ceases to give any support to monarchy. 
 Then afterwards, during the period of religious strife, the 
 
XXIII MOVEMENT TO ABSOLUTE MONARCHY 333 
 
 influence of Christianity is mixed and varying. Both 
 Catholics and Protestants, when under Protestant and 
 Catholic governments respectively, have a strong disposition 
 to favour political doctrines tending to subordinate mon- 
 archy to the control of other powers; but after a.d. 1648, 
 when this period is over and the established divisions of 
 Christendom have put an end for ever to the ecclesiastical 
 efforts after a theocratic organisation under the pope, the 
 preponderant influence both of Eeformed and of Catholic 
 Christianity is again decidedly monarchical. We may say 
 that its natural tendency to support order and especially 
 monarchical order has now free play ; so that the orthodox 
 seventeenth-century interpretation of the text, " the powers 
 that be are ordained of God," is that no Christian may law- 
 fully resist a legitimate monarch.^ 
 
 On the whole, therefore, the Eeformation and its con- 
 sequences are an important factor on the side of monarchy. 
 Even in the most purely Catholic countries, after the century 
 of strife is over, the rivalry of the Pope with the King for 
 secular sovereignty has gone never to return ; the Church 
 finds its best interest in leaning on monarchy and trusting 
 to it for material support while giving it moral support. 
 And in Anglican and Lutheran countries the subserviency 
 of the Church to the Crown is even more marked. 
 
 The broad tendency of the disruption of Christendom, 
 caused by the Eeformation, to strengthen the secular power 
 is strikingly illustrated in the case of Spain. Spain, in the 
 period succeeding the Eeformation, stands forth as the 
 
 ^ It may be observed that the early Reformers, Luther, Melancthon, even 
 Calvin, were led — partly by the return to Scripture and early Christianity, 
 as they understood it, partly by reaction from the Anabaptists, etc. — to lay 
 stress on the obedience due to the powers that be, and to keep aloof from 
 revolutionary schemes of government. Speaking generally, moreover, the 
 movement within the Church against papal power, naturally allied itself with 
 the centuries-old struggle between civil and ecclesiastical power. But this 
 alliance is not permanent or universal : indeed in the later wave of reforma- 
 tion, which connects itself not with Luther but with Calvin, we find claims 
 to supremacy of ecclesiastical over civil power which are very like papal 
 claims : but they lack political force, the Reformers having so strong a need 
 of the aid of the secular power. 
 
334 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 great bulwark of Catholic orthodoxy; it is the country in 
 which Catholicism is at once most irresistibly predominant, 
 and most intensely fanatical. It is the country of Ignatius 
 Loyola ; above all, it is the home of the Inquisition ; and 
 though we cannot find any important movement towards 
 Protestantism, or any other form of heretical or schismatic 
 doctrine in Spain at this time, still the Inquisition managed 
 to consume some 6000 human beings in successive " acts 
 of faith," during the reign of Philip II. Here then, if 
 anywhere, one would think the spiritual power of the 
 Papacy might successfully maintain its claim of superiority 
 over the secular power. But in fact it is quite otherwise ; 
 indeed, it is hardly an exaggeration to say that Philip II. is 
 for practical purposes as autocratic in ecclesiastical matters 
 in Spain as Henry VIII. is in England. He holds the 
 patronage of all the cathedral churches in Spain, chooses 
 archbishops, bishops, and abbots, regulates the details of 
 ecclesiastical discipline, and refuses to admit the pope's 
 bulls and despatches when they contravene his policy. 
 The Inquisition is his instrument not the pope's ; it is 
 he who gives it orders ; he names, dismisses, controls the 
 Inquisitors. Indeed, in spite of his religious fanaticism, we 
 find him using it for purely secular purposes when the 
 instruments of his ordinary administration fail ; for example, 
 when his Custom-house officers cannot stop the exportation 
 of horses into France, he pretends to believe that the horses 
 are intended for Protestant armies, and makes the Inquisition 
 therefore forbid their export. The pope complains, but 
 he has to submit ; his spiritual weapons are ineffective ; 
 the king's fanaticism is intense, but it is limited and 
 qualified by a still intenser belief in himself and his sovereign 
 rights. 
 
 And similarly in the French monarchy of Louis XIV., 
 the Church — though it retains important privileges, vary- 
 ing in different parts of the country — is effectually sub- 
 ordinated to the Crown, to which it gives loyal support. 
 Its most eminent orators give, like some leading representa- 
 tives of the Anglican clergy in England in the seventeenth 
 
XXIII MOVEMENT TO ABSOLUTE MONARCHY 335 
 
 century, the most unqualified adhesion to monarchical ab- 
 solutism in its extremest form. " The prince, the anointed 
 of the Lord," says Bossuet, " is responsible to no man for 
 the orders he gives " ..." no one can say to him why do 
 you do thus "... kings, " you are gods," that is, the orator 
 adds — for the phrase, he feels, verges on idolatry — "your 
 authority has a divine character, you bear on your fore- 
 heads the mark of divinity." ^ 
 
 § 2. I now turn to the lawyers. Here the influence of 
 Eoman jurisprudence is more steadily on the same side — 
 in favour of monarchy : this influence first becomes im- 
 portant after the great revival of the study of Eoman juris- 
 prudence — first in the University of Bologna — in the twelfth 
 century. For the later and splendid period of ancient 
 Eoman jurisprudence, from which the books that teach 
 medieval students come down, is of course the Imperial 
 period : it is a fundamental doctrine of the jurists whose 
 wisdom they imbibe that all governmental power is con- 
 centrated in the hands of the monarch. Accordingly, in 
 France in particular, where the feudal disintegration of the 
 nation has gone furthest, the corps of lawyers trained in 
 the study of the Eoman jurists bring to the task of serving 
 the king a professional bias for unlimited monarchy : they 
 are determined to regard the French king as inheriting the 
 powers of the Eoman Emperor. This conviction makes 
 them zealous in combating all conflicting claims: and they 
 thus become the important and indispensable instrument for 
 reducing the independence of the great nobles and making 
 the jurisdiction of the monarch effectively supreme through- 
 out the land. 
 
 And the influence of Eoman law supplies a part of the 
 explanation of the failure of the medieval essays at parlia- 
 mentary government in Germany. As I said in an earlier 
 lecture,^ the tendency to association and federation — not 
 only of individuals with other individuals of the same class 
 to defend class privileges, but of bodies with bodies — is so 
 
 1 Bossuet, Politique tirie de VEcriture, Books ill., iv., v. 
 2 Lecture xxi. pp. 305, 306. 
 
336 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 striking in the social and political history of Germany 
 from the thirteenth century onward — so much more striking 
 than in England — that I should certainly have expected 
 that it would have been more effective than was actually 
 the case in maintaining representative assemblies in the 
 country-states formed by fragments of the Empire when it 
 becomes clear that the Empire could not be maintained as 
 a coherent whole. There is, no doubt, the general cause 
 of disunion among the classes who had resisting power, and 
 this is specially marked perhaps in the Empire owing to 
 the irrevocable collapse of the Imperial power in the later 
 Middle Ages. They confederated but did not blend. The 
 violence too of the internal dissensions in the period of 
 religious strife — say, with intervals, from Luther's revolt 
 to the end of the Thirty Years' War — is doubtless another 
 cause. The exhausted fragments of the nation had a 
 specially strong desire for the order which monarchy offered. 
 But the " reception " of Eoman law is important — the great 
 influence of Eoman law in Germany, due to the German 
 king being Eoman emperor, is one cause. 
 
 All this becomes the more noteworthy when we re- 
 member that the ideas of the Eoman jurists as to 'man 
 being by nature free and equal ' gave later on an important 
 contribution to the movement of pre-revolutionary thought 
 which ultimately destroys absolute monarchy in Western 
 Europe. 
 
 § 3. I have now to point out the qualifications and ex- 
 ceptions which we have to bear in mind, in framing this 
 conception of absolute monarchy as a stage in the develop- 
 ment of West European polity. I begin with the qualifica- 
 tions. In the first place, there remain — to a varying 
 extent in the different countries where the Crown is pre- 
 dominant — survivals of what I may call the abortive 
 medieval Parliaments ; which, though they have ceased to 
 threaten a serious competition for power with the Crown, 
 yet exercise a certain check on it ; or, at the lowest, hamper 
 it a little, and keep alive the idea of the people's consent 
 being necessary to taxation. 
 
XXIII MOVEMENT TO ABSOLUTE MONARCHY 337 
 
 Thus in France, though the estates-general have ceased to 
 be convoked after A.D. 1614, estates-provincial still go on in 
 certain parts — Languedoc, Provence, Burgundy, Brittany, and 
 some smaller portions chiefly situated near the extremities of 
 the kingdom. These estates have nominally the function 
 of voting the taxes for these districts. They never oppose an 
 effective resistance to the Crown, but it sometimes cannot 
 get the supplies it wants without a little management, a 
 little corruption, or a little intimidation. 
 
 In Spain, again, there are similar survivals, and here 
 there is a marked difference in different portions of the 
 kingdom. The Cortes (Parliament) of Castile have been 
 reduced to impotence under Charles V. : but the Cortes of 
 Aragon — where the royal power, in medieval times, had 
 been more jealously limited than in Castile — still retain 
 substantial checks on the monarch's will till near the end 
 of Philip's reign — and in matters of taxation, till long after. 
 Indeed, the Spanish Crown has difficulties with the pro- 
 vincial Cortes of Aragon even so late as the first years of 
 the eighteenth century : till in a.d. 1707 it takes advantage 
 of the suppression of an insurrection to abolish the special 
 rights and privileges of the province ; and it is not till 
 A.D. 1714 that a similar fate befalls the Catalonian con- 
 stitution, after a resistance on the part of the Catalans of 
 great obstinacy and valour. 
 
 Similarly in the principalities of various size into which 
 the territory of the Empire has all but broken up in Ger- 
 many, the power of the princes continues to be somewhat 
 hampered — to a varying extent in different places — by the 
 survivals of the provincial assemblies of estates ; though 
 the control exercised by these assemblies is nowhere very 
 effective, and diminishes as time goes on. Their share in 
 legislation was in most cases the first to go — the assembly 
 was reduced to a merely consultative function ; and even 
 where the formal constitutional necessity of the assent of 
 the estates to laws was still recognised, every effort was 
 made to get it regarded as a mere formality. The control 
 over taxation, though vigorously attacked, lingered some- 
 
 z 
 
338 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 what longer : but even here the estates were commonly 
 more concerned to obtain privileges and exemptions for 
 special classes than to make their control over general 
 taxation effective. 
 
 But secondly, even when the will of the monarch has 
 come to be theoretically irresistible, the West European 
 monarchy is practically limited, not only by traditional 
 law, custom, religion, etc., but by the resisting force of the 
 human instrument through which it has to work : especially 
 the sense of personal dignity of the nobles, the intellectual 
 habits of the lawyers, the esprit de corps of both. This was 
 pointed out about the middle of the eighteenth century by 
 one of the most influential writers of his age on political 
 theory — Montesquieu — who indeed, to mark the distinction, 
 uses the term monarchy with a meaning expressly distin- 
 guished from despotism. I shall examine the general drift 
 of Montesquieu's speculation, as a factor in pre-revolutionary 
 thought, in a subsequent lecture, but what he says on this 
 point I will give in the language of one of the most judicious 
 of our own eighteenth-century historians — Eobertson ^ — at 
 the close of his view of the state of Europe. 
 
 He says that when the complete predominance of the 
 monarchy was established two things remained which pre- 
 vented the government of France from degenerating into a 
 mere despotism. First, though the nobles of France had lost 
 political power as a body, they retained their personal privi- 
 leges and pre-eminence of rank. They preserved a conscious- 
 ness of elevation above other classes, and exemption from their 
 burdens: a privilege of assuming ensigns indicative of dignity; 
 a right to be treated with a certain degree of deference 
 during peace, and a claim to various distinctions when in 
 the field. Many of these pretension^ were not derived from 
 positive laws : but being defined and ascertained by the 
 maxims of honour and supported by the whole force of a 
 strong sentiment of personal dignity, they practically set 
 
 ^ Robertson's Charles V. : Introductory View of the State of Europe, § iii. 
 [The two paragraphs that follow are mainly in the words of Robertson but 
 abridged. — Ed.] 
 
XXIII MOVEMENT TO ABSOLUTE MONARCHY 339 
 
 limits to the power of the monarch. An intermediate order 
 was thus placed between the monarch and his subjects, with 
 traditional privileges which he had, on the whole, over- 
 whelmingly strong motives for ifwt violating. 
 
 The other important barrier to royal caprice — peculiar 
 to France — was the jurisdiction of the Parhments, 
 especially the Parlement of Paris to which the supreme 
 administration of justice was committed. The kings of 
 France, when they first began to assume the legislative 
 power, produced their edicts and ordinances in the Parle- 
 ment of Paris, where they were registered : and this 
 customary function of registration gave the Parlement 
 an opportunity of protesting against an ordinance it dis- 
 approved : which it on occasion effectively used.^ 
 
 In both these cases the king could overbear the resist- 
 ance by a vigorous exercise of will : but the esprit de corps 
 of both nobles and lawyers was so strong that it gave him 
 considerable trouble to overbear it. 
 
 § 4. In the greater part of the study in which we have 
 been engaged in this course of lectures, we have been con- 
 cerned at each stage with the comparison of the leading 
 political characteristics of a group of independent or nearly 
 independent communities, subject to somewhat similar con- 
 ditions of life and sharing a common civilisation — Greek 
 city-states, medieval city-communities, medieval and modern 
 country -states — and we have endeavoured to see clearly 
 the general resemblances among the forms of government, 
 and the relations of the government to the governed, in 
 the different members of the group of states, the changes 
 that take place in them and their causes. But it has been 
 my aim, in all such comparisons, to notice differences as 
 
 ^ The Parlement — originally a national assembly exercising, as ours, 
 judicial among other functions — was specialised to judicial functions by 
 Philip the Fair in a.d. 1302, and lawyers became prominent in it (in the 
 fourteenth century it had 88 lawyers and 12 peers). The great L'H6pital in 
 1566 (under Charles IX.) introduced serious conditions of age and capacity. 
 Membership, handed down often and always held for life, gave practical 
 independence, and the Parlement became a body in which strong esprit de 
 corps was maintained for good and for evil. 
 
340 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 well as resemblances ; and when I have spoken of a 
 " prevalent " type of government, to be careful to limit 
 and qualify the statement by bringing into clear view the 
 particular instances in which the prevalent type did not 
 prevail. These negative instances are generally of the 
 highest importance in examining the causes or conditions 
 of the prevalence of the type in the positive instances. 
 Accordingly, in the last lecture, while pointing out how 
 pure monarchy tended to predominate in the West European 
 states in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, I was 
 careful to notice the existence of important exceptions to 
 this general result. 
 
 Let us now look a little closer at the leading ex- 
 ceptions and their causes. Omitting Venice and the 
 German cities — the relics of medieval republican life — 
 and the temporary lapse of Sweden towards oligarchical 
 control after Charles XII., these are England, the Nether- 
 lands, Switzerland, Poland. First let me note that in three 
 of these four cases, the influence of physical conditions is 
 obvious. How the peculiar conditions of English life that 
 specially favoured medieval parliamentary institutions were 
 largely due to the insularity of England I have already 
 shown. How the Alps exceptionally protected the struggles 
 of the Swiss peasants to free themselves from the oppression 
 of their lords, and how the almost amphibious condition — 
 politically speaking — of important parts of the Netherlands, 
 aided by the force of religious enthusiasm, enabled them, in 
 the century of religious strife that followed the Eeformation, 
 to defy successfully the apparently overwhelming military 
 superiority of Spain — these are all familiar historical ob- 
 servations. To these two republican federations I shall 
 recur in my concluding lecture on Federalism ; here I will 
 only briefly note and explain the difference in their perma- 
 nence. In the case of Switzerland, the federal and republican 
 form of government rendered natural by its physical con- 
 ditions and the origin of its independence, is successfully 
 maintained through the eighteenth century. In the case of 
 what we call Holland the same form of government is also 
 
XXIII MOVEMENT TO ABSOLUTE MONARCHY 341 
 
 explained by the conditions of origin, and is also nominally 
 maintained during this period ; but its success here is im- 
 perfect and chequered, and it tends to lapse into practical 
 monarchy — plainly, I think, from the greater dangers of war, 
 to which the low-lying Netherlands are exposed. It is at 
 the crisis of alarm caused by the invasion from France that 
 in A.D. 1672 William III. is proclaimed stadtholder of Hol- 
 land with unlimited powers : and maintains his predomin- 
 ance till his death in 1702. And a similar alarm in 1747 
 causes the appointment of a hereditary stadtholder of the 
 seven united provinces. 
 
 Turning to Poland, where we see the ultimate triumph 
 of the turbulent nobility in the struggle with monarchy, 
 we have an interesting negative example of the value of 
 the industrial element, developed in the cities of other West 
 European states : that is, of its value at once to monarchy 
 in its struggle with the feudal or quasi-feudal nobility, and 
 to social life and political order. For the characteristic of 
 Poland, as compared with the more western states generally, 
 is that the nation has not developed an effective industrial 
 class : the trade in the towns is in the hands of foreigners : 
 accordingly the oligarchy triumphs over monarchy and 
 manifests in a striking way the disintegrative, anarchical 
 tendencies of medieval oligarchy. The " liherum veto" by 
 which from A.D. 1650 onwards a single member of the 
 Polish Diet could refuse assent to the resolutions of the 
 entire assembly, is a characteristic expression and symbol 
 of the place of Poland in the development of European 
 oligarchy. 
 
 § 5. We have to examine carefully the exceptional 
 course of English political development, not merely as 
 Englishmen, but as students of political science, because 
 it is a very important factor in the general history of 
 West European politics. For when the further step comes 
 to be generally taken from pure monarchy to those nine- 
 teenth-century constitutions in which at least a large share 
 of power is given to representative assemblies elected by 
 a widely extended suffrage, it is the result of the peculiar 
 
342 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 course of development in England which to a great extent 
 gives the model followed in this constitution-making. This 
 is all the more remarkable as the ideas of the constitution- 
 making and the sentiments which powerfully impel towards 
 it radiate from France as a focus rather than from England. 
 
 The period in England in which we see a tendency 
 towards increase of monarchical power, or at least a struggle 
 of monarchy to maintain its predominance, is about two 
 centuries from the accession of Henry VII. to the Eevolu- 
 tion of A.D. 1688. The characteristics of this period I 
 shall pass over very briefly, as its general features are 
 well known, and the details are of subordinate interest in 
 the general study of the development of West European 
 polity. As we all know, after the Wars of the 
 Eoses, the power of the old baronage appears to have 
 suffered a collapse, and Parliament becomes practically 
 more subservient to the Crown than it has been in the two 
 preceding centuries. At the same time, though the Tudors 
 got their way, it was their policy to leave the legislative 
 supremacy of Parliament formally intact, and they respect 
 the jealousy of its traditional privileges which the Houses 
 of Parliament show. The theory of the constitution is not 
 attacked on their part ; the English answer to Knox's dia- 
 tribe against the " monstrous regiment of women " is that the 
 government of England is a mixed and limited monarchy.^ 
 
 It is not till the later years of Elizabeth — after foreign 
 danger has passed away — that the Commons begin to 
 reassume something like the independence of spirit in 
 criticism of acts of the Crown which Parliament had shown 
 before the Wars of the Eoses. On the other hand, the 
 theory of an " absolute and paramount power inherent in 
 the very nature of the regal office " ^ was spreading, especially 
 among the lawyers, as it was on the Continent ; and it was 
 supported by the Anglican Church, reviving the doctrine 
 of the divine right of kings harmonised with the Law of 
 Nature as being quasi-paternal. 
 
 1 Hallam, Cmistitutional History, vol. i. ch. v. 
 ^ Taswell-Langmead, English Constitutional History, p. 490. 
 
XXIII MOVEMENT TO ABSOLUTE MONARCHY 343 
 
 Then with the accession of the Stuarts, the conflict 
 finally breaks out between monarchical and parliamentary 
 claims to supremacy and is never really at rest till settled 
 in favour of Parliament by the revolution of 1688. The 
 conflict has two distinct elements — political and religious. 
 The new absolutism struggles with old parliamentary re- 
 straints, and Anglicanism struggles with Puritanism and 
 Catholicism ; Anglicanism being always on the side of the 
 Crown, and practically supporting advances in the absolutist 
 direction until the time of James II. The decisive force 
 in the revolution of 1688 is the alienation of Anglicanism 
 from James ; had it not been for this it is perhaps doubtful 
 if even the unbroken traditions of parliamentary supremacy 
 in legislation and taxation would have prevented monarchy 
 from becoming predominant in England as on the Con- 
 tinent. 
 
 The personal change from Tudors to Stuarts is in this 
 respect providential. The Tudors aim at having their own 
 way — and generally get it — but are politic enough to avoid 
 alarming opposition by advancing claims opposed to English 
 parliamentary traditions. James I. is a pedant and a doctrin- 
 aire, and therefore inclined to advance claims tending to en- 
 large the royal prerogative in theory more than he means 
 actually to maintain.^ This leads to the definite counter- 
 assertion of privileges by the Commons. The errors of 
 Charles I. and James II. were different ; but probably few 
 kings of equal ability and industry have so little understood 
 the art of governing. Speaking broadly, the victory of 
 Parliament — which does not, as one reads the history, seem 
 at all a certainty — depends on its solid support on precedents 
 of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. But this alone 
 would not suffice without the religious factor ; and it may 
 be doubted whether things would have gone as they did 
 had the religious factor been absent. 
 
 To the result attained in A.D. 1688 and the subsequent 
 development of English polity I shall recur later. But 
 
 1 See his True Law of Free Monarchits (cf. Hallam, Constitutional History, 
 chap. vi.). 
 
344 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. xxiii 
 
 first I propose, in the next three lectures, to turn from the 
 development of political facts to the development of political 
 ideas, or rather to direct attention to the development of 
 ideas as among the most important political facts. This is 
 I think a necessary part of the subject of political science 
 so far as it deals with the phenomena of civilised societies : 
 and it is a part which grows in importance as civilisation 
 advances. 
 
LECTURE XXIV 
 
 POLITICAL THOUGHT. HOBBES AND LOCKE 
 
 § 1. In this and the two succeeding lectures I propose to 
 trace very briefly the movement of modern political thought 
 up to the point at which it takes effect in the French 
 Revolution. 
 
 I will begin by saying a few words on the general 
 relation of political ideas to political facts. By political 
 ideas I mean primarily ideas of what ought to be 
 in a governed community of human beings, so far as 
 government is concerned. Such ideas may relate to (1) 
 the way in which the organs of government ought to be 
 appointed; (2) the powers which they ought to have; (3) 
 the manner in which those powers ought to be exercised 
 over the governed ; (4) the extent and formation of the 
 groups under separate governments — states and nations; 
 (5) the external or international relations of these groups. 
 These questions are all more or less connected : but some- 
 times attention is directed more to one than another; and, 
 in the line of thought which we are to examine together, 
 attention is chiefly concentrated on the first two questions 
 — the principles on which government ought to be con- 
 stituted, and the extent and justification of its rightful 
 authority over the governed. 
 
 In saying that political ideas are primarily ideas of 
 government as it ought to be, I do not mean that they are 
 not also ideas of governments as they are and have been. 
 In quiet times the government that ought to be is for most 
 persons the government that exists, though they would like 
 
 345 
 
346 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 some details changed. And even in revolutionary times, 
 when there are widespread aspirations after something very 
 different from what actually exists, any political ideal that 
 aims at being practical is likely to be modelled on some- 
 thing that is known to exist — or at any rate is believed to 
 have existed — elsewhere. We can often see this clearly 
 even when that ideal is apparently worked out by an 
 abstract a 'priori method. It is striking how experience 
 controls and limits the imagination even of the most 
 idealistic political philosophers. For instance, Plato's 
 Eepublic is a proverbial term for a Utopian constitution of 
 political society : and certainly Plato's communistic scheme 
 of abolishing private property and private families is such 
 as never has been, and we believe never will be, realised. 
 Yet even Plato is so far limited by the actual facts of 
 Greek society that he can only conceive as a political ideal 
 a town-community organised mainly with a view to war — 
 a free community extending over a continent, to which war 
 is a subordinate consideration, it does not enter into his 
 head to imagine. 
 
 But again : the development of political ideas is in- 
 fluenced in a different way by their connexion with political 
 facts. The ideas are related to the facts of political history 
 not only as effect to cause, but also as cause to effect. The 
 actual conduct of men, whether governors or governed, is 
 to an important extent influenced by their opinions as to 
 what is right and just ; and thus political theories, while 
 partly determined by pre-existing facts, become in their 
 turn political forces operating among others to modify the 
 facts. And hence to an important extent they come to 
 be shaped and fashioned as instruments for the attainment 
 of this practical end. 
 
 Now the influence thus exercised by theories on facts 
 is very different in amount in different ages and countries, 
 and it is noteworthy that it is decidedly greater in modern 
 and even in medieval European history than in ancient. 
 So far as we can see, the course of Greek history was in 
 no important respect affected by the speculation of Socrates, 
 
XXIV POLITICAL THOUGHT 347 
 
 Plato, and Aristotle. Socrates and Plato argued for aristo- 
 cracy on philosophical principles, and their views spread 
 among cultivated men : but none the less the drift of 
 political change at Athens tended steadily to democracy ; 
 and, so far as we know, there was never any slightest 
 chance of realising, or any smallest effort made to realise, 
 the political ideals of Plato and Aristotle. Whereas in the 
 history of Europe from A.D. 800 the influence of ideas on 
 facts has in various ways been very marked. Not to speak 
 of minor and more disputable effects, no one can doubt 
 that the theoretical rights of the medieval Eoman Empire 
 (which was, we may almost say, rather more of a theory 
 than a solid fact during the greater part of its existence) 
 contributed largely, as I have said in a previous lecture,^ to 
 force the history of Germany and Italy into such very 
 different lines of development from that of France or Spain: 
 no one can doubt in modern international law the great 
 influence of the theoretical view of the law of nature upon 
 actually accepted rules of international conduct:^ finally, no 
 one can doubt that abstract doctrines as to the rights of 
 man and the sovereignty of the people have been a decisive 
 force in the great movement which from 1789 onward has 
 been suddenly or gradually transforming modern European 
 polity. 
 
 Thus the succession of political theories and systems is 
 governed by two distinct kinds of causes — internal and ex- 
 ternal — the separation of whose effects is a rather difficult 
 task, though fundamentally important for the student of 
 the history of Political Philosophy. In the first place, we 
 can always trace in this succession the action of internal 
 laws of development; we find that conceptions and prin- 
 ciples at first vague are made more clear and precise by 
 reflection, and inferences which they by implication contain 
 are more explicitly set forth. In this way whatever in- 
 consistencies lurk in the dominant doctrine are made 
 evident, and its unwarranted assumptions are exposed to 
 
 1 Lecture xiii. pp. 196-198. 
 2 Cf. my ElenneTits of Politics, chap. xv. p. 243, 2nd ed. 
 
348 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 view : so that, by the mere forward movement of the 
 human reason, it tends to be overthrown or limited in 
 favour of some opposing theory, which, at first protected by 
 its own comparative indefiniteness, is forced by its triumph 
 into a similar process of development. We have seen in 
 recent times how, e.g. " Liberty " as an object of aspiration 
 at first means both individuals doing what they like, and 
 the majority having their own way : later the opposition 
 and conflict between the two is seen, and democracy pre- 
 sents itself as possibly " coming slavery." ^ 
 
 But the actual course of this succession is very different 
 from what it would be if political theories remained merely 
 in the study or the lecture-room : since, so far as political 
 doctrines are useful weapons of conflict, they tend to be 
 taken up when they are required for action and largely 
 moulded by the exigencies of conflict. This is strikingly 
 illustrated by the fate during the Middle Ages of a doctrine 
 with which we shall have a good deal to do — the doctrine 
 that the legitimate source of the authority of secular govern- 
 ment is the consent of the governed. This doctrine, through 
 the greater part of the Middle Ages, enjoyed a kind of 
 acceptance among jurists ; for the authority of the em- 
 perors — the supreme secular authority according to the 
 medieval view of the political order of the Christian world 
 — was stated in the Institutes of Justinian to have been 
 transmitted to them by the Eoman people. So long how- 
 ever as Church and State are in harmony, the doctrine 
 remains of antiquarian interest alone : but when popes and 
 emperors fall out, it occurs to zealous partisans of the 
 Papacy that the people can legitimately take back what it 
 has given, and that an " emperor who has broken his com- 
 pact should be turned off like a thievish swineherd." ^ Thus 
 an exact notion of the 'transference of power' becomes 
 of immediate practical interest. The question is raised, 
 Granting the original right of the people to the power now 
 
 ^ Cf. Mr. Herbert Spencer in The Man versus the State. 
 2 Manegold von Lauterbach (born a.d. 1060) ainid Giesebrecht Sitzungsber. 
 der hair. Akad. 1868. 
 
XXIV HOBBES 349 
 
 possessed by monarchs, can it be resumed by the people 
 when once it has been given away ? If so, how and under 
 what conditions ? However these questions are answered 
 the doctrine gains a logical development : the fundamental 
 conception of the transference of sovereign power becomes 
 more exact and precise. And political thought moves 
 towards the elaborate ' social compact ' theory of the 
 seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. 
 
 But the manner in which this notion of the social 
 compact is used by leading thinkers in this later period 
 no less strikingly illustrates the influence of fact on thought. 
 For Hobbes uses it as a basis of absolutism, Locke as a basis 
 of limited constitutional government, Kousseau as a basis of 
 the sovereignty of the people. 
 
 § 2. Let us begin with Hobbes — as indeed modern 
 political thought may be said to begin with him. The 
 establishment, in the region of fact, of political unity and 
 order on a monarchical basis has for its counterpart, in the 
 region of thought, the doctrine of Hobbes. It is his clear, 
 uncompromising enunciation of the modern doctrine of 
 sovereignty which marks in a decided way the transition 
 to modern thought. 
 
 His view seems to have first taken shape in A.D. 1640, 
 when our great rebellion was impending but had not yet come : 
 but I shall deal with it in the form it assumed in his most 
 famous treatise, the Leviathan, which appeared in 1651 
 — midway between the execution of the King in 1649, 
 and the execution of the Parliament in 1653. It is not 
 surprising that at such a crisis a philosopher should have a 
 keen, even an exaggerated sensitiveness to the evils of 
 anarchy : and should lay even exaggerated emphasis on the 
 conditions of order. 
 
 Hobbes, like B^din,^ lays down that in every political 
 community worthy of the name — in every community 
 that enjoys stable political order — there must be vested 
 somewhere, in some body or individual, a power which, 
 being the source of law, cannot be subject to the restraints 
 
 * Lecture xxiii. p. 328. 
 
350 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 of law. That is, it cannot be subject to the restraints 
 of positive law — what we call the laws of the land, laws 
 of human making : for it is and must be the supreme 
 human law -maker in the land, and cannot be bound by its 
 own laws. It is, indeed, subject to that higher moral code 
 — the Law of Nature or Divine and Supreme Eeason — 
 naturally known to every man as a rational being. ]N'o one 
 in Hobbes's time would have dreamt of denying that every 
 one was in some sense bound by the law of nature, and 
 therefore the sovereign must be so bound. But practically 
 in Hobbes's view this law only binds the sovereign before 
 God : for the law of nature requires an interpreter, and the 
 subjects must accept the sovereign's interpretation: it can- 
 not be allowed that each man is to claim a right to judge 
 the sovereign by his private interpretation of the law of 
 nature, and to resist what he judges to be a violation of 
 it — for then the door would be open to hopeless anarchy. 
 Hence :-^ (1) "The sovereign's actions cannot be justly 
 accused by the subject." (2) " Whatsoever the sovereign 
 doth is unpunishable by the subject." (3) " It belongeth 
 of right " to the sovereign to judge and do " what is 
 necessary for the peace and defence of his subjects " ; 
 (4) and to "judge of what doctrines are fit to be taught 
 them." (5) The sovereign has " the whole power of pre- 
 scribing the rules, whereby every man may know, what 
 goods he may enjoy, and what actions he may do, with- 
 out being molested by any of his follow-subjects " ; (6) 
 and " the right of all judicature and decision of contro- 
 versies " ; (7) " and of rewarding and punishing " as he 
 shall judge best ; (8) " and of making war, and peace, as 
 he shall think best " ; (9) " and of choosing all counsellors 
 and ministers"; (10) and "these rights are indivisible" and 
 inalienable. 
 
 It is to be noted that particular importance is attached 
 to the " control of doctrine " by which Hobbes especially 
 means religious teaching. Nearly half the book is occupied 
 in defending this feature of a Christian Commonwealth — as 
 
 ^ Leviathan, chap, xviii. 
 
XXIV HOBBES 351 
 
 Hobbes designed his to be. Throughout the later Middle 
 Ages — from the end of the eleventh century — the West 
 European states had been liable to feel the difficulty of 
 serving two masters, the ecclesiastical and the civil. But 
 this difficulty was temporarily intensified by the disruption 
 of Christendom, and the violent struggle between Protest- 
 ants and Catholics. When Hobbes's views first took shape 
 (a.d. 1640), there had been about a century of civil strife or 
 danger of civil strife in Western Europe, due to religious 
 dissensions. We can understand how to Hobbes the 
 doctrine that sets up " canons against laws and a ghostly 
 authority against the civil," ^ seems one of the worst diseases 
 of a commonwealth : for which it seems to him the only cure 
 to claim for the civil sovereign an inalienable right to be 
 " judge of opinions and doctrines " and prevent the teaching 
 of any not conducive to peace. 
 
 Hobbes's political creed may be therefore described as 
 Absolutism : but it is not fundamentally or primarily 
 monarchical absolutism. It is governmental absolutism, the 
 theoretical triumph of the principle of Order over all con- 
 flicting principles of political construction. For observe 
 that in Hobbes's cardinal doctrine, it is only necessary to 
 political order that this indisputable and indivisible supreme 
 power, unlimited by law, should exist in some body or in- 
 dividual : he does not affirm it necessary that it should be 
 vested in a monarch : his condition is equally fulfilled if it 
 be vested in a body of nobles or the people en masse. So 
 that his cardinal doctrine is equally applicable to monarchy, 
 oligarchy, and democracy. He holds that the individual in 
 any ordered community ought to acquiesce equally in any 
 established form of government — except so far as the obliga- 
 tion to obedience is overborne by the still more fundamental 
 law of self-preservation — so long as the government is able to 
 protect him but no longer. This last qualification was very 
 important in A.D. 1651; and I may observe that this un- 
 sentimental absolutism, limiting the subject's loyalty by the 
 monarch's power of protection, was not at all to the taste 
 
 ■^ Leviathan, chap. xxix. 
 
352 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 of ordinary loyal partisans of the temporarily dispossessed 
 monarch of England. 
 
 At the same time, Hobbes's preference for monarchy in 
 the abstract is plainly avowed ; it is not the only legitimate 
 form of government, but it is the best form ; it has more 
 advantages and fewer drawbacks than any other. Also his 
 conviction is clear that if his doctrine of sovereignty is once 
 admitted by Englishmen, if it is admitted that there is an 
 unlimited sovereign somewhere in the British Constitution, 
 no one can doubt that, by our constitutional tradition, the 
 hereditary monarch is that sovereign. A parliament that the 
 monarch has the undoubted right to dissolve is evidently, he 
 thinks, not sovereign in his sense, only an inconvenient 
 practical check on sovereignty and therefore a danger to 
 order. 
 
 Probably this expresses the ordinary view of the time, as 
 to the application of the notion of sovereignty. At this 
 period of European history, the doctrine of sovereignty un- 
 limited by law as essential to a state, though unmonarchical 
 in theory and essence, was generally monarchical in effect 
 and application. What the bodies contending with mon- 
 archy actually claimed was not to share sovereignty but to 
 limit it. 
 
 § 3. But to return to Hobbes's main theory: — How does he 
 prove the necessity that he affirms ? How is the individual 
 to be reduced to this complete subserviency to his sovereign ? 
 Here Hobbes's method of establishing his doctrine is not 
 characteristically modern : he employs notions and assump- 
 tions handed down from earlier ages. He assumes that 
 doctrine of government arising from consent of subjects of 
 which I have spoken — the doctrine that political society 
 is normally instituted by a compact, through which indi- 
 viduals living in a " state of nature " form themselves into a 
 community, and bind themselves to obey a government. He 
 argues that it is the paramount interest of each and all such 
 individuals to combine thus to form a stable commonwealth : 
 because the state of nature, being a state of anarchy, is 
 necessarily a state of universal war and misery. And he 
 
XXIV HOBBES 353 
 
 argues that only a compact binding each and all to un- 
 questioning obedience to a sovereign with unlimited power 
 can really establish a stable commonwealth : any intro- 
 duction of conditions into the compact must open the door 
 to disputes incapable of decisive settlement, and so to 
 anarchy. 
 
 Here it is important to observe the distinction between 
 the traditional and the original elements in Hobbes's doctrine. 
 That the condition of political society was preceded by the 
 state of nature was a long accepted view, and also that 
 the mutual rights and duties of government and governed 
 depended on some kind of ancient compact between them. 
 But the accepted view was that in the state of nature 
 individuals were bound by the laws of nature or reason : 
 and that normally — allowing for the imperfection of human 
 nature — they might be expected to obey these laws. Man, 
 it was commonly thought, is a rational and social being, 
 distinguished among other animals by his appetite for 
 tranquil association with his fellows, and his tendency to 
 conform to the guidance of reason. Hence, when in a state 
 of nature — not under human government — he normally 
 recognises that he ought to abstain from aggression on his 
 fellows and observe compacts with them. No doubt — being 
 an imperfect creature — he sometimes breaks his compacts 
 and attacks and quarrels with his neighbours : and then no 
 doubt it is inconvenient for the neighbour that there is no 
 government to restore order and he has to fight for his own 
 rights. The state of nature was no doubt — and is now as 
 exhibited in the mutual relations of modern nations — a state 
 in which war occurs and has to be allowed as legitimate : 
 but still war is an exceptional incident, a casual break in 
 men's normal observance of the simple rules prohibiting 
 mutual injury and commanding observance of compact. 
 
 This was the received view : but all this Hobbes boldly 
 traversed. Man, he said, is naturally a selfish being : his 
 vaunted social inclinations are really desires for benefit or 
 glory to be obtained from others. No doubt he needs the 
 help of others : but this need, if all fear is removed — e.g.. 
 
 2 a 
 
354 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 it' his superiority in power is clear — leads him to seek 
 dominion over them rather than equal society with them. 
 Hence the state of nature must be conceived as a state in 
 which men's conflicting desires and consciousness of practical 
 equality of force lead to continual war. They covet each 
 other's goods and attack each other to get them : for fear 
 of such attack they conquer their neighbours for security : 
 and when there is no other motive they make war for glory. 
 Hence even for a reasonable man who finds himself in this 
 state, the desire for peace and for the observance of rules 
 that conduce to the maintenance of peace, must remain 
 a mere aspiration, so long as a commonwealth is not 
 constituted. We cannot reasonably limit the ' right ' or 
 natural liberty of each in this state to possess himself of 
 anything — even of the person of another : for such appro- 
 priation may be the best means of preserving his life ; and 
 reason forbids him to omit the means by which his life may 
 be best preserved. By rendering unreciprocated obedience 
 to moral rules he would simply make himself a prey to 
 others, and it cannot be his duty to do that. 
 
 In this condition the life of man — in Hobbes's vigorous 
 English — will doubtless be " solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, 
 and short " : ^ but still this is his natural condition : though 
 naturally he has a paramount need of peace, he is naturally — 
 i.e. apart from the convention establishing political order 
 — incapable of attaining it : his one chance of peace is to 
 agree to obey a government whose right to command he 
 agrees not to question so long as it secures him the supreme 
 blessing of peace. 
 
 You see the two parts of the view hang together : it is 
 because the ungoverned state is so miserable that govern- 
 ment must be allowed such unlimited power. If you dis- 
 pute this view of the state of nature, Hobbes's answer is 
 forcible ; it has a painful element of truth if only half 
 truth. I will give it in his own words : " In all places, 
 where men have lived by small families, to rob and spoil 
 one another, has been a trade, and so far from being re- 
 
 ^ Leviathan^ chap. xiii. 
 
XXIV HOBBES 355 
 
 puted against the Law of Nature, that the greater spoils they 
 gained, the greater was their honour." ^ But, you may say, 
 it is because they are savages. No, says Hobbes, " as small 
 families did then; so now do cities and kingdoms which are 
 but greater families (for their own security) enlarge their 
 dominions, upon all pretences of danger and fear of in- 
 vasion, or assistance that may be given to invaders, en- 
 deavour as much as they can, to subdue, or weaken their 
 neighbours, by open force, and secret arts, for want of other 
 caution, justly; and are remembered for it in after ages with 
 honour." ^ Look, again he says, at " the manner of life, which 
 men that have formerly lived under a peaceful government, 
 use to degenerate into, in a civil war." ^ If you still doubt, 
 says Hobbes to his contemporaries, consider what opinion 
 of his fellows a man's actions even in a governed society 
 imply — " when taking a journey, he arms himself, and seeks 
 to go well accompanied ; when going to sleep, he locks his 
 doors ; when even in his house he locks his chests ; and 
 this when he knows there be laws, and public officers, 
 armed, to revenge all injuries shall be done him." ^ 
 
 For such a being then, the only compact which could 
 produce stable political order must be one that established 
 somewhere or other — in king, senate, or popular assembly 
 — a power of command absolute, inalienable, indivisible, 
 unlimited ; or strictly limited only by the individual's right 
 of resisting or evading punishment — his right to self- 
 preservation. 
 
 The doctrine of Hobbes thus represents in an intensely 
 emphatic and one-sided form the general conviction 
 that, as I have said, accompanied the great transition in 
 Western Europe, consummated in the seventeenth century, 
 to the modern state formed on the basis of monarchical 
 absolutism ; — the conviction that for stable political order, 
 there is required in the state a power somewhere, indivis- 
 ibly and indisputably supreme ; and that this end will be 
 best attained by vesting the power in a hereditary monarch. 
 
 But, as I have explained, his doctrine is primarily and 
 
 * Leviathan, chap. xvii. "^ Ibid. chap. xiii. 
 
356 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 fundamentally governmental absolutism, and only secondarily 
 and in its application to contemporary facts monarchical 
 absolutism. And it is to be noted that its important effect 
 on subsequent political thought is rather in its former aspect 
 — the doctrine that sovereignty unlimited by law must 
 reside somewhere in every ordered political community is 
 still a widely accepted element of current political theory. 
 As a support of monarchy in the struggle in England 
 Hobbes's doctrine had not much influence : it was equally 
 alien to the Whig sentiment of liberty and the Tory senti- 
 ment of loyalty — as it acknowledged no obligation to a 
 dispossessed monarch — while its uncompromising subordina- 
 tion of Church to State pleased nobody. Still it represents, 
 as I said, in the region of ideas the movement that is 
 carrying the West European polity to the stage of pure 
 monarchy. 
 
 § 4. But, as we saw, though this period of monarchy 
 which may be roughly called absolute is a normal stage in the 
 development of West European states generally, the course 
 of development of England is different and exceptional : the 
 attempt at monarchical absolutism failed in England. The 
 long conflict between monarchical and parliamentary claims 
 to supremacy suddenly ends in 1688 in a settlement made 
 decisive by the dispossession of the recalcitrant family of 
 Stuart. It is thus finally settled that the English mon- 
 arch's claim to the obedience of Englishmen is strictly 
 subordinate to the rule of law only modifiable by Parliament ; 
 applied by judges only removable by Parliament ; and that 
 the taxation of the people required for governmental expendi- 
 ture can only be determined by the representatives of the 
 people. 
 
 The general political theory which justified this moment- 
 ous conclusion of the long struggle is found in Locke's 
 Treatise on Civil Government While studying his doctrine 
 it is important to remember that he writes for a people 
 whom a continuous tradition of four centuries has led to 
 regard the co-operation and consent of a Parliament of two 
 houses — a single Parliament for the realm of England — as 
 
XXIV LOCKE 357 
 
 necessary to the making of laws which Englishmen are 
 bound to obey, and the raising of taxes which Englishmen 
 are bound to pay. And they habitually regard this as a 
 privilege of Eoglishmen, being familiarly acquainted with 
 the different state of things in France. 
 
 Locke, like Hobbes, starts with the traditional and 
 generally accepted view that the legitimate claim of any 
 government to the obedience of the governed must be 
 normally based on a fundamental compact, by which the 
 members of a political society have, to obtain the advan- 
 tages of government, resigned a portion of the rights which 
 originally belonged to them as independent human beings.-^ 
 But Locke's conception of the terms of the compact is 
 fundamentally different from that of Hobbes. According 
 to Locke, the compact by which individuals form a society, 
 and agree to be bound by the decision of the majority of a 
 society, is entered into for certain definite ends : and when 
 the majority of the society so formed establishes a govern- 
 ment, it must be supposed only to entrust power to this 
 government for the attainment of these ends : and if this 
 trust is violated the duty of obedience to government 
 ceases. 
 
 This essentially different view of the fundamental com- 
 pact and its results is connected with a view, very different 
 from that of Hobbes, as to the condition in which men 
 naturally are previous to their entrance into a political 
 society. And here we have to observe that Locke's view 
 of this state of nature — though it differs in some important 
 respects from the view which was traditional and ordinarily 
 accepted in this age of thought — is still much nearer to the 
 traditional view^ than the dark picture painted by Hobbes. 
 
 As I have said, the traditional view was that apart from 
 political society, human beings, distinguished as they are 
 from other animals by the gift of reason, had been bound 
 — and would always be bound — to obey the law of nature, 
 which every man can know by the sincere exercise of the 
 
 ^ I say, traditional view, cf. e.g. Hooker, Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity , 
 Book I. chap, x. 
 
358 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 reason God has given him. This conception of a law of 
 nature, universally applicable to men as men, of higher 
 origin and higher validity than the mutable positive laws 
 of particular human societies, had been handed down from 
 medieval to modern thought. The medieval thinkers had 
 derived it from Eoman jurisprudence,^ at first chiefly through 
 the channel of ecclesiastical tradition, afterwards through 
 the direct study of Cicero and the great Eoman jurists of 
 the ancient Empire : but in the age after the Eeformation, 
 in the collapse of the real though imperfect regulative in- 
 fluence exercised over Western Europe by the Catholic 
 Church before the Eeformation, the great need felt of some 
 universally acceptable principles of right, independent of 
 ecclesiastical authority, had brought the conception of the 
 law of nature — and with it that of a state of nature prior 
 to political society — into greater prominence. The most 
 important rules of this law so far as it related to adults 
 were negative : summed up in the great rule of abstaining 
 from all personal injury to others, and all interference with 
 their use of the goods of the earth originally common to 
 all. But, as derivative from the duty of abstaining from 
 injury, was the duty of making reparation for injury that 
 had been committed : there was also the important positive 
 duty of fulfilling compacts freely entered into. We must 
 not forget the rights of parents over children — politically 
 important, because, as may be seen from Locke's contro- 
 versial arguments, certain partisans of absolute monarchy 
 made in the seventeenth century a desperate attempt to 
 find a basis for it in the accepted view of the law of nature, 
 by regarding it as developed out of the natural authority of 
 parents over their children. 
 
 In short, the rules of the Law of Nature were the rules 
 which, according to the old individualistic view of the State, 
 it was the primary duty of the State to enforce. But in 
 the state of nature individuals had to defend their own 
 rights and exact reparation for their own wrongs : therefore, 
 private war, to obtain such reparation, had to be admitted 
 
 1 Cf. ante Lecture xii. pp. 181-183. 
 
v: 
 
 VN/VH*RQ 
 
 Of 
 
 XXIV LOCKE 359 
 
 to be an inevitable incident of the state of nature — though 
 not, as Hobbes paradoxically afi&rmed, its normal condition. 
 
 This, then, being the now accepted view of the law and 
 state of nature, how was the authority of government to be 
 based on principles of natural right so conceived ? The 
 accepted answer was that there were two such ways : it 
 might be derived from an original consent of the people 
 governed, or it might be based on conquest in a legitimate 
 war. For it seemed that combatants repelling a violent 
 aggression must have a natural right to kill the aggressors : 
 and it seemed that if they must be allowed a right to kill, 
 they must be allowed to inflict the milder penalty of servi- 
 tude. 
 
 § 5. So far Locke accepts the traditional view of the origin 
 of legitimate government : but at this point he introduces 
 an important change. For you will observe that the 
 doctrine, as I have so far stated it, might be used to justify 
 the most unlimited despotism : if only it was admitted — 
 as was generally held — that every man has a natural right 
 to deliver himself over into slavery. For thus the slavery 
 of a people may result from an originally free consent, or 
 as a deserved penalty for wrongful aggression. And in 
 fact Grotius, in his epoch-making work on International 
 Bight in War and Peace, which appeared in a.d. 1625, does 
 argue that a perpetual despotism may be legitimately estab- 
 lished in either of these ways : — perpetual, since, as he says, 
 " the slavery of a people is naturally perpetual, because the 
 succession of parts does not prevent it from continuing one 
 people." ^ 
 
 Here Locke's view is widely different. According to 
 him no man has the right to consent to be a slave : for 
 a man has no absolute power over his own life — suicide is 
 not allowed by the law of nature — and therefore " cannot, 
 
 ^ Grotius, De Jure Belli ac Pacis, Book ir. chap. v. § 32. Speaking 
 broadly, the task of modern thought as regards Natural Eight was to apply- 
 to public law ideas and principles which the Roman jurists applied to private. 
 The epoch - makingness of Grotius lies mainly in his application of it to 
 international law. The importance of Locke's work is its application to 
 constitutional law. 
 
36o DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 by compact . . . enslave himself to any one, nor put himself 
 under the absolute . . . power of another, to take away his life, 
 when he pleases." ^ N'or again can the aggression of ancestors 
 justify the enforcement of servitude on their descendants for 
 all time. Indeed, the state of natural independence is not to 
 be regarded as something existing only in the remote past. It 
 is a state out of which each individual must be conceived to 
 pass by his own consent expressly or tacitly given, before 
 government has rights over him : only every one who owns 
 property in a country — and even a temporary resident 
 while he resides and so makes use of its land — must be 
 understood to have consented to obey the government of a 
 country so long as he so owns or uses. 
 
 And in conceiving the compact by which the govern- 
 ment of a country was originally formed — as we have no 
 direct evidence what it was — we must assume it to be such 
 as men living in natural freedom and independence would 
 reasonably combine to make : and if so, the government 
 that results cannot have an arbitrary and unlimited power. 
 For it cannot be supposed that men would give up their 
 natural freedom and their natural right to punish aggression, 
 except for the end of securing a better preservation of their 
 lives, liberties and estates than they can provide for them- 
 selves. The power of government, in short, is naturally and 
 reasonably limited by the end for which it is instituted : 
 and this end is to remedy the drawbacks of the state of 
 nature. 
 
 These drawbacks are three. In Locke's words : " First, 
 there wants an established, settled, known law, received and 
 allowed by common consent to be the standard of right and 
 wrong, and the common measure to decide all controversies 
 between them : for though the law of nature be plain 
 and intelligible to all rational creatures ; yet men being 
 biassed by their interest, as well as ignorant for want of 
 study of it, are not apt to allow of it as a law binding to 
 them in the application of it to their particular cases. 
 
 " Secondly, in the state of nature there wants a known 
 
 ^ Locke, Treatise on Civil Government^ Book ir. chap. iv. § 23. 
 
XXIV LOCKE 361 
 
 and indifferent judge, with authority to determine all differ- 
 ences according to the established law : for every one in 
 that state being both judge and executioner of the law of 
 nature, men being partial to themselves, passion and revenge 
 is very apt to carry them too far, and with too much heat in 
 their own cases; as well as negligence, and unconcernedness, 
 make them too remiss in other men's. 
 
 " Thirdly, in the state of nature there often wants power 
 to back and support the sentence when right, and to give it 
 due execution. They who by any injustice offended, will 
 seldom fail, when they are able, by force to make good their 
 injustice ; such resistance many times makes the punish- 
 ment dangerous, and frequently destructive, to those who 
 attempt it." ^ 
 
 In short, the state of nature is wanting in these three 
 respects — clear definition of the law ; impartial applica- 
 tion ; completely effective enforcement. These drawbacks 
 make the state of nature certainly unsafe and uneasy — 
 though not the condition of mere perpetual war and misery 
 that Hobbes held it to be — and hence it is reasonable for 
 men to submit to the limitation of their natural rights 
 which government entails, if government will provide a 
 remedy for these drawbacks. But it would be unreason- 
 able for them to submit except on this condition. Hence 
 the power of government must be understood to be limited 
 by the condition that it is to be used in the execution of 
 established known laws, applied by impartial judges : and 
 the further condition that it is not to take the property of 
 the governed without their consent given personally or by 
 deputy. For — and this is an important and original point 
 in Locke — the individual's right of property is not de 
 rived from government or from any compact with other 
 men. It is derived from the natural right of any individual 
 to material things with which he has mixed his labour — 
 provided that his appropriation of them leaves " enough, and 
 as good ... in common for others." ^ The goods of the earth 
 
 ^ Locke, op. cit. Book 11. chap. ix. §§ 124-126. 
 2 Op. cit. Book II. chap. v. § 27. 
 
 'i 
 
i4> 
 
 362 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 in the state of nature are by natural right common : but a 
 man's labour in the same state is manifestly his own : and 
 when he has invested the latter in any portion of the 
 former, it becomes by right his own — provided the oppor- 
 
 Jj^itijpq ^^ nf.l-iPra arft .nniTigpi^irprl^ TJllS right, thCuT"" 
 
 independent of and prior to the compact from which 
 government springs : accordingly, it cannot be supposed 
 that any reasonable man would give the government he 
 agrees to establisli a right to take his property without his 
 consent. If government does not fulfil these conditions, 
 if it has recourse ^^^^j^^^^^^ oc\(^ro\ pj-t — nn tai (\ a the due 
 enforcement of law — a r^d t^ taxation ) ; ;9 w hich consent has 
 not been given, then it violates the ends for which govern- 
 ment was instituted, and the governed have a right to 
 regard the compact as dissolved. 
 
 On the other hand, the governed, though they had an 
 
 original right to choose any form of government they liked, 
 
 have not a right to change it when once chosen, so long as 
 
 jit fulfils the conditions of its trust. But when any govern- 
 
 Iment comes to an end — either naturally, as when a royal 
 
 I family dies out, or through violation of trust — then the 
 
 1 supreme legislative power reverts to the people, to keep or 
 
 I bestow at its free choice. The people may thus be said to 
 
 I have inalienably and perpetually a latent sovereignty, but 
 
 J only latent. 
 
 One more condition has to be named. The supreme 
 government originally appointed by the people has no 
 right to transfer its power to others. No such transfer 
 has any validity. Now the supreme organ of government 
 is necessarily the organ that makes the laws, not the organ 
 that carries them out : i.e. the legislature — in England the 
 king and the two chambers — , not the executive — the king 
 without the chambers : if, therefore, the legislature is 
 changed from that originally appointed — changed either 
 with its own consent or otherwise — the duty of obedience 
 to it ceases. And the legislature is changed, says Locke,, 
 when a prince who is only one part of the legislature, 
 subverts or suspends the laws laid down by the legislature 
 
XXIV LOCKE 363 
 
 and requires his own arbitrary commands to be obeyed instead. 
 Also, the legislature is in effect changed when the prince 
 hinders it from assembling in due time or from acting 
 freely : or if by his arbitrary power he alters the electors 
 or ways of election without the consent and contrary to the 
 common interest of the people : or finally, if he delivers 
 the people into subjection to a foreign power. A prince 
 who does these things alters the constitution which his 
 people has agreed to obey : and thereby loses his claim to 
 their obedience. And this, the Whigs claimed, was what 
 James II. had done or sought to do. 
 
LECTURE XXV 
 
 POLITICAL THOUGHT : LOCKE TO MONTESQUIEU 
 
 § 1. In my last lecture I gave a brief sketch of the views 
 of Hobbes and Locke : Hobbes representing in the region of 
 ideas the movement which is carrying Western Europe from 
 the divided authority and imperfect political order and 
 coherence of the Middle Ages, to the modern state formed 
 on a monarchical basis ; Locke's doctrine corresponding to 
 the exceptional course of events which established con- 
 stitutional instead of absolute monarchy in England ; 
 Hobbes writing at the crisis of the Great Rebellion and 
 supplying a theory of legitimate government which would 
 do equally well for Charles or Cromwell, but would re- 
 pudiate any division of powers ; Locke's book appearing 
 immediately after the Great Revolution of 1688, and 
 giving the theory on which it was defended/ 
 
 Let us observe the notions common to the two. Both 
 start with the conception of a state of nature, in which adult 
 men are jurally independent, no one having a right to govern 
 any other — whatever he may do by the exercise of force. 
 Both agree in regarding an " original compact " of such 
 originally independent persons as the normal method of 
 establishing a legitimate government. I may add that both 
 recognise also conquest as a source of governmental rights, 
 though Hobbes holds that here too there is a compact between 
 victor and vanquished, while Locke holds that only conquest 
 
 ^ It gives, of course, rather the doctrine on which the revolution was justi- 
 fied by constitutional theorists than the view with which it was made. 
 
 364 
 
LECT. XXV HOBBES AND LOCKE 365 
 
 in a just war can establish rightful dominion, and that only 
 over the persons who took part in the war. 
 
 You will note that the question in all this discussion is 
 a jural one. It is not the question how government came 
 to be, but how it came to be legitimate. Of this compact 
 seemed the normal explanation. Now it might seem that 
 if the rights of government depend on an ancient compact, 
 the problem of determining them is one for the historian. 
 But neither Hobbes nor Locke actually use a historical 
 method, except subordinately for confirmation of their 
 conclusions. Hobbes indeed repudiates it in principle,^ 
 and though Locke is hardly prepared to go so far 
 he does so practically, for he determines what the com- 
 pact must be supposed to have been by considering 
 the ends which reasonable beings in a state of nature 
 must be supposed to have had in view in entering into a 
 compact. 
 
 Both again apply their opposed doctrines of unlimited and 
 limited powers of government respectively to all forms of 
 government. Hobbes's absolute sovereign may be one, few, or 
 the whole people acting corporately: though he has a prefer- 
 ence for monarchy. Similarly Locke's theory admits all forms 
 of government, if only their exercise of power conforms to his 
 conditions ; the original compact may constitute democracy, 
 oligarchy, monarchy, or any mixed form ; to whichever 
 form may have been selected, obedience will be due so long 
 as it is faithful to its trust and no longer. But as Hobbes 
 has a preference for monarchy, so Locke, on the other hand, 
 regards as preferable a government in which the legislative 
 power is separated from the executive, and is put wholly or 
 mainly into the hands of " divers persons " who make laws 
 as a body which they have afterwards to obey as indi- 
 viduals. It is preferable, because it avoids the temptation 
 to human frailty which is given, when the same persons who 
 have the power of making laws, " have also in their hands 
 the power to execute them, whereby they may exempt them- 
 selves from obedience to the laws they make, and suit the 
 
 1 Cf. Leviathan, end of chap. xx. 
 
366 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 law, both in its making, and execution, to their own private 
 advantage." ^ 
 
 And when this separation is effected, the legislature is 
 naturally and necessarily supreme over the executive : 
 since the organ that carries out the laws must neces- 
 sarily be subordinate to the organ that makes them. 
 It is true that where, as in England, the supreme head of 
 the executive is also a part of the legislature, and so has 
 no legislative superior, there is an admissible sense in which 
 he may be called supreme or sovereign — as in fact he is 
 traditionally called. But it remains true that he is only a 
 part of the really supreme or sovereign portion of the 
 government: and the oaths of allegiance and fealty taken 
 to him are taken to him not as supreme legislator, but as 
 supreme executor of the law made by him jointly with others.^ 
 This is how Locke meets Hobbes's argument that the 
 hereditary monarch has for so many centuries been alone 
 called sovereign in England. The answer is, Where the 
 legislature is distinct from the executive, the legislature 
 must be supreme: and for centuries the monarch in England 
 has only been a part of the legislature. 
 
 Hence, it was argued, when the monarch subverts or 
 suspends the laws as laid down by Parliament, or alters 
 the election or ways of election to the House of Commons 
 " without the consent, and contrary to the common interest 
 of the people," or hinders Parliament "from assembling in its 
 due time, or from acting freely " : he in effect changes the 
 established legislature. So again, when as head of the 
 executive he sets up his arbitrary will against the laws 
 he is appointed to carry out, or when he " employs the force 
 treasure and ofi&ces of the Society to corrupt the representa- 
 tives and gain them to his purposes," he acts contrary to 
 his trust. In either case his right to the obedience of his 
 subjects is forfeited, and they may legitimately set up a 
 new monarch in his place.^ 
 
 But how does Locke answer Hobbes's strongest argument 
 
 Locke, oip. cit. chap. xii. § 143. ^ Qp^ q^^^ chap. xiii. 
 
 ^ Op, cit. chap. xix. 
 
XXV LOCKE 367 
 
 that if conditions are thus introduced into the fundamental 
 compact on which government is based, anarchy comes in ? 
 Partly he admits it. Anarchy does come in : the right 
 that the governed have to resist a government that violates 
 its trust is not a right that belongs to the state of political 
 order : it is a reversion to the right of resistance to wrong 
 which belongs to the state of nature. This Locke fully 
 admits ; and with fine rhetorical effectiveness he turns the 
 argument against his opponent. Herein lies, he says, the 
 great heinousness of the crime of a government that violates 
 its trust that they bring in the evils of anarchy.-^ 
 
 But let us not exaggerate the danger : it is not lightly 
 that a people can be got to face the difficulties and dangers 
 and inevitable evils of a revolution; it is only a grave 
 and persistent violation of trust by their established govern- 
 ment which will make them do this. And indeed, he 
 contends, by establishing a general recognition that the 
 power of government is a trust held under conditions and 
 not an arbitrary power, you really diminish rather than 
 increase the danger of rebellion and anarchy : for you 
 diminish the danger of oppression, and history shows that 
 whatever theories thinkers may lay down, oppression will 
 in fact lead to revolution. 
 
 § 2. When we pass from the seventeenth to the 
 eighteenth century in tracing the development of political 
 thought in modern Europe, the main interest of the student- 
 begins in England, but before the middle of the eighteenth 
 century passes to France. Even, I think, for a Frenchman 
 who is tracing the chief factors in the movement of thought 
 that led up to the great revolution of 1789, Hobbes and 
 Locke are more important than any French writers of the 
 seventeenth century. And even for Englishmen who are 
 studying the history of political ideas with a special interest 
 in the antecedents of modern England — even they, I think, 
 about the middle of the century must temporarily transfer 
 their main attention from England to France. For in 
 English political thought in the latter half of the eighteenth 
 
 ^ Op. cit. chap. xix. 
 
368 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 century the most interesting elements may be traced to 
 French influence — influence either positive and directly 
 stimulating, or stimulating indirectly by rousing vehement 
 antagonism.^ 
 
 In the first half of the century the movement of thought 
 in England is rather languid, but for the careful student 
 it has the interest which sometimes attaches to a dull and 
 stagnant period, intervening between two periods of in- 
 tellectual stress and movement : one can trace in it the 
 fading out of old manners of thought and the nascent efforts 
 to get to new points of view. 
 
 Locke's view of the fundamental social compact as source 
 and limit of governmental right is widely accepted, but to 
 a great extent with mere conventional acceptance and not 
 with vital grasp. So far as thought is exercised on it, the 
 development it undergoes is in the direction of separating 
 the practical question. How are the duties and rights of 
 government here and now to be determined ? from the 
 historical — or prehistoric — inquiry. On what terms did our 
 ancestors originally consent to obey government ? It was 
 more and more felt — and not only by persons of revolu- 
 tionary tendencies — that the former question ought not to 
 be determined by the result of the latter inquiry. Suppose 
 our ancestors did commit the " grave absurdity " of letting 
 themselves be taxed without their consent : is that any 
 reason why we should for all time submit to the intoler- 
 able consequences of their folly ? N'o, answers ie.g^ a most 
 moderate and sober Professor of Moral Philosophy, Francis 
 Hutcheson, who taught in Glasgow from a.d. 1730 to 1746, 
 we are free from the obligation of such an unreasonable com- 
 pact, and " may insist upon a new model of polity." ^ With 
 this qualification, Locke's views are accepted as orthodox 
 Whig doctrine ; but the interest taken in them is not very 
 keen ; while the opposing doctrine of the divine right of 
 kings, against which Locke's argument was primarily 
 
 ^ As examples of the latter I may just mention the writings of Burke, our 
 greatest writer of this period. 
 
 '^ Hutcheson, System of Moral Philosophy, Book iii. chap. v. § 4. 
 
XXV BOLINGBROKE 369 
 
 directed, though it continued to be preached from pulpits, 
 had ceased altogether to have any serious influence in what 
 I may call the week-day world. Thus it is treated as an 
 antiquated absurdity, too childish for refutation, by Boling- 
 broke, who does the chief political thinking for what Mr. 
 Leslie Stephen styles the "Walpole Era." 
 
 In the history of Political Philosophy Bolingbroke hardly 
 deserves a place, but the history of political thought or 
 ideas is not exactly the same thing, and in the history of 
 English political ideas he cannot be passed over ; since he 
 was not only the 
 
 . . . guide, philosopher, and friend ^ 
 
 of the growing parliamentary opposition to Walpole 
 (a.d. 1725-1741); his ideas not only throw valuable 
 light on the contemporary phase of our constitution ; 
 they lived on after his political career was over, and 
 had considerable effect on the course of English politics. 
 We may trace their effect even in the more profound 
 and limpid political reflections of Hume. Thus in the 
 Dissertation on Parties in which his long opposition to 
 Walpole was summed up, he anticipates Hume in drawing 
 attention to the peculiar position of English parliamentary 
 parties under the first two Hanoverian kings. The Whigs, 
 by the very force of their triumph, had become the party 
 of the court : the Tories had no less inevitably gone into 
 opposition to the reigning monarch. Thus each party 
 found itself driven by circumstances into collision with its 
 original principles. Parties in this condition naturally 
 tend to degenerate into factions : and the consequent evils 
 are impressively driven home by Bolingbroke. To his 
 influence perhaps is partly due the deeply unfavourable 
 view of political parties which prevails in the succeeding 
 generation — in spite of the fact that they are the recog- 
 nised instruments of parliamentary government. I do not 
 know any vigorous defence in English literature of the 
 working of parliamentary party combination, until the fine 
 
 ^ Pope, Essay on Man, Ep. iv. 
 
 2 B 
 
370 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 outburst at the end of Burke's Thoughts on the Present 
 Discontents — nearly thirty years after Walpole's fall. 
 
 What then was Bolingbroke's political ideal ? A rather 
 vague and superficial one, which I only notice because of 
 the special importance of English constitutional history in 
 the political development of Western Europe. He wants, 
 for the protection of liberty, to maintain the "balance of 
 the constitution " ; and, to this end, he wishes to put an 
 end to the corruption that is threatening the independency 
 of Parliament, by forming a real " country party " in which 
 the distinctions of Whig and Tory are to be obliterated. 
 He does not see — what is evident to the more disengaged 
 and penetrating reflection of Hume — that it is in fact 
 corruption, or at least the influence of the Crown over 
 members by places and pensions, which sustains in the 
 eighteenth century the balance between Crown and 
 Commons. Destroy this influence, and the tendency of 
 the new constitution would inevitably be — as subsequent 
 history has shown — to transfer power from the Crown to 
 ministers appointed by Parliament. Bolingbroke will not 
 see this, he expounds his " Idea of a Patriot king," who is 
 to dispense with corruption, and yet to govern as well as 
 reign, to put an end to the mischief of faction and at the 
 same time maintain the balance of the constitution. 
 
 The idea was essentially unpractical but it had practical 
 effects : as a Quarterly reviewer says, it " contributed in no 
 small degree to bring about that great revolution which 
 transformed the Toryism of Filmer and Kochester into 
 the Toryism of Johnson and Pitt"^ — substituting as the 
 object of loyal devotion, instead of the king claiming 
 obedience in virtue of divine right, a king demanding and 
 winning it through his patriotic superiority to party, and 
 his steady undivided concern for the true interests of the 
 country. Such was doubtless the ideal which George III. 
 formed at the outset of his reign ; and — though any idea 
 of dispensing with corruption must have soon vanished — 
 it was partly by appealing to the strong body of vague 
 ^ Quarterly Review, vol. cli. (for 1881), p. 343. 
 
MONTESQUIEU 371 
 
 sentiment existing in the nation in support of this ideal 
 that George III. and the younger Pitt crushed the Whigs 
 in 1783. 
 
 In tracing the influence of Bolingbroke I have been 
 carried beyond the period in which he lived and wrote. 
 The thought of this period, taken as a whole, seems to me 
 characterised, as I have said, by a feeling of languor after 
 conflict and perhaps some little disappointment at the results 
 of the Glorious Eevolution. The end so vehemently sought 
 has been reached : the reign of law is established and 
 monarchy brought decisively within the control of Parlia- 
 ment in legislation and taxation : the " balance " of the 
 constitution seems tolerably secure. But the pride English- 
 men feel in their balanced constitution is somewhat tem- 
 pered by an uneasy conviction that Parliament actually is 
 a nest of oligarchical factions, brought into precarious and 
 unstable concord with the Crown by corruption. 
 
 Then in 1748 Montesquieu's Esprit des Lois appears: 
 and Englishmen suddenly find their constitution idealised 
 and set on a pedestal for the admiration of cultivated 
 Europe, as one framed for securing liberty more completely 
 than even the democratic republics of ancient fame. And 
 Montesquieu's subtle, thorough, and highly eulogistic analysis 
 of the English constitution not only directed the attention 
 of foreign observers to it, but led Englishmen themselves 
 both to feel greater pride in it and to take a somewhat new 
 view of its characteristics.^ 
 
 § 3. We may observe as we pass, just before the middle 
 of the century, from English writers to French — as the tide 
 of pre-revolutionary thought begins to rise — the different 
 
 ^ The statement of this view most familiar to Englishmen is that found 
 in Blackstone (Book i. chap, ii.), the first volume of whose famous com- 
 mentaries was published in 1765. Blackstone was professionally expounding 
 the laws of England and not any political theory : but in order to meet the 
 taste of cultivated readers and attain the very remarkable success which his 
 exposition achieved, it was necessary that his account of legal details should 
 be rounded off in a setting of political theories : and the material of this was 
 very largely taken from Montesquieu — though, after the fashion of the 
 time, it was taken without acknowledgment. 
 
372 DEVELOPMENT OF EURO RE AN POLITY lect. 
 
 relation of theory to fact as between the English and 
 French revolutions. Neither Hobbes nor Locke was directly 
 an important cause of political effects ; Hobbes's book 
 anticipated but hardly influenced the reaction from the 
 rebellion ; Locke's work justified a revolution that was over. 
 The French writers prepared the way for one that was to 
 come. Open a French history of political ideas : — I can re- 
 commend Janet's Histoire de la Politique as a work of solid 
 value, though not free from serious errors — open Janet 
 and you will find the Esprit des Lois of Montesquieu, 
 which Janet regards as " undoubtedly the greatest work of 
 the eighteenth century," classed with Eousseau's Contrat 
 Social as forming together the literary source and spring of 
 the revolutionary movement. 
 
 It is true that an English reader of the former work finds 
 now some difficulty in understanding how it could aid a 
 movement of which the ideal aim was to realise a political 
 order based on eternal, immutable, and universally applicable 
 principles of natural right. For the originality and interest of 
 Montesquieu for us lies largely in the fact that he represents 
 the first great systematic introduction of the historical 
 method into modern jurisprudence and politics : and the 
 historical method, we think, is as hostile to the a priori 
 method of Eousseau, and his assumption of universally 
 applicable principles of political construction, as water is 
 to fire. Hence I am not surprised that Maine ^ regards 
 Montesquieu's influence as opposed to and overborne by 
 Eousseau's. I think this is a misleading view, and that 
 Janet's is much truer : but I am not surprised at Maine's 
 mistake, for in fact Montesquieu's fundamental doctrine is 
 that laws and forms of government cannot properly be 
 judged to be good or bad abstractly and universally, but 
 only historically and relatively. He maintained firstly 
 that in judging of the goodness and badness of particular 
 laws and political institutions, they have to be considered 
 in relation to the form of government of the society in 
 which they are established — a law that is expedient and 
 
 ^ Ancient Law, chap. iv. 
 
XXV MONTESQUIEU 373 
 
 good for a monarchy or an aristocracy may be bad for a 
 democracy and vice versa. And he maintained secondly 
 that the goodness of forms of government should be con- 
 sidered not abstractly but in relation to the varying nature, 
 habits, circumstances, of the particular portions of the 
 human race in which these different forms have actually 
 been established. The question whether a people should 
 have a democratic government is one, according to Montes- 
 quieu, which we cannot answer without knowing that 
 people, if I may so say, within and without : its morality 
 may be too feeble to maintain the strain of republican 
 institutions ; or its climate may be so hot that it falls 
 inevitably into despotism. 
 
 These two main theses, on the relativity of laws to 
 government, and of government to conditions internal 
 and external, are enforced and illustrated with a great 
 wealth of learning, much originality and insight, and 
 even more ingenuity and suggestiveness : and it is easy to 
 understand how the book had a brilliant literary success. 
 But how could it be a source of the revolutionary move- 
 ment ? The explanation is that Montesquieu's historical 
 impartiality is limited, and does not exclude very decided 
 preferences for one form of government over another. He 
 is concerned to point out that the three forms of govern- 
 ment which he recognises as fundamentally distinct in their 
 natures and principles — republic, monarchy, and despotism 
 — are suited to different peoples and require respectively 
 different kinds of laws to keep them going : but he does 
 not therefore stand neutral as regards their principles : on 
 the contrary, the principles as he presents them differ as 
 light, twilight, and darkness. 
 
 The principle of a republic — the spring of action 
 which it requires to keep it going and which, as long 
 as republican government really flourishes, it maintains 
 in effective operation — is Political Virtue, i.e. patriotism 
 and public spirit and the readiness to perform public 
 duty at any sacrifice of private interest. And this 
 virtue, he says, is more characteristic of the democratic 
 
374 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 republic than of the aristocratic : the latter is indeed 
 more perfect the more it approaches to the former.^ 
 Such virtue is not similarly needed in a monarchy — and 
 by monarchy you are to understand the West European 
 monarchy of his time, of which France was the most 
 splendid example — ; it does not need political virtue as a 
 republic does, and this is fortunate, as it certainly does not 
 foster such virtue and therefore would not have it to draw 
 on in any adequate degree if it did require it. The 
 mainspring by which monarchy works is Honour: the 
 sense of honour of privileged classes — especially nobles 
 and heads of the legal profession — occupying an inter- 
 mediate position between the monarch and the mass of 
 his subjects. This sense of honour is, he says, at once a 
 source of strength to monarchy, as producing a more 
 devoted and energetic obedience on the part of these 
 privileged persons, so long as the monarch respects their 
 traditional privileges and rules ; at the same time it is a 
 source of an elastic resistance, if he tries to override them. 
 I call it elastic resistance, because it is a resistance which 
 the monarch's undisputed authority can overbear at any 
 point on which he concentrates his will : but it is in 
 practice an effective check, and, as I said before,^ constitutes 
 in Montesquieu's view a fundamental distinction between 
 West European monarchy and Oriental despotism, where 
 all are equal in slavery and the mainspring by which 
 government works is pure Fear. 
 
 Well, you see what Montesquieu's historical impartiality 
 comes to ! It is true that he does not recommend demo- 
 cracy as a practical ideal to his fellow-countrymen : his 
 practical aim is rather to save the French monarchy from 
 the dangerous tendency he sees in it to decline into 
 despotism, and he hopes to do this by laying stress on the 
 value to both monarch and people of the sense of honour 
 of the nobles and esfprit de corps of the lawyers, as at 
 
 * This subordination of the difference between aristocracy and democracy- 
 is peculiar to Montesquieu. 
 2 Lecture xxiii. pp. 338, 339. 
 
MONTESQUIEU 375 
 
 once supplying the monarch with better instruments for 
 governmental work than mere slaves can ever be, and 
 imposing an elastic but real check on his arbitrary caprice. 
 But though Montesquieu does not recommend the demo- 
 cratic republic, he employs his stores of historical knowledge 
 and the whole force of his rhetoric to spread a reasoned 
 admiration of it as the form of government that at once 
 requires and fosters patriotism and public spirit. This 
 idea that republics are pre-eminent in — we may almost say 
 have a monopoly of — political virtue, may be called the 
 main historical element of French revolutionary thought : 
 and perhaps it did as much even as the idea of natural 
 liberty and equality, and the idea of the inalienable and 
 indivisible sovereignty of the people, to rouse the fire of 
 revolutionary ardour. 
 
 § 4. But this is not Montesquieu's only contribution to 
 the "ideas of 1789," nor is it that which has in the long 
 run been of most effect in the constitution-making to which 
 the revolution of 1789 gave the first impulse. In the long 
 run, it is not the democratic republic of the Graeco-Eoman 
 world which has furnished the pattern for modern popular 
 government : but rather that other constitution which 
 Montesquieu singles out for admiration — the English con- 
 stitution as settled by the revolution of 1688. 
 
 The importance of Montesquieu's account of the British 
 constitution lies in his clear perception — in spite of his 
 admiration for democratic republics — that a democratic 
 constitution is not necessarily the freest, i.e. not necessarily 
 constructed so as to give the maximum of protection to the 
 reasonable liberty of individuals. He knew, indeed, from 
 history, that a democratic majority might be as tyrannical, 
 in the way of unjust coercion of individuals, as any despot 
 could be. On the other hand, he finds that political liberty 
 is, in a unique and remarkable degree, the aim of the 
 complex arrangements of English constitutional monarchy. 
 If we examine it, he says, we shall find that "liberty appears 
 in it as in a mirror." ^ 
 
 ^ Esprit des Lois, Book xi. chap. v. 
 
376 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 The fundamental principle in Montesquieu's view on 
 which a government adapted for realising liberty must be 
 constructed is that of separation of the fundamental powers 
 of government, and a balanced distribution of them among 
 different organs, differently appointed bodies or individuals, 
 so that by the natural play of the whole organisation, any 
 tendency to oppression on the part of any one organ of 
 government may be checked by another. Thus he follows 
 Locke in advocating the separation of the legislative from 
 the executive power. The legislature should only have the 
 power of making general laws, not of decreeing any 
 particular act of administration, though it may with ad- 
 vantage control by criticism the acts of the executive. The 
 assent of the head of the executive should be required for 
 laws, — to prevent any undue encroachment of the legislature 
 — but he should not be able to make laws. 
 
 But he lays down further — a point Locke had not 
 noticed — that the judicial power should be also separated 
 from either of the other two : if the judge was also the 
 legislator, it would be difficult to keep him to the single- 
 minded aim of interpreting established law. If the 
 executive and judicial power were in the same hands, the 
 danger of the combined power being used oppressively to 
 private persons would be great. Moreover, Montesquieu 
 holds that the " terrible power " of awarding punishment 
 for crime should be given, as in England, not to a per- 
 manent magistrate, but to juries drawn from time to time 
 from the people at large ; and he lays stress on the security 
 given by the Habeas Corpus Act in England, by which the 
 power of the executive to imprison citizens before trial is 
 severely limited. 
 
 Legislation and taxation should be entrusted, as in 
 England, to an assembly chosen by the whole body of really 
 independent citizens divided in local divisions ; but this 
 assembly, again, should be checked by a body of nobles, 
 to prevent oppression of the minority of rich and dis- 
 tinguished persons. 
 
 It is only by such a constitution as this, a carefully 
 
XXV MONTESQUIEU 377 
 
 balanced system of mutually checking powers, that we can 
 effectively secure political liberty : — secure that is, that " no 
 one can be either constrained to do what he is not legally 
 bound to do, or prevented from doing anything legally 
 permissible." ^ Montesquieu's ideal therefore — his practi- 
 cable ideal — is the British constitution idealised. 
 
 This principle of the separation of the three fundamental 
 powers of government forms a distinct and important 
 element of the revolutionary programme. Thus in the 
 famous declaration of rights of November 1789, we find 
 it emphatically stated that " every society, in which . . . the 
 separation of powers is not definitely determined, has really 
 no constitution {rC a point de constitution^ And another clause 
 lays stress on the need of strictly limiting by law the power 
 of the executive to arrest and imprison private citizens. 
 These are Montesquieu's ideas : and his ideas as sup- 
 ported by the example of the British constitution — or 
 perhaps we should rather say the arrangements of the 
 British constitution as explained and interpreted by 
 Montesquieu — have on the whole been a factor second to 
 none in importance in the constitution -making of the 
 century that followed the publication of the Esprit des Lois, 
 
 Still, in the movement of thought finally summed up in 
 the Declaration of Eights that I have quoted, his influence 
 is quite subordinate to Eousseau's. Indeed, if you want 
 to have expressed in the form of summary resolutions the 
 fundamental doctrines of Eousseau's Contrat Social, you have 
 only to read one after another the earlier clauses of this 
 declaration. 
 
 ^ Esprit des Lois, Book xi. chap. iv. 
 
LECTUKE XXVI 
 
 POLITICAL THOUGHT : THE INFLUENCE OF ROUSSEAU 
 
 §1.1 DREW attention in the last lecture to the double point of 
 view from which we have to regard Montesquieu — a double- 
 ness expressed in the striking contrast between the aspects 
 in which he is presented by Janet and Maine respectively. 
 
 Janet, commencing his chapter on Montesquieu,^ refers 
 to the series of revolutions through which Erance has 
 passed since 1789, and says, "How can we dismiss these 
 memories from our minds, when we turn our thoughts to 
 the books which have been the first source of all these 
 changes {la premiere origine de tous ces monvements), V Esprit 
 des Lois and le Contrat Social ?" Perhaps in this phrase Janet 
 attributes, or may seem to attribute, too much to the influence 
 of political ideas and literature and too little to the influence 
 of political facts in the causation of the French Kevolution 
 and its consequences. But if we confine ourselves to 
 the influence of ideas — the literary source of the revolu- 
 tionary movement — Janet's statement is as true as so brief 
 a statement can be, and certainly expresses the prevalent 
 French opinion. 
 
 On the other hand, Maine, in the interesting fourth 
 chapter of Ancient Law, expresses an entirely diiBPerent 
 and apparently conflicting opinion. So far from regarding 
 Montesquieu and Eousseau as co-operating to bring about 
 the Eevolution, he regards them as diametrically opposed. 
 After describing the important part played by jurists in 
 
 ^ Eistoire de la Politique, vol. ii. Book iv. chap. v. 
 378 
 
LECT. XXVI INFLUENCE OF ROUSSEAU 379 
 
 French history, the '' enormous advantage " gained by the 
 French kings in their struggle with the nobles and the 
 Church by their alliance with the lawyers, and the strong 
 position they occupied as a privileged order, side by side 
 with the feudal aristocracy, distributed over France in 
 great chartered corporations, — he goes on to describe how 
 they came to reconcile their speculative opinions and in- 
 tellectual bias with their professional interests and habits 
 by what I may call an enthusiastic Platonic love for the 
 Law of Nature. France, he says, was actually subject to 
 the " curse of an anomalous and dissonant jurisprudence " — 
 a diversity and confusion of local laws, in spite of the 
 political and social unity of the nation — "beyond every 
 other country in Europe " : and the lawyers had a keen 
 sense " of those perfections of jurisprudence which consist in 
 simplicity and uniformity." But " they believed, or seemed 
 to believe, that the vices which actually invested French 
 law were ineradicable ; and in practice they often resisted 
 the reformation of abuses with an obstinacy which was not 
 shown by many among their less enlightened countrymen. 
 But there was a way to reconcile these contradictions. 
 They became passionate enthusiasts for Natural Law. The 
 Law of Nature overleapt all provincial and municipal 
 boundaries ; it disregarded all distinctions between noble 
 and burgess, between burgess and peasant ; it gave the 
 most exalted place to lucidity, simplicity, and system ; but 
 it committed its devotees to no specific improvement, and 
 did not directly threaten any venerable or lucrative techni- 
 caHty." ^ 
 
 It is easy to understand how this fervid admiration for 
 the Law of Nature would aid a revolutionary movement, 
 if ever an ardent and wide-reaching demand for political 
 change became strong enough to overbear the interested 
 conservatism of the legal profession ; and Maine goes on 
 to describe how this flame of revolutionary enthusiasm was 
 spread by Kousseau. But he speaks of Montesquieu's ideas 
 as working entirely, though on the whole ineffectively, in 
 
 ^ Maine, Ancient Law, p. 85 (3rd ed.). 
 
38o DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 the opposite direction. Montesquieu, he says, " proceeded 
 on that Historical Method hefore which the Law of Nature 
 has never maintained its footing for an instant." Why- 
 then did he not stem the revolutionary movement towards 
 the realisation of the birthright of man ? Because, Maine 
 says, his work " was never allowed time " to put forth its 
 influence on thought, " for the counter-hypothesis which it 
 seemed destined to destroy passed suddenly from the forum 
 to the street," launched by Kousseau, " that remarkable 
 man who, without learning, with few virtues, and with no 
 strength of character, has nevertheless stamped himself 
 ineffaceably on history by the force of a vivid imagination, 
 and by the help of a genuine and burning love for his 
 fellow- men, for which much will always have to be 
 forgiven him." -^ 
 
 In this conflict of authorities, I have no doubt of the 
 truth of the statements on both sides. The influence of the 
 Esprit des Lois certainly aided the revolutionary movement, 
 as Janet says. At the same time there is no doubt that 
 Montesquieu's ideas are, as Maine observes, essentially 
 opposed to the fundamental assumption of Kousseau that 
 there are immutable and universally applicable rules of 
 Natural Eight, in which alone man can find a legitimate 
 basis for government. 
 
 To turn the Platonic admiration for the Law of Nature 
 as an ideal into a practical ardour for its realisation, and to 
 extend it from the civil relations, with which alone the 
 lawyers were concerned, to political or constitutional re- 
 lations, was in France the work of Eousseau and his school. 
 At the root of the revolutionary Utopias of the age we find 
 the old time-honoured and accepted propositions of the Law 
 of Nature, 'that all men are naturally free,' and 'that all men 
 are naturally equal ' — only held with a quite novel heat of 
 conviction, and used in a quite novel way as premisses to 
 justify the most startling and far-reaching political demoli- 
 tion and reconstruction. 
 
 § 2. It is a commonplace that the absolute monarchy in 
 
 1 Op. cit, pp. 86, 87. 
 
XXVI INFLUENCE OF ROUSSEAU 381 
 
 France had prepared the way for revolution ; but it was 
 not only the absoluteness of the monarchy, it was also the 
 manner in which it had grown out of feudalism. The 
 monarchy, intent on its aim of concentrating all power in 
 its own hands, had gone on the principle of bargaining with 
 the other elements in the old feudal society which might have 
 held it in check. Thus, by taking from the nobility their 
 political and all their most important social functions, it had 
 rendered them largely useless incumbrances; and in order to 
 induce them to acquiesce with a good grace in this political 
 extinction it had left them pecuniary privileges to such an 
 extent as to render them an intolerably expensive in- 
 cumbrance. At the same time, in order to prevent them 
 more effectually from ever taking up an attitude of rivalry or 
 antagonism to the Crown, and gaining influence enough to do 
 this, it had completed the severance of the leading nobility 
 from the social functions naturally devolving on large landed 
 proprietors by forming them into a large and splendid court, 
 on which royal favour descended in the substantial form of 
 gilded showers from the treasury, yet still was hardly lavish 
 enough to make up for the expenditure entailed by the 
 splendour. 
 
 Politically and administratively the system of Louis XIV. 
 was in many respects a success. The splendour of Versailles 
 seemed at once to represent fitly and to enhance the glory 
 that France gained under his rule. The nobility, on the 
 whole, were fully content with the share they took in this 
 splendour ; and the centralised administration secured to the 
 people generally many advantages — some protection from 
 lawless personal oppression, some diffusion of enlightened 
 procedure, etc. But financially it was fatally weak ; and 
 its financial weakness riveted and aggravated crying social 
 inequalities and misery, which were in some respects all the 
 worse because they were old, legal, consecrated by custom 
 and history. 
 
 Let us examine in detail these two mutually dependent 
 facts — a radically vicious system of governmental finance, 
 and flagrant social inequality and oppression. We have to 
 
382 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 go back to the fatal time when the course of development 
 of feudal into modern France definitely separated itself from 
 the corresponding course of development in England; when 
 Charles VII. was allowed in a.d. 1439 to establish a tailU 
 'per'pUuelle, without the consent of the estates - general. 
 Under the feudal system, as we have seen, the king, like 
 any other feudal lord, provided his ordinary expenditure out 
 of the revenues of his domains, while extraordinary expenses 
 were provided for by voted contributions in which different 
 classes naturally took their fair share. But from the time 
 that the shameful bargain was concluded under Charles VII. 
 by which the nobles sacrificed constitutional liberty by 
 allowing the power of the purse to be given up — " letting 
 the people be taxed without their consent, provided only 
 the nobles themselves were exempted " ^ — inequality was 
 established which the utmost efforts of enlightened ministers, 
 Sully, Eichelieu, Colbert, were unable permanently to miti- 
 gate. The taille (from which in feudal times the gentry 
 were exempt, as a compensation for their being bound to 
 military service) became the regular royal tax. 
 
 Tocqueville describes all the evils that come from this 
 taxing of, "not those most able to pay, but those least 
 able to resist." ^ As I have just said, continual efforts were 
 made to mitigate them, but — the government must have 
 money, and when new direct taxes were imposed, which 
 nominally fell equally on all, the vicious practice of con- 
 ciliating the rich and powerful by mitigations was still kept 
 up. The clergy, organised and having assemblies, obtained 
 avowed remissions, and the nobles in their private capacity 
 obtained remissions in a less regular way. Again, the corvee 
 royale — forced labour at a low salary, originally for roads, 
 but gradually extended to other public works — was main- 
 tained, and made worse owing to the necessities of govern- 
 ment ; while from this, too, the noble and his " gens " were 
 exempted. 
 
 Throughout the generation preceding the Kevolution we 
 
 1 Tocqueville, L'Ancien Regime et la Revolution, Book ii. chap, x. p. 169. 
 2 Op. cit. Book II. chap. x. p. 171. 
 
XXVI INFLUENCE OF ROUSSEAU 383 
 
 see the Government trying more and more to act paternally, 
 but unable to do so from want of money and from this 
 vicious system of taxation.-^ Thus we have a Government 
 needy, financially shifty, legally and illegally oppressive; 
 and landed nobility, landed clergy, exempt from taxation 
 legally and illegally. 
 
 But to oppressive exemptions we must add oppressive 
 privileges. The peculiarity of the decay of feudalism in 
 France, which rendered it the most appropriate soil for the 
 Eevolution, is that — the general characteristic of feudalism 
 being the blending of government and landed property in an 
 elaborately graduated hierarchy — in Erance in the eighteenth 
 century all share in government had, as I have said, passed 
 from the nobles ; while a whole system of dues and ex- 
 emptions which originally belonged to them qyia adminis- 
 trators, and which could only be justified on this score, 
 remained as sources of profit to individuals who were now no 
 more than " premiers habitants." Of all the special rights 
 of the nobility, "the political part had disappeared; the 
 pecuniary part alone remained and had sometimes been much 
 increased." ^ Thus feudalism, having from a political become 
 a purely civil institution, had become a simple nuisance — 
 especially to peasants who had become proprietors.^ The 
 poor peasant not only saw the rich noble exempt while 
 he was himself burdened with taxation, forced to labour, 
 forced to military service ; he also found himself forced to 
 pay to the same noble in his private capacity a number of 
 oppressive taxes. Had the peasant not been proprietor, he 
 would not have felt many of them. Had he been governed 
 by the seigneur, they would have seemed to him natural 
 incidents of government. As it was, they galled him at 
 
 ^ See Tocqueville's Ancien EdgtTne, Book 11. chap, x., for other shameless 
 expedients of the Government to obtain money. 
 
 2 Op. cit. Book II. chap. i. pp. 60, 62. 
 
 ^ Peasant proprietors were very numerous. Though the nobles and clergy 
 each owned about one-fifth of the soil of France, the number of proprietors 
 does not seem to have been much increased by the sale of all the estates of the 
 latter and a great part of the former at the Revolution. Cf. Tocqueville, 
 op. cit. Book II. chap. i. p. 58. 
 
384 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 every turn ; while the burden of expenditure imposed on 
 the noble by custom rendered it difficult for him to abandon 
 them. To all this we must add the old feudal right of 
 administering justice — much restricted and decaying, but 
 yet an abuse of real importance, often made a source of 
 pecuniary profit by needy gentry ; and must also note 
 the absenteeism of rich and great proprietors, and the 
 poverty, isolation, and social uselessness of smaller ones, 
 which rendered their rights practically more oppressive 
 than they would otherwise have been. 
 
 This state of things offered an exceptionally favourable 
 soil for the growth of the sentiment of liberty and equality 
 preached by Kousseau. 
 
 § 3. There are two main aspects in which the work of 
 Eousseau is commonly regarded by well-informed persons, 
 on each of which it is important to dwell in order to get a 
 full view of the whole of his extraordinary influence. He 
 is regarded (1) as the apostle of Nature, in contrast with the 
 artificiaKty and frivolity of " so-called civilised existence," 
 and (2) as the apostle of the inalienable sovereignty of the 
 people, a doctrine established by giving a new and striking 
 turn to the old doctrine of the social contract. But I think 
 Maine misunderstands the relation between the two aspects. 
 
 He attributes to Eousseau the belief that a " perfect 
 social order could be evolved from the unassisted considera- 
 tion of the natural state " ; and by the natural state Maine 
 means the original state, previous to the formation of civil 
 society — as no doubt Hobbes and Locke would have meant. 
 He tells us that in Eousseau's view " every transformation 
 of society which would give it a closer resemblance to the 
 world over which the creature of nature reigned, is admirable 
 and worthy to be effected at any apparent cost." "Every 
 law or institution which would misbeseem this imaginary 
 being under these ideal circumstances is to be condemned 
 as having lapsed from an original perfection." ^ 
 
 N"ow, this view of Eousseau's aims in the Contrat Social 
 is rather widespread ; but though the mistake is — if I may 
 
 ^ Ancient Law, chap. iv. pp. 88, 89. 
 
XXVI INFLUENCE OF ROUSSEAU 385 
 
 use the treacherous word — very " natural," it is very com- 
 plete. It is weak to say that Eousseau does not hold the 
 view that Maine attributes to him : he does not hold any- 
 thing of the kind. 
 
 Rousseau's work seized hold of the public mind at a 
 time when — according to the almost unanimous agreement 
 of French historical writers — the critical and negative work, 
 of which Voltaire was the leader, was seriously demoral- 
 ising the educated world. It co-operated with and aided 
 the tendency of the political conditions, due to the deliberate 
 policy of the monarchy, to produce a luxurious and frivolous 
 aristocratic society, of which the court was the centre. 
 
 A wealthy and polite society from which the monarchy 
 had, as we have seen, withdrawn almost all the steadying and 
 ennobling influence exercised by the responsibilities of political 
 power, the performance of serious and important social services 
 to their fellow-men — such a society might yet be partially 
 saved from mere frivolity by strong religious convictions 
 having the support of thoughtful opinion and the prestige 
 of eloquent expositors, as it had in the great days of the 
 seventeenth-century monarchy. But when the hold of 
 Catholic orthodoxy on the minds of most educated persons 
 had been shattered by the unrivalled literary skill of 
 Voltaire ; and the talkers in salons and at dinner-parties 
 talked — to use Berkeley's phrase — " as if atheism was 
 established by law, and religion only tolerated " ; when 
 philosophy, following the new impulse to learn from 
 England, had abandoned Descartes for Locke, and developed 
 Locke's teaching in the direction of materialism and sensa- 
 tionalism in metaphysics, and naked egoism in morals, then 
 the chief intellectual barrier against luxurious frivolity and 
 artificiality was removed. 
 
 " The feudal aristocracy," says Taine,^ became a " soci^t6 
 de salon," — absorbed in the life of the salon to an un- 
 paralleled extent, to the subordination of other interests and 
 duties, to the loss not merely of all deep patriotic concern 
 for public affairs, but of all real force and vitality in the 
 
 1 Origines de la France contemporaine. L'Ancien Regime. L. 11. ch. i. 
 
 2 c 
 
386 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 domestic affections. Intellectual interests, indeed, remain ; 
 the salons follow, with sympathy and applause, the great 
 enterprise of Diderot, d'Alembert, and their colleagues, to 
 instruct mankind ; but the interest in serious topics is only 
 on condition that the serious topics become a means of 
 entertainment, and a source of richness and variety in 
 conversation. So far as they believe in anything, these 
 denizens of the salon believe in progress, progress of the 
 species, progress of the arts and sciences — the spread of 
 what the Germans call "Aufklarung," enlightenment in all 
 directions. But the sole business of good society is to talk 
 about this progress in the intervals of fetes. Ion mots, and 
 badinage, and to employ the superfluous wealth of the 
 nation in talking about it amid the utmost artificiality 
 of costly grace and splendour. 
 
 It was such a society as this that Eousseau startled, and 
 to a remarkable extent passionately moved, by his preaching 
 of the superiority of the natural life of man to the artificial 
 product of civilisation. 
 
 The first work that brought him into notice was a prize- 
 essay, which not only won the prize of the Academy at 
 Dijon, but the applause of the metropolis. The question 
 was whether the restoration {i.e. after the Middle Ages) of 
 the sciences and arts has contributed to purify or corrupt 
 manners. But Eousseau — inspired in a manner which, as 
 he describes it, is almost ecstatic with the great theme of the 
 superiority of Nature to Art — looks beyond restoration to 
 the original establishment of sciences and arts, and maintains 
 that rude, natural man, with his happy ignorance, trans- 
 parent manners, and simple virtues, has lost far more than 
 he has gained from the suspicion and treacheries, the 
 arrogance and vanity, the pompous impostures, the useless 
 speculations which the pursuit of knowledge has brought 
 with it, and the vain luxury that has attended progress in 
 the arts. And the thesis was maintained, in various forms 
 and manners, through a series of treatises, in which we ought 
 not to attempt to find complete consistency of view, but in 
 which there certainly appears a unity of tone and sentiment. 
 
xxvr INFLUENCE OF ROUSSEAU 387 
 
 It is not within the limits of my present task to go 
 further into this side of Eousseau's work ; but, briefly, he is 
 certainly an admirer of the " noble savage " as he existed 
 prior to political society ; and it is natural to suppose that 
 his object in the Contrat Social is to imitate this state of 
 nature as far as possible, and that he thinks this may be 
 perfectly done by the social contract. But, as I say, it is 
 a complete mistake. The mistake is due to the fact that the 
 old profound and inveterate fusion in the word " natural " 
 of the idea of " what originally was " and of " what ought 
 to be " has — to an important extent — disappeared from 
 Eousseau's political ideas, while it still remains in his 
 language. Eousseau's practical aim, in political construction, 
 is to have a constitution in which justice is realised, and he 
 considers that justice can only be realised in a constitution 
 based on the principles of what he still, with others, calls 
 !N'atural Eight {droit Tiaturel), i.e. the principle of which, as 
 Maine says, the dignity and claims were admitted with 
 unqualified eulogy by the pre-revolutionary jurists, not in 
 France only, but in continental Europe generally. 
 
 But, in the jurist's conception of Natural Jja^w {droit naturel), 
 the prominent and important content of the notion had always 
 been — not the application of the rules, so-called, to a 
 supposed original condition of man, prior to the formation 
 of political societies, but — the universality of their appli- 
 cation to man as man, as contrasted with the restricted 
 application of the laws of any particular political society to 
 the members of that society. And with this, as we have 
 seen, was joined a conception of the permanence and im- 
 mutability of Natural Law, applicable to man as a rational 
 being, and discoverable by abstract reason, as compared 
 with the mutable character of the laws of any particular 
 state. 
 
 That political and social order should be in harmony 
 with Natural Eight was a common-place; and that by 
 Natural Eight was meant certain external and immutable 
 principles, even Montesquieu had not expressly disputed. 
 This conception of Natural Eight Eousseau maintained : it 
 
388 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 is fundamental in his political reasoning. So far, Maine is 
 doubtless not misleading. 
 
 The mistake is to suppose that Rousseau regards droit 
 naturel as realised in the original state of man — the state 
 of savage nature which in his Discourse on Inequality ^ he 
 begins by describing : what he calls the " veritable state of 
 nature." On this point Eousseau's language is quite ex- 
 plicit and unmistakable. Original man, in the veritable 
 state of nature, does not live hj jus naturae, droit naturel, 
 because he has no notion of jus or droit at all, — " not the 
 least notion," says Eousseau, " of mine and thine, no true 
 idea of justice ... no vices or virtues . . . unless we use 
 these terms in the sense of qualities conducive to his own 
 conservation." This is almost like Hobbes : but Rousseau 
 considers that Hobbes errs in attributing to original man 
 passions leading to conflict which would not really be found 
 in him in the state of nature. Rousseau's man is a more 
 isolated and self -sufficient being, " without need of his 
 fellows or desire to harm them " ; and hence though he 
 " reasonably attributes to himself a right to all things of 
 which he has need," the danger to other men from this 
 predominance of the impulse to self-preservation was at its 
 minimum — besides which each one's self-love is moderated by 
 pity, which in this primitive condition " takes the place of 
 laws, manners, and virtue." 
 
 The original state of nature, then, though it is, if not 
 perhaps the happiest, at any rate the freest from inequality, 
 is certainly not a state in which jus naturae is realised. 
 And though in the later state — on the whole the happiest 
 — that Rousseau afterwards describes, in which a certain 
 amount of sociability has begun, he supposes a sort of pro- 
 perty in dwellings — huts of branches and clay — he is careful 
 to represent the respect for this property as due less to a 
 sense of the right of property than a sense of the inex- 
 pediency of trying to appropriate one's neighbour's hut. 
 He tells us that as — in this new situation — domestic affec- 
 tions, arts of manufacture, and especially social life with 
 
 ^ Discourss^ir VOrigine de V InigaliU parmi Us Homines, 
 
XXVI INFLUENCE OF ROUSSEAU 389 
 
 song and dance, developed, the desire of consideration led 
 to a sense of injury. But the "first rules of justice" do 
 not come in till property is recognised, and property does 
 not come in till the fatal arts of metallurgy and agriculture 
 have produced the great revolution which destroyed this 
 second, happiest state, when families were domestic and 
 social, but independent. 
 
 It is evident, therefore, that in desiring to construct a 
 political order founded on droit naturel, Eousseau has no 
 notion of even imitating, much less perfectly realising, 
 the vdritable 4tat de nature. That has gone for ever. 
 Natural man had the advantage of independence : in the 
 true state of nature (unlike Hobbes') he has at once no need 
 of others, and no inclination to hurt them : but Eousseau is 
 as far as any man from the wish to transform society in a 
 way which would make it resemble as closely as possible 
 this original condition of independence. This man has lost : 
 his best substitute for it is complete dependence on a 
 general will, of which his own will is merely an element. 
 Indeed, Eousseau is so far from thinking that — to use 
 Maine's words — a "perfect social order could be evolved 
 from the unassisted consideration of the natural state," 
 that he expressly says that no social order can be perfect, 
 just because it is not natural. " Everything that is not in 
 nature has its inconveniences, and civil society more than 
 all else (phisque tout le reste)!' ^ 
 
 Indeed, I may almost say — paradoxical as it will sound 
 — that Eousseau resembles Hobbes more than any other 
 writer, certainly comes next to Hobbes, in the extent of the 
 difference that he conceives between natural and social man : 
 and hence the resemblance which we find between the social 
 contracts of Eousseau and Hobbes, in spite of the great con- 
 trast between them. With Eousseau as with Hobbes the 
 natural man in his primitive condition was absolutely in- 
 dependent of others : the difference is that with Eousseau 
 he was not at war with others : he had no need of their aid, 
 but neither had he any need of hurting them. But this 
 
 1 Du Contrat Social, Book iii. chap. xv. 
 
390 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 independence, he holds, ceased in the very early stages of 
 the process of civilisation ; and " from the moment that one 
 man had need of the help of another, as soon as it was 
 perceived to be profitable for one man to have provisions 
 for two," ^ the equality and happiness of the early state was 
 lost, and mankind went rapidly down into a state of war 
 resembling Hobbes'. But from this there is no restoring 
 them to their original independence, according to Eousseau : 
 to save man from slavery, our only resource lies in a con- 
 tract which places him in complete dependence on others, — 
 complete, though mutual and equal. The individual, in 
 Eousseau's political system, surrenders his own will to the 
 will of the body of which he becomes a member, as com- 
 pletely and unconditionally as he does in Hobbes' system, 
 save in the one point of the revocability of the contract. 
 The natural man is in idea at least annihilated, to live 
 again as the civic man or citizen, the member or part of a 
 corporate whole. 
 
 § 4. The movement of thought which culminates in the 
 revolutionary doctrine is, as we have seen, merely the last 
 stage of a process which carries us back beyond the begin- 
 ning of modern history. It is an attempt to determine the 
 structure and powers of government on principles of abstract 
 justice ; and the source of these principles is distinctly to 
 be traced back to the " Law of Nature " as conceived and 
 applied by Koman lawyers under the influence of later 
 Greek philosophy. This process of development I will now 
 briefly sum up. The characteristic of the revolutionary 
 doctrine is that it rests on two or three very simple prin- 
 ciples : (1) that men are by nature free and equal; (2) 
 that the rights of government must be based on some com- 
 pact freely entered into by these equal and independent 
 individuals ; (3) that the only compact at once just to the 
 individuals and sufficient for social union is one in which 
 each individual becomes an indivisible part of a body that 
 retains an inalienable right of determining its own internal 
 constitution and legislation — a sovereign people. These are 
 
 ^ Discours sur VOriginc de l''In4galiU. 
 
XXVI INFLUENCE OF ROUSSEAU 39i 
 
 the three main points of Eousseau's charter of liberation 
 issued to mankind. And we may briefly give the historical 
 origin of the three thus : (1) belongs to the Law of Nature 
 of the Koman jurists ; by them only conceived as an ideal 
 code for civil relations. It was left for later medieval and 
 modern thought to apply it to constitutional and inter- 
 national relations. (2) is an inference connected with this 
 Law of Nature, conceived as the only law subsisting in a 
 state of nature, prior to political society : and is generally 
 accepted at the outset of modern thought. But the com- 
 pact is very variously conceived : it may be interpreted in 
 favour of order and despotism, as by Hobbes, or in favour 
 of liberty and constitutional government, as by Locke. (3) 
 is Eousseau's ; arrived at by an original combination of the 
 lines of thought of Hobbes and Locke. 
 
 Kousseau agrees with Locke that the fundamental social 
 compact ought to have for its end and object the better 
 preservation of the person and goods of every individual 
 who enters into it. But whereas Locke holds that this 
 necessarily imposes limits on governmental authority, and 
 especially makes it illegitimate for government to tax the 
 governed without their consent, — Eousseau holds that the 
 only compact which can produce this effect is one which 
 involves, as completely as that of Hobbes, the total 
 surrender of the individual with all his rights to the com- 
 munity, and the complete submission of his will to the 
 governing will that results from the social union. But 
 whereas Hobbes takes the view that this governing will is 
 simply the will of whatever government — whether of one, 
 few, or all — the contracting individuals agree to obey, 
 Eousseau maintains that it must be the will of the whole, 
 the truly general will. The Whole formed by the social 
 union is essentially and permanently and inalienably sove- 
 reign. The different powers of government commonly re- 
 cognised — legislative, executive, etc. — are not properly, he 
 says, parts of sovereignty, but emanations from it : and the 
 sovereign must retain always and inalienably the supreme 
 legislative power. The different so-called forms of govern- 
 
392 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 ment — monarchy, oligarchy, etc. — cannot legitimately be 
 more than forms of executive government ; their business 
 must be to carry out the sovereign people's will. If any 
 one idea, any one principle, can be said to be in itself the 
 intellectual source of the great Ke volution of 1789, it is 
 this principle of the perpetual and inalienable sovereignty 
 of the people. 
 
 The conditions of the social union being the same for 
 all, no one has any interest in making them onerous for 
 others : hence Rousseau, unlike Locke, places no limit 
 on the absolute power of the whole over its members — 
 except the one very important restriction that the general 
 will must be expressed in general laws that affect all citizens 
 alike. There is no limitation of its legislative competence 
 by pre-existing individual rights : the surrender of the in- 
 dividual to the community is unlimited and complete : but 
 it is conditional on an equal mutual surrender by all others : 
 therefore the will of the sovereign whole must be a truly 
 general will.-^ 
 
 § 5. It is interesting to contrast this view — that the 
 one thing needful to secure just government is to secure 
 that laws are made by the general will of the whole people, 
 of which all individuals are equal parts, and that this 
 general will is always expressed in general laws : — it is in- 
 teresting to compare this with the opposite view of a school 
 whose influence in 1789 was hardly perceptible, but which 
 cannot be passed over in the history of eighteenth-century 
 political ideas, as their subsequent influence was indirectly 
 very great. I mean the Physiocrates or Eeonomistes — the pre- 
 cursors of Adam Smith and the original authors of the system 
 
 ^ Observe that in this latest form of the doctrine of a social compact, all ques- 
 tions as to the historical fact of a compact have become irrelevant. The com- 
 pact is transmuted into an ideal conception : it states the relations that ought 
 to exist in a justly ordered State — the relations, on the one hand, between 
 the individuals and the community they form ; on the other hand, between 
 the community and its organs of government. It may be noted that if we 
 want a summary comparison of the idde mere of 1688 with the idee mere of 
 1789, we cannot have it better than in Locke's Civil Government, chap. xiii. 
 § 149, and Rousseau's Contrat Social, Book i. chap. vi. 
 
 See Appendix, Note G, as to Rousseau's idea of the general will. 
 
XXVI INFLUENCE OF ROUSSEAU 393 
 
 of natural liberty or laisser /aire. I am not now concerned 
 with their peculiar theories of production and taxation, but 
 merely with their view of the political order required to 
 realise natural liberty and common good. It was curiously 
 opposite to Eousseau's, though still a part of the general 
 movement, in French thought of the age, towards reorganisa- 
 tion of society in harmony with natural equity — the 
 establishment of a social order which should at once realise 
 the natural rights of individuals and obtain the maximum of 
 utility for the community. While the school of Kousseau held 
 that the essential thing was to alter the basis of the struc- 
 ture of government by establishing the sovereignty of the 
 people, in the view of the economists the important point 
 was, not how government ought to be constituted, but what 
 government ought to do. While Kousseau and his followers 
 had no conception of a need of limiting the scope of legisla- 
 tion, the Physiocrates held that the one duty of government 
 was to get out of its head that it had to make laws. 
 What it had to do was to ascertain and protect from 
 encroachment the simple, eternal, and immutable laws of 
 nature ; to protect the natural freedom of each to labour 
 in the way that seemed to him best, so long as he did not 
 injure others, — abolishing all industrial privileges, restraints, 
 and prohibitions ; and to protect the fruits of his labour. 
 This simple task they seem to have thought could best be 
 performed by an absolute monarch; — at least they were 
 willing, for the most part, to leave the absolute monarchy 
 as it was ; in fact, they opposed that separation of powers 
 which Montesquieu admired in the English constitution as 
 tending to complicate and enfeeble the action of government.^ 
 
 ^ This fundamental difference of method in aiming at, broadly speaking, 
 the same ultimate end — protection of the individual from oppression — is all 
 the more interesting for us, as it still exists in the popular liberalism of the 
 present day. Civil and constitutional freedom — the one, being left alone by 
 the government, and the other, having control over government — are very 
 different things. They coincide practically as regards the majority of the 
 electoral body, since the majority will prevent government from interfering 
 with them disagreeably, but they may not coincide as regards the minority. 
 For example, a man who likes a glass of beer and to go to the theatre on 
 
394 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. xxvi 
 
 But the drift against absolutism was too stroug for this 
 school to have much permanent direct influence in France 
 before 1789. A great part of what the Physiocrates urged ^ 
 was undeniably useful and needed: the removal of restrictions 
 and restraints on industrial processes, the release from com- 
 pulsory labour, the suppression of monopolies, etc. If 
 introduced with due care, due regard for expectations and 
 habits formed by a long regime of governmental tutelage, 
 and due compensation for legitimate vested interests that had 
 grown up in connexion with this regime, such reforms might 
 have made it possible to restore order to the embarrassed 
 finances of France. But the attempt made by Turgot, the 
 most eminent member of the school, when he was for a brief 
 space (a.d. 1774-1776) controller -general, conspicuously 
 failed in the necessary care and circumspection : his reforms, 
 pressed on with the uncompromising rigidity of a doctrinaire, 
 alienated public opinion, and brought him into conflict with 
 the parlement, which, being the only traditional constitu- 
 tional check on royal authority, had strong support in the 
 growing popular sentiment for freedom. And when Turgot 
 fell, it was evident that the lead of the movement towards 
 organic change had passed from the Physiocrates, and that 
 the tendency under the influence of Eousseau to seek 
 national prosperity by a renovation of the structure of 
 government, instead of a limitation of its functions, would 
 irresistibly dominate the coming revolution. 
 
 Sundays may feel personally freer under an absolute government where he is 
 allowed these indulgences, than in a country with universal suffrage, where 
 the majority prevents him. 
 
 ^ Apart from the unhappy impCt unique. 
 
LECTUEE XXVII 
 
 DEVELOPMENT OF ENGLISH POLITY SINCE 1688 
 
 § 1. England and France took the leading part, in funda- 
 mentally different ways, in bringing about the last great 
 change in West European polity — the establishment of the 
 form of government which we call " constitutional monarchy" ; 
 the form which now prevails all but universally in Europe 
 outside Eussia, France being not essentially an exception 
 though it might at first sight seem so. France, it is true, is 
 a republic, not a monarchy : but the West European con- 
 stitutional monarchy is not, paradoxical as it may seem, 
 essentially monarchical in the ordinary sense : i.e. a per- 
 manent hereditary king is not essential to it. In many 
 cases — I do not say in all — if the functions performed 
 by the hereditary monarch were transferred to a President 
 elected for a term of years, the difference resulting would 
 certainly not be so fundamental as to lead us to regard it as 
 an essentially different form of government. 
 
 You will observe that it is this general change in West 
 European polity which I wish to characterise and explain, 
 and not the particular striking phenomenon which we 
 call the French Eevolution. I have had to direct special 
 attention to the movement of pre-revolutionary thought in 
 France : but in doing so I have always had in view its 
 effect in causing the general change in Western Europe, 
 and not its effect in causing a particular series of events in 
 France. If I had been trying to explain the particular 
 phenomenon of the French Eevolution, I should have had 
 to bring into view other causes which I have felt justified 
 
 395 
 
396 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 in ignoring. For — as Professor Seeley once impressively 
 expounded in a course of lectures delivered here — " the evil 
 which most visibly and indisputably brought on the French 
 Revolution was the bankruptcy of the French Government. 
 It was in despair of dealing alone with the deficit that 
 the banker Necker determined to strengthen himself by 
 summoning the States-General." And if we go further back 
 and inquire into the causes of this bankruptcy, we must not 
 be content to refer to the radically bad system of finance, 
 the inequalities of taxation, of which I spoke in the last 
 lecture. For these inequalities, though they were partly 
 the cause of the bankruptcy, were not the sole cause. The 
 bankruptcy, as Seeley says, was caused by war : and if we 
 inquire further, we may come to the conclusion that it was 
 caused by the ambition of Louis XIV. ; that it was a con- 
 sequence of the European wars kindled by him, and the 
 position in Europe which his policy gave to France, and 
 which debarred it from the policy of non-intervention which 
 could alone have lightened the financial burdens. But this 
 interesting line of thought I leave to the student of French 
 history. What we are now concerned with are the general 
 types of polity tending to prevail at different stages of the 
 political development of Europe, and the causes of transition 
 from one prevalent type to another ; and from this point 
 of view the bankruptcy of France and its causes become of 
 subordinate interest. 
 
 I have referred to this now, because I am proposing in 
 this lecture to direct special attention to the facts of English 
 history : and my justification for doing this is, that when 
 we are trying to explain the form of government which, by 
 the end of the third quarter of the nineteenth century, had 
 become all but universal in Western Europe, the state of 
 things in England is certainly a more obvious and indisputable 
 element of the explanation than the state of things in France. 
 I do not say that it is a more important element : if I had 
 thought this, I should not have claimed so much of your 
 attention for the development of political ideas in the 
 eighteenth century. I do regard the overflow of the tide 
 
XXVII ENGLISH POLITY SINCE l688 397 
 
 of revolutionary thought and feeling — of the .movement 
 in favour of Liberty, Equality, and Sovereignty of the 
 People — from France into the neighbouring countries, where, 
 since the splendid times of Louis XIV., the cultivated world 
 had been accustomed to read French literature, and to look 
 to France as the source of new ideas, new culture, new 
 ways of living, — I do regard this as a factor really second 
 to none in importance as a cause of the general transition. 
 At the same time, this French share of the causation is 
 more obscure, and more difficult precisely to measure : the 
 English share is more clear and unquestionable. For, how- 
 ever much these neighbouring lands were influenced by 
 French thought, they have not tried to imitate any of 
 the peculiar constitutions to which the constructive ingenuity 
 of the French mind, together with the rapidly recurring 
 crises of revolutionary change, has given birth, — neither the 
 constitution of 1791, nor the constitution of the year III., 
 nor the constitution of the year VIIL, nor, returning to 
 the Christian era, the constitution of 1848, nor that of 
 1870, nor that of 1875. What they have imitated has 
 been obviously and palpably the English constitution, just as 
 in France it was imitated in 1814 and 1830. 
 
 § 2. To the English constitution, then, I now turn. I 
 must begin by observing that its imitators have not always 
 known what it was or how different it was at different 
 stages : they have not thoroughly grasped the process of 
 change that had gone on in it between the Eevolution 
 of 1688 and the constitution-making period of the nine- 
 teenth century. This imperfect apprehension has continued 
 till very recent times, and even now still lingers in some 
 quarters. Indeed, we may say that there are two forms of 
 misapprehension. Sometimes the nineteenth -century con- 
 stitution is too much assimilated to what really existed in 
 the eighteenth ; sometimes mce versa. 
 
 To illustrate the first, I may direct attention to Blunt- 
 schli's-^ treatment of the subject. In examining this, we 
 must bear in mind that Bluntschli is a man of wide in- 
 
 ^ Theory of the State, Book vi. cliaps. xiv.-xvi. (English translation). 
 
398 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 formation as a politician, of liberal aims, and though not a 
 penetrating thinker, he is not a loose or careless one. In 
 his book you have an instructive account, from a modern 
 German point of view, of the movement by which con- 
 stitutional monarchy has become the prevalent type in the 
 West European states. According to Bluntschli, certain 
 "results" were arrived at by the Ee volution of 1688. 
 Absolute monarchy was rejected, and limited or constitu- 
 tional monarchy established, based on principles which the 
 Hanoverian kings, he says, found it difficult to understand, 
 but which — " circumstances being too strong for them " — 
 they could not refuse to recognise ; and in our own day 
 the "royal family" in England has become unreservedly 
 constitutional, while the monarchy has " lost neither respect 
 nor power " thereby, — observe, " not lost power." ^ He then 
 describes briefly how a constitution broadly resembling the 
 English has been — in the nineteenth century — established 
 in the Eomance states (omitting France), in Belgium and 
 Holland, and in Scandinavian and Teutonic countries. I 
 say "broadly resembling the English," because everywhere 
 supreme legislative power is in the hands of the monarch, 
 the representative assembly, and a senate or council, while 
 executive power is in the hands of a king and responsible 
 ministers. 
 
 But this last phrase leads us to the delicate question, 
 how the executive power is divided between the king and 
 his responsible ministers : and it is here that Bluntschli 
 shows the misapprehension of which I am speaking. Eor 
 he proceeds to contrast "true" and "false" ideas of consti- 
 tutional monarchy ; and in this contrast it is clearly 
 English constitutional monarchy — as much as any other 
 — of which he means to give the " true idea." When he 
 says that it is a "false idea of constitutional monarchy" 
 to suppose that the real power has passed from the king to 
 his ministers, he means that it is a false idea of English 
 constitutional monarchy no less than of any other. When 
 he says that the principle of constitutional monarchy is 
 1 Op. dU pp. 373, 374. 
 
XXVII ENGLISH POLITY SINCE 1 688 399 
 
 inconsistent with the idea " that the monarch is subordinate 
 to the national representatives or to his ministers, and that 
 he may be compelled by them to express a will other than 
 his own " ^ ; that " constitutional monarchy does not transfer 
 the centre of gravity in the government either to the 
 chambers or to the ministers " ^ ; that the constitutional 
 " monarch has a share in legislation which is usually decisive 
 as regards the substance of a law " ^ ; that the " whole 
 government" — i.e. the whole function of governing within 
 the limits laid down by law — is really and not formally 
 " concentrated in the monarch " * ; he apparently believes all 
 this to be true of English as well as continental specimens. 
 He is, indeed, aware of differences in the extent of limita- 
 tions imposed on the royal rights, and he recognises that 
 the English constitution " imposes more limitations upon the 
 royal rights than have been found tolerable by most of the 
 continental monarchies." ^ But he regards this as merely a 
 difference in degree ; he does not regard it as going so far 
 as to render the propositions above quoted inapplicable to 
 England. 
 
 Now, so far as Bluntschli — and I have taken him as the 
 representative of a school of thought widely extended in 
 Germany — intended these statements to be true of the facts 
 of English polity when he published his book in 1852, and 
 still more in 1875 when he published the fifth edition, I do 
 not think any duly instructed Englishman will doubt 
 that he was wrong. And he certainly did in part so intend 
 them : but partly, in his talk of " true and false " ideas, he 
 mixes up the question of fact with a question of what ought 
 to be, and partly with a merely verbal question. And as 
 both these kinds of confusion are commonly made in dis- 
 cussing topics of this kind, I will spend a minute or two in 
 making them clear. 
 
 Partly, Bluntschli argues that if the power of the nominal 
 head of the government is reduced to the point to which the 
 " false ideas " would reduce it, this nominal head should not 
 
 1 Oi?. cit. p. 405. 2 Q^^ cn^ p^ 4Qg_ 3 Qp^ ^n^ p^ 408. 
 
 4 Op. cit. p. 408. 5 Qp^ cit. p. 407. 
 
400 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 be called a monarch. Well, that is a mere question of 
 words : let us call this form of government — as Tennyson 
 — a " crowned republic " ; the name does not matter, the 
 practical question is whether it is a good thing or not. 
 But again, Bluntschli no doubt means to argue that it is not 
 a good thing : that we shall get better government on the 
 whole if the monarch is allowed to have a will of his own 
 and to carry out his own ideas — within the limits laid down 
 by law and imposed by the need of ministerial co-operation. 
 This, again, is a tenable view as to what ought to be, but it 
 should not be mixed up with a view of what actually exists 
 in England or any other country. At the same time, this 
 mixture is very common when we are considering any point 
 in a constitution which depends not solely or strictly on 
 law, but largely on custom and convention, on the general 
 opinion as to what any member of a government ought to 
 do, and the general approval which would be given to sys- 
 tematic resistance if he tried to do anything else. And that 
 is the case with the division of power between the monarch 
 and his ministers. 
 
 There is, in fact, a wide difference between the English 
 and the German species of constitutional monarchy. But 
 it is not, in the main, a legal difference : in both types 
 alike every governmental act of the monarch requires the 
 co-operation of a responsible minister : while in England no 
 more than in Germany is there any legal requirement that 
 the prime minister should be the recognised leader of a 
 majority of the house of representatives. The difference is, 
 that if the Queen of England were now (1899) to dismiss 
 Lord Salisbury, as the Emperor William dismissed Bismarck, 
 simply because she did not agree with his policy, her act 
 would meet with almost unanimous disapproval, which 
 would take effect in a refusal of supplies by an over- 
 whelming majority of the House of Commons, and so would 
 rapidly and certainly end in the humiliation and sub- 
 mission of the monarch. This would undoubtedly happen 
 in England : and therefore it would seem absurd in England 
 to say that this practical impossibility of dismissing a prime 
 
XXV ir ENGLISH POLITY SINCE 1 688 401 
 
 minister who has the contidence of the majority of the 
 House of Commons is due to a " false idea " of the functions 
 of a constitutional monarch : and if any one did say this, 
 he would be clearly understood to be expressing an opinion 
 as to conventions and expectations that ought to prevail, not 
 that he supposed to be actually prevalent. 
 
 But if the case were otherwise — as it doubtless was in 
 Germany when Bluntschli wrote — if opinion were divided 
 as to the proper normal extent of the power left by the 
 constitution to the monarch, any expression by a writer of 
 individual opinion as to what ought to be might have an 
 important effect in modifying the general opinion.. There 
 would thus be a strong temptation to say the " true idea " 
 of constitutional government is so and so, in the hope of 
 aiding in establishing it as the prevalent idea. 
 
 And, as I before said, I think that some English writers 
 on our history after 1688 have been influenced by the 
 same temptation to which Bluntschli has yielded, but have 
 been led by it in an opposite direction. They seem to 
 have vaguely believed, or at least to have been willing that 
 their readers should believe, that the Victorian phase of 
 English polity, — the system by which the monarch regularly 
 and normally accepts as prime minister the leader of the 
 party that has the majority in the House of Commons, allows 
 him the selection of his colleagues, and allows the Cabinet 
 so formed to determine the action of the Crown in most im- 
 portant matters, — that this system dates from the Eevolution 
 of 1688, or at any rate from the disuse of the royal veto 
 which began in William III.'s reign. This I hold to be a 
 complete mistake. Constitutional monarchy, in the sense in 
 which Locke's treatise aims at establishing it, i.e. in the sense 
 of the undisputed supremacy of law only capable of being 
 modified by King, Lords, and Commons, over the so-called 
 sovereign — this was both aimed at and established in 1688. 
 But the transfer of executive power, of governmental power 
 within these limits, from the king to a set of ministers of 
 whom the head is practically chosen by the parliamentary 
 majority — this was not aimed at, and there was scarcely even 
 
 2d 
 
402 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lfxt. 
 
 a germ of it for some time. There is no manifest sjmiptom of 
 a decline in royal power till about the middle of George II.'s 
 reign, and after this the substantial power of the king 
 revived under G-eorge III. 
 
 § 3. The Victorian polity is only discoverable in germ 
 in the eighteenth century, and has taken its present shape 
 in the main since the first Eeform Bill. The established 
 eighteenth-century view was that the prime minister, and 
 other ministers, were chosen by the monarch. One or other 
 of them had, no doubt, to keep a majority in the House of 
 Commons ; but that was conceived as a part of the busi- 
 ness on which the Crown employed them. The fact that if 
 they could not do this business they had to go, did not 
 present itself as a restriction on royal power, any more 
 than the fact that a general who cannot maintain military 
 discipline would have to go, under the most absolute mon- 
 arch who wanted his armies to win battles. 
 
 But it may be said, a minister who has to make and 
 keep a majority must be dependent on the House of Com- 
 mons, and must ultimately be practically chosen by it. 
 !N"ot so, for the fact that he was the minister of the Crown 
 helped him a considerable way towards a majority. Here 
 I may observe that if the effect of 1688 is commonly over- 
 rated, the change that took place after 1660 is — as Seeley 
 points out — underrated.^ The method by which the English 
 
 ^ Cf. Seeley, Introduction to Political Science, p. 253. 
 
 [On the outside of this lecture Mr. Sidgwick made the note "Borrowed 
 in part from Seeley ; this must be carefully looked to in case of publication." 
 And it will be found by any one who compares, that from this point onwards 
 the lecture is in fact largely taken from Seeley's Introdicction to Political 
 Science (Lectures iii. and iv. of the second series in the volume), though the 
 writers are by no means in complete agreement. Not only are pieces quoted, 
 but in other passages, not exactly quotations, the ideas and phraseology are 
 used. This book of Sir John Seeley's was published posthumously in 1896, 
 and was prepared for publication by Mr. Sidgwick ; and I believe that it was 
 while he was editing it that the present lecture assumed, broadly speaking, 
 the form it now has. To what extent it would have been altered, had he 
 lived to put these lectures into book form, I cannot of course say. 
 
 It is interesting to observe that these lectures of Sir John Seeley's were 
 not altogether new to Mr. Sidgwick when he edited them. He had read 
 them previously in manuscript, and there are rather full notes on them 
 
XXVII ENGLISH POLITY SINCE 1688 403 
 
 sovereign deals with Parliament in the eighteenth century- 
 dates from the Eestoration or soon after. Influence 
 became an important factor soon after the Eestoration — 
 influence being a term including all the different means 
 of persuasion which the Crown, partly by its prestige, 
 partly by its wealth and patronage, could exert upon 
 individuals."^ For the permanence of Parliament dates 
 from the Eestoration, and, as Seeley says, " When Parlia- 
 ment became permanent, the Crown had this compensa- 
 tion, that Parliament also came within its reach and so 
 became subject to its influence." ^ 
 
 Thus conflict between monarchical and parliamentary 
 power in the executive government is, we may say, doubly 
 veiled in the eighteenth century. Parliament preserves 
 all the legal forms of a monarchy exercising, within the 
 law, real executive power and having a share in legislation : 
 but in the background it has the power of the purse and of 
 refusing the Mutiny Act. The king knows this, and does 
 not attempt open fight with Parliament. He lets the veto 
 become obsolete : but in the background he too has a for- 
 midable force — influence. The king retired from view and 
 ceased to be an impressive figure in internal politics : but 
 those who lived in the eighteenth century under these 
 historically unimpressive kings always complain of their 
 having too much power. In the middle of George III.'s 
 reign — nearly a hundred years after the Glorious Eevolution 
 — a resolution was proposed in the House of Commons 
 " that the power of the Crown has increased, is increasing, 
 and ought to be diminished." It is only for a compara- 
 tively brief period in the middle of the eighteenth century 
 that it goes under an eclipse. 
 
 Let us briefly pass in review the monarchs after 1689. 
 William III. no one regards as merely ceremonial. Anne by 
 
 among his papers, evidently written for discussion with Seeley, and express- 
 ing points of agreement and disagreement ; and it appears that at the same 
 time Seeley was reading the lectures or some of them which have developed 
 into the present book, and doubtless criticising them. The object apparently 
 was to secure, so far as possible, agreement and harmony of treatment. — Ed.] 
 1 Cf. Seeley, cyp. cit. p. 261. 2 q^^ ^^^^ p^ 261. 
 
404 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 her own will made and unmade ministers ; her will was a 
 main factor in determining important changes of policy.^ 
 When we come to George I. and George II., it certainly 
 seems as if power had passed to Walpole for a long time ; 
 but so under the French kings, even after Louis XIV., the 
 power often seems concentrated in the hands of ministers. 
 In both cases it is essentially because the king's favour is 
 secured to the minister.^ And this is how the matter is 
 regarded by Walpole's contemporaries. For half a century 
 after 1689 there is no indication that the House of Com- 
 mons even desires to use its control over legislation and 
 taxation to force the monarch to appoint the minister 
 selected by it. A minister supported by a majority of the 
 House of Commons, such as Walpole, is powerful no doubt, 
 but there is no idea that he is " powerful against the sove- 
 reign." ^ The sovereign never tries to dismiss him and fails 
 — there is no trial of strength, — but there is no idea that 
 there is anything to prevent his doing so, except his con- 
 viction that Walpole does his business better than any one 
 else could do it, gets him the money he wants, etc. And 
 granting that the Minister has his way to a great extent, — 
 that may happen in a despotism. No doubt when the 
 coalition against Walpole has grown strong he can no 
 longer do the king's business; he has to be dropped; but 
 this does not imply any new constraint on the king's choice. 
 ''Very far back in our history the Parliament has occa- 
 sionally dictated to " the king " what Ministers he shall not 
 consult." * That is a very different thing from taking the 
 choice out of his hands. 
 
 1 Cf. Seeley, o^. cit. p. 274. 
 
 2 The parallel between Walpole and e.g. Richelieu or Mazarin is, however, 
 incomplete, in that the latter did not derive their power from any source 
 but the Crown, whereas Walpole derived his partly from his capacity of 
 managing the House of Commons. I think the tendency to parliamentary 
 ministers was established when Parliament became permanent, with the power 
 of the purse. If a king is led to choose his first minister for his capacity of 
 managing Parliament, the step is not great to the position in which he will 
 find it necessary to take the minister whom the leaders of the majority 
 want. 
 
 « Op. cit p. 276. ^ 0^. cit, p. 276. 
 
XXVII ENGLISH POLITY SINCE 1 68 8 405 
 
 Still, causes tending to make the minister independent 
 of the sovereign did no doubt begin to operate when the 
 Hanoverian kings came in : though I think, with Seeley, 
 that the first clear indications of the growth of this system 
 appeared in the last fifteen years of George II.'s reign. In 
 any case' they are due not to the Eevolution, but to " the 
 working of the very peculiar system of party that came in 
 with the House of Hanover." -^ This is, briefly, the system of 
 having the Whigs always in office, which the Hanoverian 
 kings have to accept until, in the course of time, Toryism runs 
 itself clear of Jacobitism. This practically threw the king 
 into the hands of the Whigs : who could, therefore, by hold- 
 ing together, force their choice on him. Thus the Pelhams 
 were forced on him in 1745 : probably not from any deep- 
 laid "intention of carrying the Eevolution further, and re- 
 ducing to a lower point the power of the Crown." ^ Still it 
 did have this effect : and it appears that George II. " was 
 conscious of a paralysis creeping upon the monarchy. When 
 some one praised the English constitution in his hearing, he 
 said it was . . . not a good one for the king." ^ 
 
 But when we come to George III., there is a revival. 
 In fact, a note in Bluntschli shows that it is the con- 
 stitution in George III.'s reign that he has in view when 
 he extends his " true idea " of constitutional monarchy even 
 to the English constitution : his mistake is in supposing 
 the Victorian constitution to be practically identical with 
 the Georgian. But English writers often seem to fall into 
 the opposite mistake of representing George III. as strug- 
 gling against the polity established by the Eevolution. 
 George III. has no idea of reviving any of the struggle of 
 James II. : he has no idea of suspending, or dispensing from, 
 or in any way violating or evading the obligation of any 
 law, or of disputing or limiting the legislative power of 
 Parliament. What he struggles against is the new usurpa- 
 tion of the Whig party introduced in 1745, facilitated, as I 
 have said, by the fact that, an important part of the old 
 
 1 Seeley, op. dt, p. 278. 2 cf. (yp, dt. pp. 278-281. 
 
 3 Op. cit. p. 283. 
 
406 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 royalist party being still actively or passively attached to 
 the Stuarts, George II. could not trust a Tory government. 
 
 With George III. this inevitable subserviency to the Whigs 
 ceases : and he struggles on the whole successfully against 
 the " new usurpation " by which the Pelhams were forced 
 on George II. As Seeley says, " Throughout his reign 
 you find him steadily insisting . . . that the minister shall 
 be his minister " : and " on the whole he is successful. The 
 disturbed period before 1770 ends in the ministry of Lord 
 North, who is emphatically the king's own minister, and 
 who holds office for twelve years ; the second short period 
 of disturbance ends in the ministry of the younger Pitt, 
 also agreeable to the king, which lasts eighteen years ; and 
 after Pitt's death the other side can only hold office about 
 a year." ^ 
 
 It is sometimes supposed that Pitt, having the support 
 of the country, was really independent of the Crown ; and 
 that in choosing him the king had in fact put himself under 
 a master. I recommend any one who thinks so to read a 
 paper from which an extract is published by Lord Eose- 
 bery — an unimpeachable authority on such a point. It is 
 " an analysis of the House of Commons, dated May 1, 1788, 
 which has been recently discovered among the papers of 
 one of Pitt's private secretaries. In it the * party of the 
 Crown' is estimated at 185 members. * This party in- 
 cludes all those who would probably support His Majesty's 
 Government under any minister not peculiarly unpopular.' 
 ' The independent or unconnected members of the House ' 
 are calculated at 108; Fox's party at 138; and that of 
 Pitt at 52. Even this unflattering computation is further 
 discounted by the remark that ' of this party, were there a 
 new Parliament and Mr. P. no longer to continue minister, 
 not above twenty would be returned.' " ^ Well, through 
 the powerful influence to which this document gives such 
 striking testimony, " the party that had humiliated his 
 predecessor is held by George III. at arm's length. The 
 
 • 1 Seeley, o/?. cit. p. 283. 
 2 Lord Rosebery's Pitt, p. 78. 
 
XXV II ENGLISH POLITY SINCE 1688 407 
 
 party of the Pelhams, directed after the retirement of New- 
 castle by Kockingham and after Eockingham's time by Fox, 
 and known in this reign simply as the Whig party, can 
 only at long intervals during this reign force its way into 
 power, The king will tolerate them for a moment if he 
 sees no alternative, but always under protest. They are 
 not his ministers, and it is his fixed opinion that he has the 
 right to appoint ministers at his pleasure. Accordingly he 
 receives them sullenly, watches them narrowly, and struggles, 
 if he cannot appoint the whole Cabinet, at least to have re- 
 presentatives on it, some Thurlow or EUenborough. And 
 then he waits for his opportunity, which commonly arrives 
 in about a year, dismisses them, and once more chooses a 
 ministry for himself." 
 
 " Tor about half a century George III. was able to keep 
 our system at this point. But under George IV. and 
 William IV. the " dependence of the minister on Parliament 
 " grows again rapidly. Canning forces himself on George IV., 
 and if it cannot exactly be said that Earl Grey forced him- 
 self on William, it is at least true that the share of the 
 king in his appointment, compared to the share of the 
 people, was as one to a hundred." ^ 
 
 § 4. After the Eeform Bill in 1834 the power of 
 appointing the minister is found to have gone. " William 
 IV., tired of the Eeform Ministry, seized the opportunity of 
 Lord Althorp being called to the upper house to make, as 
 he said, 'a new arrangement,' dismissed his ministers, and 
 sent for Sir Eobert Peel. Then it appeared how our con- 
 stitution had insensibly altered. The problem proposed to 
 Sir Eobert was insoluble. . . . The House did not dispute 
 the king's right to appoint his own minister, they treated 
 that minister with all due respect ; still when he unfolded 
 his policy to the House it failed to obtain the approbation 
 of the majority." ^ 
 
 It is interesting to note the details of the struggle. 
 There is no suggestion of refusing the supplies : even a 
 
 ^ Seeley, op. cit. pp. 283-4. 
 2 6>p. cit. pp. 284-5. 
 
408 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 motion of Hume's to limit them to three months is dropped : 
 nor is there a motion of want of confidence. What would 
 have happened if Peel had taken the line of confining him- 
 self to executive functions and leaving the Houses to legis- 
 late, we cannot say with certainty, but probably he would 
 have been forced to resign. However, he thought it neces- 
 sary to have a policy, that is, to propose legislative measures, 
 to " offer improvements in civil jurisprudence, reform of 
 ecclesiastical law, the settlement of the tithe question in 
 Ireland, the commutation of tithe in England, the removal 
 of any real abuse in the Church, the redress of the grievances 
 of which the Dissenters have any just ground to complain." 
 He thus took up a position which rendered it necessary for 
 him to resign when the majority would not have his policy. 
 N'ow what precisely was the alteration that had taken 
 place ? Suppose that " a similar appointment had been 
 made in George II. 's reign, ... in what way would the 
 minister have avoided the same fate " ? The answer is that 
 " in the eighteenth century a minister had a majority 
 because he was minister." ^ This was not necessarily by 
 bribery; compare the elder Pitt's speech on the repeal 
 of the Stamp Act — "The gentleman must not tell us that 
 we passed the Act ourselves, and are therefore as much 
 responsible for it as he is. No ! we took it on his credit as 
 minister. ... I wish the House had not this habit : but 
 so it is. Even that chair, Mr. Speaker, looks too often 
 towards St James'." But the influence of places and 
 pensions was a solid support of this " habit." ^ The Houses 
 knew that they were responsible for legislation : and Pitt's 
 is here an advocate's speech. To say, as Seeley does, that 
 
 ^ Seeley, oj?. clt. p. 285. 
 
 '■^ Compare Hume, Essay vi., on the Independency of Parliament (published 
 1742), "The Crown has so many offices at its disposal, that, when assisted 
 by the honest and disinterested part of the house, it will always command 
 the resolutions of the whole so far, at least, as to preserve the antient con- 
 stitution from danger. We may, therefore, give to this influence what name- 
 we please ; we may call it by the invidious appellations of corruption and 
 dependence; but some degree and some kind of it are inseparable from the 
 very nature of the constitution, and necessary to the preservation of our 
 mixed government." Compare also Paley (a.d. 1785). 
 
XXVII ENGLISH POLITY SINCE 1688 409 
 
 " it had not yet entered the mind of the representatives 
 that they were entrusted with the government of the 
 country" — if in government we include legislation — 
 seems to me a great exaggeration. Still, " they were in 
 the habit of thinking that it was the business of the king 
 to govern the country. When therefore he was pleased 
 through his ministers to explain " that he held certain 
 measures needful for executive government, they considered 
 that they were entitled, as regards their general expediency, 
 to take " them on the king's credit ; only they held them- 
 selves bound to consider these measures as they affected the 
 people, their constituents." ^ 
 
 And this is very near the relation of the Emperor 
 William to the Eeichstag; an instance which shows that 
 the maintenance of this form of constitutional monarchy 
 does not necessarily depend on corruption, though actually 
 worked by corruption in England in the eighteenth century. 
 In Germany this is not used. But there are other supports 
 besides parliamentary opinion favourable to the king's free 
 choice: — the idea that, owing to the traditions of the 
 monarchy and the loyalty in the army, the king could, if 
 pressed too hard, defy Parliament and win. The future of 
 this species of constitutional monarchy, apparently firm 
 in Germany, struggling in the Scandinavian States, is an 
 interesting speculation ; but prophecy is neither my duty 
 nor my pleasure. 
 
 Of the change in England we may recognise several 
 causes. Firstly, there had been a gradual decay of royal 
 influence in George III.'s reign, against which the king had 
 struggled with characteristic firmness, but against which, 
 naturally, George IV. was powerless. The Eockingham 
 Whigs had reduced the Crown patronage, and probably the 
 great growth of the nation in wealth and population had 
 diminished the relative importance of the Court.^ " In the 
 crowded, commercial, manufacturing England of George IV.," 
 members of Parliament " ceased to be courtiers." ^ 
 
 1 Seeley, op. ciL p. 287. ^ Cf. op. cit. pp. 288-9. 
 
 3 Op. cit. p. 289. 
 
410 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. xxvii 
 
 The growth of the legislative business of Parliament 
 was another cause. Thus, when it had become " the main 
 business of a minister to legislate, to legislate not on the 
 succession to the Crown, or on the Pretender, or on tests 
 and abjuration oaths, or other matters in which the king 
 was interested, but on workhouses and factories, and banks 
 and tariffs and navigation laws, — questions on which " ^ the 
 traditions of the Crown did not dispose it to active inter- 
 vention, — there was a natural tendency for the minister to 
 become the minister of Parliament : to resist which it 
 would have required a monarch quite different from George 
 IV. or even William IV. Again, the personal unpopu- 
 larity and disreputableness of these sons of George III., 
 especially George IV., were a not unimportant factor in 
 dispelling the element of personal loyalty in the " king's 
 friends " of George III.'s reign. And, finally, the movement 
 of ideas, and the absence of any clear perception of the 
 difference between the later polity and the earlier, facili- 
 tated the change. This cannot occur again. If a Hohen- 
 zollern monarch submits to take a parliamentary prime 
 minister, he will know what he is doing. 
 
 ^ Seeley, oj). cit, p. 290. 
 
LECTUEE XXVIII 
 
 CONSTITUTION-MAKING OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 
 
 § 1. In preceding lectures we saw how in the formation of the 
 modern state as we agree in conceiving it — especially in 
 contrast with the medieval state — the first stage was naturally 
 accompanied by the tendency to absolute monarchy which 
 we find in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It 
 appeared to be essential to the modern notion of the state 
 that there should be somewhere a power capable of making 
 laws, and which, accordingly, being the source of law, could 
 not be bound by any laws : and it was essential to the 
 ideal of the modern state — in a normal and not anarchical 
 condition — that this power should be supreme ; that it 
 should receive the complete obedience of an overwhelming 
 majority of the citizens, and through their obedience be 
 able to bring the organised force of the community to crush 
 any open resistance of individuals or groups. And I 
 pointed out that the easiest way of arriving at a fairly 
 approximate realisation of this ideal was to establish this 
 power on a monarchical basis, concentrating all supreme 
 authority in the hands of one individual ; and that hence 
 we have an important body — both of thinkers and practical 
 men — maintaining from the sixteenth to the eighteenth 
 century that the advantage of order thus obtained, the 
 exclusion of the evils of anarchy, altogether outweighed 
 the admitted drawbacks of absolute monarchy. 
 
 Nor was the opinion in favour of absolute monarchy 
 necessarily affected by the progress of ideas which, as I 
 previously said, gradually modernised the king from the old 
 
 411 
 
412 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 quasi-feudal conception as having a sort of property in the 
 country. Indeed, even on the very eve of the Eevolution 
 in France, in 1787, the keeper of the royal seal affirmed 
 to the judicial body called the Parlement of Paris — "The 
 sovereign power in France resides in the king alone : he 
 is responsible to God alone for the use of it : the right 
 of making laws is in his sole hands independent and 
 indivisible." But the keeper of the royal seal had not 
 moved with his times. In the age of Louis XIV. this 
 proposition expressed the overwhelmingly prevalent opinion. 
 But as time went on, and free criticism was developed in 
 France and diffused its influence over other parts of Europe 
 — criticism first of ecclesiastical and then of secular rule — 
 there was, as we have seen, a strong drift of educated opinion 
 the other way. And though we are not, of course, to suppose 
 that this drift of political thought was the only cause of the 
 revolution which led to a new form of polity — I have 
 noticed the specially financial reasons, due to the manner 
 in which France had grown out of feudalism, which im- 
 portantly co-operated — still, the drift of opinion was, I 
 cannot doubt, a really important factor. 
 
 It is to be observed that there are two different 
 kinds of defects in absolute monarchy. It is not only a 
 defect that the supreme power of law-making is in the 
 hands of an individual, who may not use it in the interests 
 of the community : it is a further defect that the execution 
 of the laws being under the supreme control of the same 
 person, there is no sufficient guarantee that he will observe 
 even his own laws, if passion or favour urge him to break 
 them. The distinction between the two is important, because, 
 as G. C. Lewis has said, " There is a great difference between 
 deliberate, universal, and avowed, and unpremeditated, par- 
 ticular, and casual rapacity and injustice. Many governments 
 which habitually act towards their subjects in the most op- 
 pressive manner would be ashamed to reduce the maxims by 
 which they are in fact guided into the form of a law, and to 
 publish it to their subjects and the whole civilised world.' ^ 
 
 ^ Government of Dependencies, Preliminary Inquiry, p. 30. 
 
XXVIII CONSTITUTION- MAKING OF THE 19 TH CENTURY 413 
 
 Thus, even if the same individual is supreme both in 
 legislation and in the execution of the laws, it would be an 
 important gain to his subjects if he could, at any rate, be relied 
 on to keep his own laws. This leads us to see that, apart 
 from the question of sovereignty, there is an obvious gain in 
 separating legislative from executive and judicial functions 
 in such a way that those who execute the law are as much 
 bound to obey it as those on whom they execute it : and that 
 the question whether they have obeyed it or not may always 
 be brought before impartial judges for decision. And ob- 
 serve, even when sovereignty is placed in the hands of a 
 people — or of an assembly representing the people — this 
 division of functions is no less necessary for the security of 
 minorities. A supreme assembly may be tyrannical no less 
 than an individual : the only sense in which democratic 
 institutions can be strictly called " freer " than a monarchy 
 is that under a monarchy a majority may be oppressed, 
 while under a democracy it can only be a minority.^ 
 
 The general recognition of these truths in the first part 
 of the century of constitution -making that we have just 
 gone through, was mainly due to Montesquieu. He found, 
 as I have said, this separation of powers realised in a 
 striking degree in the British constitution of his time, and 
 his influence caused the eyes of the world to be fixed on it as 
 a pattern. Briefly stated, the chief feature of Montesquieu's 
 eulogy of the British constitution, was that by giving the 
 three functions of government — legislative, executive, and 
 judicial — to differently constituted organs, and, in the main, 
 separate and independent organs, it secured the liberty 
 of the individual from illegal oppression : while, by making 
 an assembly which was representative of the people an 
 essential constituent of the legislature, it approximately 
 secured that no law was passed, and especially no tax 
 imposed, without the approval of at any rate an important 
 part of the people. 
 
 In the English constitution of Montesquieu's time, 
 indeed — and for eighty years after the publication of V Esprit 
 
 1 Cf. Elements of Politics, chap. xx. § 2. 
 
414 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 de>8 Lois — the principle of representation was very imper- 
 fectly carried out. But suppose this imperfect representa- 
 tion rectified by an extended and properly distributed 
 suffrage, and we get a constitution in which, if the ideal 
 of popular sovereignty is not completely realised, it is at 
 any rate realised to a considerable extent — though in an 
 indirect way — by the control of the representative assembly 
 over legislation and taxation, and the check exercised on the 
 executive government through the necessity of obtaining 
 supplies from that assembly. At the same time, the inde- 
 pendence of the judicature — including the jury — and the 
 strict limitation on the power of the executive to arrest and 
 imprison before trial, secure the reign of law, and the 
 effective protection of the liberty of the individual citizen. 
 
 Here we have, summarily stated, the last result of 
 political development in the majority of the states of 
 Western Europe. It is a type varying, as I have pointed 
 out, very widely, and realising the ideal just sketched in 
 varying degrees : England and Germany being the two poles 
 within which the variation, speaking broadly, occurs : and 
 it is not confined to the monarchical form : its most essential 
 features being found in the present government of republican 
 France.^ 
 
 In such a constitution we may say the ideal of Montes- 
 quieu and the ideal of Rousseau are both realised to a con- 
 siderable extent. But I ought to add that Eousseau would 
 have repudiated this view : regarding it as essential that 
 the sovereignty of the people should be directly exercised, 
 and not indirectly through representatives. " The English 
 people," he says, " are only free at the moments of parlia- 
 mentary elections." ^ I mention this because two modern 
 nations, in which democratic ideas have had fullest develop- 
 ment, have taken important steps in the direction of 
 Eousseau's ideal— the United States of America, by con- 
 stitutions limiting ordinary legislation ; Switzerland further, 
 
 ^ Cf. my Elements of Polities^ chap. xxii. § 5. 
 
 ^ "Le peuple Anglais pense etre libre, il se trompe fort; il ne Test que 
 durant I'^lection des membres du parlement." — Contrat Social, Bk. iii. ch. xv. 
 
XXVIII CONSTITUTION-MAKING OF THE 19TH CENTURY 415 
 
 by the Keferendum — reference to all vote-possessing citizens 
 of laws framed by their representatives. 
 
 These are both Federal States, and for the present I am 
 only concerned with the constitution-making of what may be 
 called Unitary, as distinct from Federal states. I shall not 
 describe it in detail ; that would, in my limits, tend to an 
 unprofitable array of dates and dry summaries. But I may 
 note that France takes the lead, and till the middle of the 
 nineteenth century is at once the most daring in her experi- 
 ments, and the most widely influential on other states — 
 that is, the party of reform and revolution gets its impulse 
 from France. And even after the series of short-lived con- 
 stitutional experiments which belong to the revolutionary 
 crisis, the lapse into military despotism, the reaction in 
 Europe against that despotism, and the restoration — com- 
 pelled by Europe — of the monarchy in France : — after all 
 this France again becomes a leading centre of influence in 
 the region of political ideas, in the second quarter of the 
 century, until, after the second republic (1848) has led to 
 the second empire, a general distrust of the French methods 
 of arriving at the desired union of freedom and order spreads 
 through Western Europe: and the third republic (1870- 
 1875), founded on disaster, has hitherto been watched with 
 cold curiosity rather than admiring sympathy by neighbouring 
 nations. 
 
 § 2. The relation of England to the movement has been 
 fundamentally different. As I have said, England supplied 
 the chief pattern for the form of government in which, after 
 struggle and conflict, the change ultimately results, and, as 
 we have had occasion to observe, the English constitution, 
 before it comes to be used as a pattern, has had a place in 
 that movement of ideas of which France is the focus ; be- 
 cause an important factor in this movement is the contrast 
 that certain influential French writers — first Voltaire and 
 then Montesquieu — drew between the liberty that they 
 actually saw in England in the middle of the eighteenth 
 century and the absence of liberty in France. Indeed we 
 may say that — under the influence especially of Montes- 
 
4i6 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 quieu — the British constitution was transmuted from a fact 
 into an idea. But the idea thus formed did not exactly 
 represent the fact at the time ; and, as we saw in the last 
 lecture, was fundamentally unlike what the fact is now ; the 
 ultimate result of our revolution in 1688 was very different 
 from its immediate aim. 
 
 The ultimate result has come to be the system of what 
 Bagehot calls " Cabinet Government " : in which the ex- 
 ecutive powers are practically in the hands of a committee 
 of the two Houses of Parliament, selected by their head, the 
 prime minister, who, in his turn, is practically determined 
 — in ordinary cases — by the majority of the House of 
 Commons, which can at any time dismiss him and his 
 colleagues, subject to an appeal to the electorate : he is 
 protected from complete subserviency to the House by the 
 power of dissolution. The power of the hereditary monarch 
 and that of the House of Lords are both of a subordinate 
 kind, though not unimportant. The nobility can check 
 legislation through the House of Lords ; but they practically 
 do not claim to resist the House of Commons on the main 
 features of any question on which its opinion is manifestly 
 in stable harmony with the opinion of a decisive majority of 
 the constituencies ; they only claim to enforce delay and re- 
 consideration and an appeal to the electorate. The monarch 
 has a right to know everything, to have everything dis- 
 cussed with him, and by means of this discussion can in- 
 fluence critical decisions ; also he has the important power 
 of dissolving the House of Commons, and ascertaining 
 whether the Cabinet or the majority of the House of Com- 
 mons is really supported by the people ^ ; but the direction 
 of policy is with the prime minister and Cabinet. All 
 this is admitted in current controversy. 
 
 ^ ["That is, the monarch would not act unconstitutionally by dismissing 
 his ministers, even though they had the confidence of a majority in the 
 representative assembly, and appointing others, who would then dissolve the 
 assembly, in hopes of changing the balance of parties in parliament by a 
 new election." See the author's Elemerds of Politics, chap. xxii. p. 439, 2nd 
 edition. This chapter may be consulted for a further treatment of the 
 subject of this paragraph and of other parts of this lecture. — Ed.] 
 
XXVIII CONSTITUTION-MAKING OF THE 19TH CENTURY 417 
 
 But, as we saw, this is quite a different form of 
 government from that which the Eevolution of 1688 was 
 intended to bring about : and for a long time the process 
 by which it was gradually being brought about was im- 
 perfectly apprehended even by acute observers. The Ee- 
 volution was intended to make Parliament supreme in 
 legislation : but it was not intended to give a majority of 
 the House of Commons the power of practically nominating 
 the executive, nor even to enable it to force legislation on 
 the monarch, whose assent was still formally necessary to 
 bills. This is evidently the view of Locke, whose work on 
 civil government was, as I said, considered to give the 
 theory of the Eevolution of 1688. The monarch is, for 
 Locke, the real head of the executive, really supreme in 
 administration, and really a member of the complex organ 
 which lays down the laws. Locke's whole point is that 
 he is not supreme in legislation : that his duty is to 
 conform to the law laid down by Parliament : that his 
 suspending or dispensing from such law is a violation of 
 his trust. 
 
 And if you look at the official account of the rights of 
 the monarch in Blackstone (a.d. 1765), you will see that he 
 is not only supposed to direct foreign affairs by his " sole 
 prerogative of making war and peace, treaties and alliances," 
 but even in domestic affairs, as a constituent part of the 
 legislature, generalissimo of the army, the fountain of justice 
 and honour, the head of the Church, his range of power is 
 very great. The House of Commons is understood by 
 Blackstone to be able to prevent the abuse of these powers 
 by impeachment of ministers : but no reader of Blackstone 
 would dream that the substance of these powers had passed 
 to a committee selected by a chief practically chosen by a 
 majority of that House ; and in fact, as we saw in the last 
 lecture, this change had not been accomplished in Black- 
 stone's time. But what still enabled the monarch to hold 
 the House of Commons balanced was not the power of 
 veto on legislation, which was practically obsolete^, but the 
 influence exercised on members of the House by the 
 
 2 E 
 
4l8 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 Crown, partly through the survival — especially in the 
 Tory party — of an opinion favourable to real monarchical 
 rule, within the law, but largely through the solid induce- 
 ments of places and pensions. The indispensability of 
 the latter was, as I said, clear to the cool but somewhat 
 cynical observation of Hume, who told the declaimers 
 against corruption that they were attacking the force that 
 maintained the balance of the constitution: and that if 
 corruption were put an end to, the tendency of the English 
 constitution to become a republic must be irresistible.-^ But 
 it was not clear to Montesquieu : the constitution which 
 Montesquieu admires was the constitution officially recognised, 
 not that which was practically working. Its chief merit was 
 supposed to lie in the separation of powers by which the 
 tyrannic preponderance of either, dangerous to individual 
 liberty, was prevented : whereas in Cabinet government, as 
 we now know it, the intimate practical union of legislative 
 and executive functions in a small committee of Parliament, 
 enjoying the confidence of the majority of the House of 
 Commons, is the most marked characteristic. The strong 
 mutual check actually exercised, under the system of Cabinet 
 government, by the legislature on the executive and vice 
 versa, is unlike anything conceived by Montesquieu. 
 
 This misapprehension is historically important, because 
 it is the British constitution as conceived by Blackstone 
 and Montesquieu which the founders of the American con- 
 stitution had before them, not exactly as a pattern, but as 
 a type of which they might copy the merits while avoiding 
 the defects : and in fact if we compare the American con- 
 stitution with our own at various stages, we see that this 
 result has been to a great extent attained. The American 
 president really has the power of veto,^ which the English 
 king has long only formally retained : the president really 
 does appoint and dismiss his own ministers ; the decisions of 
 the executive are really his decisions and not theirs : and in 
 order that he may not use this power to control the House 
 
 ' Hume, Essay vi. 
 '^ Liable, however, to be over-ridden by two-thirds of Congress. 
 
XXVIII CONSTITUTION-MAKING OF THE 19 TH CENTURY 419 
 
 of Eepresentatives or the Senate, his ministers are prevented 
 from sitting in either House. 
 
 But in the West European states, in which constitutional 
 government is mostly the product of the nineteenth century, 
 it is the later stage of development — Cabinet government — 
 which has in most cases been adopted : though owing to 
 the want of clear distinction between the two, the power of 
 the monarch has been left somewhat indefinite and varying. 
 In fact, as I have said, constitutional monarchy fluctuates 
 between two types broadly corresponding to what Bluntschli 
 calls " true " and " false," but which it seems more impartial 
 to call German and English (or new English, since the German 
 is very like the old English) : one in which the hereditary 
 monarch is really head of the executive, though the consent 
 of the representative assembly is necessary for legislation and 
 taxation ; the other in which the main part of the executive 
 power has passed to a Cabinet presided over by the leader of 
 the party holding a majority in the representative assembly. 
 
 Observe that, since the difference depends mainly on 
 custom and opinion and not on law, it is not always 
 possible to say to which type a particular polity at a par- 
 ticular time approximates. For if the king's confidence is 
 given to a prime minister who has also the confidence of 
 the country^ and the support of an assured majority in the 
 representative assembly, there is no clear indication on 
 which side power lies. The question is, what would happen 
 if the monarch tried to dismiss the minister ; and that we 
 can only tell when the time comes.^ The point is not 
 whether at any particular time the monarch is a nonentity 
 and the minister all-powerful : for this is often the case in 
 an absolute monarchy under a weak king. The question is, 
 whether if the monarch wished to dismiss the minister he 
 would find him too strong. 
 
 1 This was the case with William Pitt (the younger) in George III.'s reign, 
 and with Bismarck in Germany in our own time. 
 
 2 Besides, even if this were tried and failed once, it might succeed another 
 time if the opportunity were better taken : thus the balance of power might 
 oscillate. 
 
420 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 § 3. In saying that the English type is the prevalent 
 one, I ignore minor differences which are not unimportant. 
 For instance, there is a difference as to the second chamber, 
 whose continued resistance to legislation approved by the 
 lower house can be overcome in England by the creation 
 of peers, whereas this is not the case in most Continental 
 states. But I do not think that this makes as much 
 practical difference as it might seem to do, since the 
 Continental aristocracies have not much resisting force; 
 the main struggle is between monarchy and democracy. 
 
 But speaking broadly, what I have called the English type 
 has been practically imitated in Belgium, which has given 
 for more than sixty years a particularly regular and precise 
 example of the working of the English kind of constitutional 
 monarchy: and in Holland also, since 1848, this type has 
 been adopted. Portugal, after a stormy period in the second 
 quarter of the century, with revolutions backward and for- 
 ward, has had since 1852 — as I understand — peaceful 
 parliamentary government, in which the principle that the 
 leader of the parliamentary majority is to be prime minister 
 has been practically accepted : and the Sardinian con- 
 stitution of 1848 — extended between 1860 and 1870 to 
 the rest of Italy — has been also worked on the same prin- 
 ciple. The same may be said, since 1876, of Spain — which, 
 however, has had a remarkably disturbed and unstable 
 political development during the first three-quarters of the 
 nineteenth century. 
 
 In the Eomance countries generally, then, we have 
 parliamentary government unmistakably prevalent, and in all 
 cases, except France, in a monarchical form : the Parliament 
 being constructed everywhere on the two-chamber system,, 
 though it is the majority in the representative — or the more 
 directly or simply representative — chamber which is under- 
 stood to give the indispensable support to the ministers in 
 power. 
 
 I say " the representative, or the more directly or simply 
 representative," because in almost all these cases — Italy is 
 the only exception — the members of the senate, or upper 
 
XXVIII CONSTITUTION-MAKING OF THE 19 TH CENTURY 421 
 
 chamber, are appointed in whole or in part by election. 
 The election takes various forms. In Belgium, for the 
 most part, the senators are chosen by the same electors as 
 elect the primary representative chamber, but only a com- 
 paratively well-to-do minority are eligible. In Spain, where 
 half the senate is elected, the eligibility is also partly 
 determined by income, but it is also necessary that the 
 senator should have fulfilled some one of a number of 
 functions — civil, military, and professional — of which the 
 holding of a university professorship is one. Here, however, 
 the electors to the senate are not the electors to the house 
 of representatives, but electoral bodies which include, along 
 with others, members of provincial councils. In France 
 the election of senators is similarly given to members or 
 delegates of local governing bodies: but eligibility is un- 
 restricted by income. In Holland, too, provincial govern- 
 ments elect, but eligibility is limited to the comparatively 
 wealthy. In Italy the senators are nominated for life. 
 
 I fear these details may be bewildering, but I have given 
 them to bring out two points : — first, that the imitation of 
 the English model does not extend to the House of Lords 
 except, so far as the Eomance countries are concerned, in 
 the one case of Spain to a partial extent ; secondly, that 
 the schemes of the different nations are very diverse — so 
 diverse that we may perhaps infer that no nation has 
 solved with conspicuous success the problem of constructing 
 a second chamber. Perhaps we may say that there is a 
 tendency to prefer the principle of election by persons 
 themselves elected, especially by elected provincial organs 
 of government. And this principle, in a more decided form, 
 may now be regarded as normally applied in federal legis- 
 latures constructed on the two-chamber plan.^ We find it 
 also — when we turn to the Scandinavian states — in Sweden. 
 In Norway, alone of West European states, the second 
 chamber is elected by and out of the first. But it is 
 noteworthy that in both Sweden and Norway, but specially 
 
 1 [The author did not live to see the establishment of the Australian 
 Commonwealth. — Ed. ] 
 
422 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 Norway, the separation into two chambers is less complete 
 than elsewheae. Thus in Norway the two bodies are 
 united for the final vote on any law on which they dis- 
 agree ; and in Sweden this method is adopted for preventing 
 a deadlock in financial matters. 
 
 As regards extent of the franchise, again, the pattern of 
 England has not been followed. England has rather been 
 dragged after the Continental movement than led it; the 
 tendency being almost everywhere in the direction of 
 universal suffrage. 
 
 § 4. On the other hand, there has been a very important 
 imitation of the judicial system of England. First in the 
 jury. Here, however, a distinction has to be taken between 
 civil and criminal trials. So far as I know, outside the 
 United Kingdom the jury in civil trials has only been 
 adopted in Portugal ; but in criminal trials it has spread 
 to most West European countries as an important element 
 of the securities for freedom, for which, largely, ' constitu- 
 tional ' government has been demanded. 
 
 Also, in varying forms or degrees, the judicial protec- 
 tion afforded amply in England against encroachments by 
 the executive on the liberty of the individual citizen has 
 been more or less imitated. But here we must note a 
 remarkable difference — even diametrical opposition — in 
 the interpretation of the principle of ' separation of powers ' 
 in different countries, especially England and France, and 
 it is curious that the two opposite views should both arise 
 from a hona fide application of the same principle, and both 
 be in a manner derived from Montesquieu, who was 
 historically the first to draw attention to the fundamental 
 importance of the principle for the security of the private 
 citizen.^ 
 
 The English interpretation of Montesquieu's principle 
 
 ^ I may say that Montesquieu's view seems to me quite obscure on the 
 particular point at issue : in fact he does not expressly treat of it in his 
 famous chapter on the British Constitution, Book xi. chap. vi. Also his 
 definitions of 'executive' and 'judicial' are not clear. But his general 
 idea is certainly ' To prevent arbitrary oppression, put the powers of govern- 
 ment in diflferent hands.' 
 
XXVIII CONSTITUTION-MAKING OF THE 19 TH CENTURY 423 
 
 has always been — ' To secure legal liberty of citizens, let 
 one organ (the legislature) lay down the law, another (the 
 judicature) decide whether an alleged breach of law has 
 been committed, another (the executive) organise and direct 
 the physical force required to secure obedience to the law 
 and do whatever else is needed for carrying the law into 
 effect ; and let adequate independence be secured to all 
 three.' How to secure adequate independence is a difficult 
 matter ; and in particular Montesquieu held that the assent 
 of the executive to new laws must be made necessary in 
 order to prevent the legislature from undue interference 
 with the executive : so, the very ground on which separa- 
 tion is urged requires that separation not to be complete. 
 But as regards the relation of the executive to the judiciary, 
 the application of the principle has to English minds always 
 seemed simple and obvious. The great point being that the 
 executive is to be kept within the limits of the law, the 
 question whether any of its members or subordinates has 
 in any particular case exceeded them should — it seems 
 obvious — not be left to the executive itself to decide. ' No 
 man can be trusted to be an impartial judge in his own 
 cause ' ; hence, the English mind argues, the decision of 
 these questions must be given to an independent judiciary. 
 
 But the French interpretation is diametrically opposed. 
 As Mr. Dicey says in his chapter on this subject in 
 the Law of the Constitution (Part. ii. chap, xii.), " The 
 expression ' separation of powers ' ... as interpreted 
 by French history, by French legislation, and by the 
 decisions of French tribunals . . . means neither more nor 
 less than the maintenance of the principle that while 
 ordinary judges ought to be irremovable and thus inde- 
 pendent of the executive, the government and its officials 
 ought (whilst acting officially) to be independent of and to a 
 great extent free from the jurisdiction of the ordinary Courts." 
 Montesquieu's doctrine was thus, he continues, "misapplied 
 by the French statesmen of the Eevolution, whose judgment 
 was biassed, at once by knowledge of the inconveniences 
 which had resulted from the interference of the French 
 
424 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 parlements in matters of state, and by the characteristic 
 and traditional desire to increase the force of the central 
 government." The result is " that the relations of the 
 government and its officials towards private citizens are 
 regulated by a whole body of special rules . . . which 
 differ from the laws which govern the relation of one 
 private person towards another." And "the ordinary 
 tribunals have, speaking generally, no concern with any 
 matter of" this so-called "administrative law. Questions 
 of private right as between private citizens and all accusa- 
 tions of crime fall within the jurisdiction of the civil 
 tribunals. . . . But the ordinary judges are incompetent 
 to pronounce judgment on any ... act done by any official, 
 high or low, hona fide in his official character." The private 
 individual must seek redress for a wrong done by an 
 official in the discharge of his official duties from adminis- 
 trative tribunals. Of these Mr. Dicey says, "These so- 
 called ' Courts ' have of comparatively recent times acquired 
 to a certain extent a quasi-judicial character. . . . We must 
 take care, however, not to be deceived by names. The 
 administrative authorities which decide all disputes in 
 regard to matters of administrative law may be called 
 ' tribunals,' and may adopt forms moulded on the procedure 
 of a Court, but they all of them ... are composed of 
 official persons, and, as is implied by the very pleas 
 advanced in defence of withdrawing questions of adminis- 
 trative law from the civil Courts, look upon the disputes 
 brought before them from a governmental point of view, 
 and decide them in a spirit different from the feeling 
 which influences the ordinary judges." 
 
 Well, you see how differently the French understand the 
 principle of * separation of powers ' from the English. To 
 the English mind it means, * The function of judicially 
 deciding whether a member or subordinate of the executive 
 has kept within the limits of the law must be separated 
 from the executive function.' To the French mind it 
 means * The function of judicially deciding disputes of 
 right between private citizens must be kept apart from 
 
XXVIII CONSTITUTION-MAKING OF THE 19TH CENTURY 425 
 
 the function of deciding whether members or subordinates 
 of the executive have broken the law ; the latter function 
 must therefore be given to special administrative tribunals.' 
 It certainly seems to me clear that the English inter- 
 pretation is more in harmony with the general drift of 
 Montesquieu's ideas.-^ 
 
 ^ It does not, of course, follow that there is not anything to be said for 
 the French view on general grounds of expediency, and general principles of 
 political construction, apart from Montesquieu and his ideas. See Mr. Dicey's 
 book, pp. 326-8 (4th ed.), and my Elements of Politics, ch. xxiv. § 8. 
 
LECTUKE XXIX 
 
 MODERN FEDERALISM 
 
 § 1. In my last two lectures I characterised briefly the 
 history of constitution-making in unitary states, and dis- 
 tinguished the two types between which, we may say, the 
 actual constitutions known by the common name of con- 
 stitutional monarchy lie. In some cases, as in England, 
 what may be called parliamentary government under 
 the forms of constitutional monarchy is established and 
 recognised : in other cases the struggle between this and 
 what may be called constitutional monarchy proper, or 
 simple constitutional monarchy, in which the monarch 
 governs as well as reigns, is still going on : while in 
 Germany the reins of power are still firmly and undis- 
 putedly held by the hereditary monarch. In the single 
 case of France parliamentary government is established in 
 republican, not monarchical, form ; but it cannot be said 
 that the success or stability of this variety of the type is as 
 yet sufficiently clear for us to attribute any attractive force 
 to the variety, or to predict that other West European states 
 are likely to imitate France. The signs of the times seem 
 to indicate that questions of the extension of the functions 
 of government are more likely to engage the main attention 
 of politicians of the coming generation than questions of 
 change in the form of the internal polity. 
 
 It may, however, have occurred to my hearers, that in 
 the comparison of two types of modern constitutional 
 monarchy as English and German respectively, I over- 
 looked an important distinction between the two countries 
 
 426 
 
LECT. XXIX MODERN FEDERALISM 427 
 
 selected as typical — viz., that the constitution of Germany- 
 is federal, while the constitution of England is not ; England 
 is what for contrast it is convenient to call a "unitary" 
 state. I did not, however, overlook this ; only it was not 
 necessary for my argument to allude to it : because the point 
 on which I had to lay stress — the relation of the monarch 
 to the ministers who discharge executive functions, and to 
 the representative assembly whose consent is necessary for 
 legislation and for the budget — is substantially the same in 
 the German Empire and in the chief states that make it up, 
 especially Prussia; so that it is not materially affected 
 by the division of functions involved in the federal system. 
 Whether William of HohenzoUern acts as German Emperor 
 or as King of Prussia, in either case he appoints his 
 own ministers, and the representative assembly — whether 
 Federal or Prussian — makes no attempt to force on the 
 monarch a prime minister practically selected by the 
 majority of the assembly. At the same time, what I 
 may call the " federality " of Germany — the union of the 
 German states outside Austria into a larger whole for 
 certain purposes, especially foreign affairs and war, while 
 retaining their independence for many important matters 
 of internal and civil legislation and administration — this 
 is a very noteworthy fact when we are considering the 
 total result of political change in Western Europe. 
 
 It is also to be noted that a somewhat similar but more 
 complicated federality is found in Austria, — complicated 
 owing to a quite peculiar union between Austria and 
 Hungary, superadded to a division of legislative functions 
 between the imperial diet of Austria and local diets of the 
 various provinces or lands making up Austria as distinct 
 from Hungary. So that there are three deliberative bodies 
 for Austrian affairs : (1) a sort of dual body — two delega- 
 tions of equal number chosen respectively by the Austrian 
 and Hungarian Parliaments, who deliberate on the affairs of 
 common interest for Austria and Hungary simultaneously, 
 but ordinarily apart, communicating and occasionally meet- 
 ing ; (2) the imperial diet of Austria ; (3) the local diets 
 
428 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 of Bohemia, Styria, Tyrol, etc. : and there is a correspond- 
 ing division of executive functions. Then, further, in the 
 affairs of Hungary federality is introduced again in a 
 rather peculiar form, resembling that " Irish Home Eule " 
 which it has been proposed to introduce into the United 
 Kingdom — I should perhaps say, resembling not the 
 form of Irish Home Eule which was actually pro- 
 posed here, but the form that is most consistent with 
 the general principles of representative government. That 
 is, in a particular part of the Hungarian kingdom 
 — Croatia — there has been since 1872 a separate Parlia- 
 ment which legislates on a part of those matters that 
 are not regarded as common to the whole of the territories 
 of the Hungarian Crown, the rest of such matters being 
 legislated on in the Hungarian Parliament at Buda- 
 pest, to which Croatia sends deputies ; the Croatian 
 deputies voting in the Hungarian Parliament not on all 
 matters, but only on such matters as are not legislated on 
 separately in the Croatian Parliament. 
 
 You see what a complicated case this is of the operation 
 of what I have called federality — i,e, of the plan of uniting 
 communities for certain important purposes of government, 
 while they are separate and independent for certain other 
 important purposes. I use these vague terms because, as 
 we shall see, the division of functions is made differently 
 in different cases : but we may say that wherever federality 
 is introduced, the matters assigned to the common govern- 
 ment include the whole or the greater part of the manage- 
 ment of foreign affairs. 
 
 In the North, in Scandinavia, we have also a dual state 
 formed by Sweden and Norway : though the tie of union 
 here is materially more slender than that which unites 
 Austria and Hungary. 
 
 § 2. Then, finally, in Switzerland we have the famous 
 historic instance — unique in modern European history — of 
 federality handed down all but unbroken from medieval to 
 modern times. In respect of continuity of development the 
 Swiss federation is to the federal type almost what England 
 
XXIX MODERN FEDERALISM 429 
 
 is to the unitary type. And the medieval growth and 
 development of the Swiss confederation is one of the few 
 stories in later European history which has rivalled in 
 dramatic interest the struggles of Greeks and Eomans 
 against foreign enemies. How, in a.d. 1291, the peasants of 
 Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden banded together — not for 
 political independence at first, as they professed to maintain 
 unimpaired their allegiance to the emperor, and even the 
 rights of subordinate feudal lords in their territory — but in 
 a defensive alliance against the oppression of bailiffs or 
 middlemen acting for the feudal lords: how, in 1315, 
 these rustic soldiers routed the feudal army of Leopold 
 of Austria, hurling down stones and trunks of trees on 
 them from the heights of Morgarten : how the triumphant 
 confederacy begins to shake off dependence on feudal lords : 
 how neighbours sought entrance into it till, in 1353, it 
 has become a league of eight states, including the free 
 imperial cities of Bern and Zurich : how, twenty- five 
 years later, the enlarged confederacy is victorious over 
 another Austrian force, led by another Leopold, in the 
 famous battle of Sempach, which practically gets rid for 
 ever of the overlordship of the Hapsburgs : — all this is 
 fixed in the memory of those who read history in the old- 
 fashioned, but not yet antiquated, spirit, in search of people 
 and events to draw out their sympathies. Then, after this 
 "heroic fourteenth century," there follows a century less 
 morally admirable, but no less prosperous : the confederacy 
 makes conquests, and extends its protection over feebler 
 neighbours ; till, after a victorious war with Charles of Bur- 
 gundy (a.d. 1474-1477), its military prowess is established 
 throughout Europe — so that, in the Italian wars that follow, 
 Switzerland is on all sides recognised as the prime source of 
 first-rate mercenary infantry. At the end of the fifteenth 
 century they have become practically independent of the 
 empire, from which they are formally declared free in 1648 
 — having, early in the sixteenth century, been increased 
 from eight states to thirteen, with subject and protected 
 territories: and having got through the struggles of the 
 
430 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 Eeformation period without breaking up — a striking proof 
 of the strength that federality has by this time acquired. 
 Henceforward until the end of the eighteenth century there 
 is no great change. 
 
 Meanwhile the Confederation is by no means homo- 
 geneous or democratic in its constitution. Since the middle 
 of the fourteenth century it has been a league of states with 
 very dissimilar polity, partly of rural cantons, but partly of 
 cities — notably Bern, the leading member — in which we 
 find the tendency to narrowing oligarchy which I noticed 
 in the final phase of development of medieval city-polity.-^ 
 The cities despise the country districts attached to them, 
 and especially the civic oligarchy of Bern rules its subject 
 territories harshly : so the French revolutionary movement 
 finds elements that welcome it eagerly, and the old Con- 
 federation falls in 1798. Then, for the first and last time, 
 federality seems lost : the " Helvetic Eepublic, one and 
 indivisible," was proclaimed. But the federal tradition was 
 too strong : in 1802 Bonaparte gives way to it and restores 
 federality in some measure, and in 1814 there is a reaction 
 to something like the previous constitution. 
 
 Then, in 1848, after a civil war, a new federal polity 
 is formed to an important extent after a new model — 
 the United States of America. For here the resemblance 
 between Switzerland and England ceases. Switzerland 
 does not give the decisive model of federality ; this is given 
 by the United States of America. This leads me to the 
 most important of all the federal states to which European 
 political development has led — the American — important 
 especially from the great size of the territory over which 
 it has been maintained. But of this I will speak more 
 presently. 
 
 § 3. I have given this sketch of the development of the 
 Swiss polity, not merely on account of the dramatic or 
 romantic interest to which I referred, but because, as I said, 
 Switzerland, like England, is an instance of a uniquely con- 
 tinuous development of one specimen of a type of polity 
 
 1 Lectures xvi. pp. 240, 241 ; xvii. pp. 257, 258 ; xx. p. 301. 
 
XXIX MODERN FEDERALISM 431 
 
 from medieval to modern conditions, a number of other 
 specimens of the same kind having failed to persist. 
 
 For it must not be supposed that the union of the Swiss 
 cantons and cities is an isolated and peculiar phenomenon 
 in its first stage — I mean in the fourteenth and fifteenth 
 centuries, when the confederates still maintain a full 
 acknowledgment of Imperial supremacy. On the contrary, 
 as I had occasion to point out in a previous lecture,^ con- 
 federations for defence of common rights and interests, by 
 force of arms if necessary, are a common phenomenon in 
 Germany in this period, after the failure of the Holy Eoman 
 Empire to accomplish its task of reducing Germany and 
 Italy to order has become manifest soon after the middle of 
 the thirteenth century. For example, you will remember the 
 great Hanseatic League of North German cities which (a.d. 
 1367-1370) waged successful war against the Scandinavian 
 kingdoms. As I said, similar, though less famous, leagues 
 of cities are numerous : and not only of cities : the lesser 
 nobility form similar leagues against the encroachments of 
 the greater, and the tendency to combination goes further, 
 and nobles and cities form similar unions. Indeed, so far 
 as medieval representative institutions are due to an impulse 
 from below, as they largely are in Germany, we may regard 
 them as having a federal character in their aims ; — though, 
 in the form of polity in which they ultimately result, this 
 federal character is obscured by the monarchical headship 
 of the country states into which Germany breaks up, while 
 the federal bond which holds these states together in an 
 Empire is increasingly feeble. 
 
 The Swiss Confederation, then, so far as the cities are 
 concerned, was the reverse of an isolated phenomenon : but 
 this is not the case with the rural cantons. For the most 
 part in Germany the peasants were excluded from the 
 movement of free combination : the survival of the feudal 
 organisation of society kept them down too effectively. The 
 only exceptions besides Switzerland are, like Switzerland, to 
 be explained by the nature of the country : it seems to have 
 
 1 Lecture xxi. pp. 305, 306. 
 
432 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 required either the mountains of the Alps, or the sea-coast 
 of Friesland and Ditmarsh, to enable free communities of 
 peasants to develop and combine. But we note that the 
 protection of the sea was less effective than the mountains : 
 the germs of free democracy and federal polity in Friesland 
 fade in the fifteenth century, and Ditmarsh, the other mari- 
 time exception to the general course of things, has ceased 
 to be an exception before the end of the sixteenth century. 
 
 But the mention of the sea and of Friesland may remind 
 you that I have omitted one European state that for a long 
 time possessed a federal polity, and that in a period of its 
 history which rivals the Swiss in the interest of a dramatic 
 struggle ending in victory and brilliant prosperity. I refer, 
 of course, to Holland — or rather the United Netherlands. 
 I left this out in my survey of European federality, because 
 in the nineteenth century the federality of the Netherlands 
 is not more than a survival : the polity is in the main the 
 ordinary constitutional monarchy, only with somewhat larger 
 powers and higher dignity attached to the local governments 
 of the old United Provinces once sovereign and leagued. 
 I will not therefore trace the formation of their federal 
 polity, and the complicated and varying relations between 
 " Estates-General " — the main federal organ — and the quasi- 
 monarch " Stadtholder "; the latter tending to prevail in the 
 eighteenth century. Nor will I go into the history of the 
 struggle of the United Netherlands. It is more dramatic 
 even than the Swiss, as the Hollanders are less continuously 
 successful : in fact, on land they are palpably inferior to 
 Spain, which is trying to reduce them. They are as mani- 
 festly saved by their relation to the sea as the Swiss by their 
 mountains ; but here again we see that the protection of 
 the sea is less complete : it is clearly the greater danger 
 of war which presses the polity from the form of a 
 federal republic towards that of a limited monarchy. 
 
 § 4. It is time that we should pass to a closer considera- 
 tion of the notion of federality and the conditions which 
 tend to favour its introduction, and of the distinctive char- 
 acteristics of a federal state. 
 
XXIX MODERN FEDERALISM 433 
 
 I may begin by remarking that much German learning 
 and subtlety has been applied to distinguishing the conception 
 of a " Federal State " {Bundes-Staat) from that of a " Con- 
 federation of States " (Staatenbund). I think that perhaps 
 undue importance has been attached to the aim of getting 
 a clear and sharp distinction. I do not, at any rate, pro- 
 pose to discuss the various possible lines that may be drawn : 
 or determine exactly when communities forming a union 
 designed to be permanent cease to be individually sovereign 
 — especially as federality in Switzerland has a long career 
 before any sovereignty is claimed. It is more important 
 from our point of view to observe that when a federal com- 
 munity is formed by the union of communities previously 
 independent — I shall presently observe that this is not the 
 only way, though it has been the most important way of 
 introducing federality — the union tends to get closer and 
 the conditions more definite and stable as time goes on ; so 
 that the two notions — confederation of states, federal state 
 — represent two stages in the development of federality. 
 Here I will confine myself to the examination of such 
 unions in a comparatively stable condition, to which the 
 term "Federal Statb^" may in a broad sense be applied. 
 
 I may begin by pointing out that a federal state is only 
 one kind of composite state. As I said in my Elements of 
 Politics} a state including parts that have, from any cause, 
 a high degree of political separateness may be called com- 
 posite ; even if the governments of its parts are controlled 
 regularly by one supreme legislature, so that its constitution 
 still remains formally unitary. If a state thus constituted 
 is under popular government, and its supreme legislature is 
 elected only by, or consists only of, the citizens who reside 
 in a portion of its territory, the other parts of the state are 
 commonly said to be " dependencies " of the portion to which 
 the legislature is formally responsible : and a similar differ- 
 ence may practically exist under other forms of govern- 
 ment, although the formal constitutional rights of the great 
 majority of the inhabitants may be the same throughout 
 
 1 Cf. Elements of Politics, cli. xxvi. § 1. 
 
 2 F 
 
434 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 the territory of the state. For example, under absolute 
 monarchy, though no part of the state can be formally 
 a dependency of any other part, it may be so practically ; 
 the monarch may choose his leading subordinates exclusively 
 or mainly from a portion of his dominions, and be practi- 
 cally under the exclusive influence of its public opinion. 
 This position of dependence, whether formal or only prac- 
 tical, is calculated to cause discontent : and it is not likely 
 to be permanently acquiesced in by communities habituated 
 to popular government and feeling themselves on a level in 
 civilisation with the dominant community ; unless, indeed, 
 they are very unequal in size, or unless their exclusion 
 from political rights is compensated by economic advan- 
 tages, which, again, will be likely to excite the jealousy of 
 the inhabitants of the dominant portion of the state. Hence, 
 unless one portion of such a composite state is overwhelm- 
 ingly superior in size and strength, there will be a tendency 
 to an approximate equalisation of political privileges among 
 the parts ; and if at the same time there is a general desire 
 to secure the political separateness of the parts as well as 
 their union in the larger whole, there will be a further 
 tendency to demand that the division of functions between 
 the government of the whole and the government of the 
 parts shall be determined by a constitution which the com- 
 mon legislature of the whole is not competent to change — 
 at any rate by the ordinary process of legislation. 
 
 These, I think, are essential characteristics of the modern 
 idea of a federal state : — a whole made up of parts, with 
 approximate equality of political position among the parts, 
 and a clear and precise as well as balanced and stable 
 constitutional division of governmental functions between 
 the government of the whole and the government of the 
 parts. Historically, however, this latter characteristic is 
 attained late : in the leading instances of historical federa- 
 tions, we find for a long time no such clear and precise 
 constitutional division of powers, although practically the 
 parts retain their independence, while effectively united 
 in a whole. A certain balance of power is therefore more 
 
XXIX MODERN FEDERALISM 435 
 
 essential than clearness and precision in the division of 
 power. But, no doubt, if there is no such clear division 
 there seems an obvious danger of friction and conflict be- 
 tween the governments of the parts and the government of 
 the whole, and a difficulty of maintaining the balance of 
 power which is characteristic of a federal state. In the 
 nineteenth century, therefore, when constitutional ideas are 
 well developed, the maintenance of this division naturally 
 carries with it some distinction between the ordinary central 
 legislature, that makes laws on the matters not reserved 
 to the part-states according to the constitutional division of 
 powers — and the extraordinary legislature, as Austin calls 
 it, that has the power of altering the fundamental con- 
 stitution. This distinction may exist in a unitary state, 
 but it is a natural security of an orderly and harmonious 
 federal constitution. 
 
 From this comes a curiously mingled result as regards 
 the stability of a federal state. On the one hand, the 
 greater independence of the parts tends to make it less 
 coherent than a unitary state : so that if discord arises the 
 parts break off more easily and smoothly, so to say. This 
 was illustrated by the civil war in North America (1861— 
 1864). If the United States had been a unitary state, with 
 slavery in one part, there might no doubt have been a civil 
 war : but the rebels could hardly have cut themselves adrift 
 in solid aggregates, in the apparently orderly and business- 
 like way in which the Southern States voted themselves out 
 of the Union one after another, while the Northern States 
 looked on. On the other hand, so long as disorder and 
 disruption are prevented, the constitution tends to be un- 
 usually stable : as again is illustrated by the United States, 
 where the consent of three-fourths of the federated states 
 is required for a change in the constitution — which has 
 practically prevented almost any change for a hundred 
 years, except the momentous change in enfranchising the 
 negroes, due to the civil war. 
 
 The division of functions between the common govern- 
 ment of the whole and the separate governments of the 
 
436 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 parts naturally varies. The general idea is that the federa- 
 tion is to be a whole for external relations, while each part 
 is to be independent in internal affairs. But (1) this prin- 
 ciple does not settle how matters external to the parts but 
 internal to the whole are to be determined — that is, matters 
 that concern the relations of the parts as, for instance, free 
 trade among them. And (2) some matters prima facie internal 
 to the parts may expediently be left to the government of 
 ,the whole, on account of the mischief or inconvenience that 
 would be caused by want of uniformity. To this class 
 belong {e.g.) the regulation of currency, bankruptcy, patents 
 and generally commercial law, criminal law, etc. Matters 
 belonging to both these classes are to a considerable 
 though varying extent left, in modern federal states, to 
 the common government. 
 
 § 5. Let us now consider the conditions under which 
 the federal form of polity is suitable and naturally tends 
 to arise. Of these by far the most important — throughout 
 the period of history that we have traced until comparatively 
 recent times, and even now more important than any other 
 — is the need of strength in external relations. Where 
 there are adjacent communities, anxious to preserve a real 
 independence, but afraid of proving too weak in isolation 
 to hold their own with powerful states in their neighbour- 
 hood, a federal union is an obvious resource. This, as 
 we saw, is exemplified by the part played by federalism 
 throughout Greek history: and it is no less exemplified 
 by the various — either abortive or successful — attempts at 
 federal union which appear in later medieval and early 
 modern history. 
 
 Thus, to refer to instances above given, the league of the 
 " Hanse " towns of Northern Germany was formed to main- 
 tain their commercial interests, and so was the league of the 
 cities of the Ehine ; the more permanent federal union of the 
 Swiss cantons originated in the effort of small peasant com- 
 munities of mountaineers to maintain their independence ; 
 and the union of the provinces of Holland was formed 
 in the terrible heroic struggle against the persecuting 
 
XXIX MODERN FEDERALISM 437 
 
 armies of Spain in the last quarter of the sixteenth century. 
 In all these cases it is clear that nothing but the need of 
 greater strength in external relations would have brought 
 about a union of so durable a kind among the federating 
 communities. Hence the varied efforts of partial federation 
 which distinguish the Eomano-Germanic Empire from the 
 thirteenth century onward are largely due to the weakness 
 of the central government. 
 
 Even in the more recent case of the United States of 
 America, this motive seems to have been on the whole the 
 decisive one in overcoming the mutual jealousies and love 
 of independence of the originally separate colonies of Eng- 
 land who threw off the yoke of the mother-country. In 
 the case, however, of the United States, though the first 
 federal union was due to the War of Independence, com- 
 mercial considerations seem to have had an important share 
 in bringing about the second and more stable union of 1789. 
 And considerations of this kind are likely to be important 
 in the future, so long as states endeavour by elaborately 
 arranged tariffs to exclude or hamper the competition of 
 foreign producers in their markets : it will generally be an 
 advantage to the aggregate of the members of a large state 
 that they enjoy a comparatively large area of unrestricted 
 trade — assuming that internal trade is unrestricted. When 
 the case of the United States is quoted as an instance of 
 the prosperity derived from protection, it is a fair answer 
 that the United States present the largest area of unre- 
 stricted free trade that the world has yet seen. 
 
 § 6. I now turn to the aspect of federalism — in which it 
 presents itself as more in harmony with the ideal of modern 
 democracy than a unitary polity — as a means of realising 
 the maximum of liberty compatible with order. 
 
 The doctrine of popular sovereignty as spread by Eous- 
 seau was cosmopolitan, and the theoretical determination of 
 the limits of the sovereign people, when once Eousseau's 
 idea of direct democracy is abandoned, was left somewhat 
 obscure. So when, immediately after the great crisis of 
 change in France, the revolutionary propaganda was com- 
 
438 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY lect. 
 
 menced from France as centre, it easily blended with the 
 old desire for national aggrandisement ; and thus the transi- 
 tion from the enthusiastic issue in the name of republican 
 theory of a charter of liberties to Europe, to the Napoleonic 
 efforts to estabHsh France in an imperial position in Europe, 
 was not a sharp or abrupt transition. The movement of 
 " nationality " — as characteristic of the nineteenth century 
 as constitution-making — was as much a reaction against, as 
 a continuation of, the French revolutionary movement : and 
 the clear apprehension of the danger of a "tyranny of the 
 majority" — which Eousseau had overlooked — on which 
 writers like Tocqueville laid stress, drew attention to the 
 important guarantee of liberty furnished by local self- 
 government. 
 
 There are, no doubt, important considerations on the other 
 side : and it may be observed that they grow stronger, the 
 more highly civilised and densely populated a country be- 
 comes. Average statesmanship must be expected to be less 
 enlightened in local legislatures, and the danger of mis- 
 chievous legislation in the interest of a predominant class is 
 greater — since such predominance has many more chances 
 in one or other of a number of districts than in the whole 
 country. But what I am concerned to point out now is 
 that we have here, as I before noticed, another way — distinct 
 from union of communities previously independent — in 
 which, in modern times, federality has come to be developed : 
 namely by the establishment of secured local liberties, 
 mainly under the influence of the sentiment of nationality, 
 in states that were previously of the unitary type. It may 
 be observed that such states have often had a kind of 
 federality, only obscured by the predominance of the 
 monarchical common government. The formation of states, 
 in the feudal period and that of transition from feudalism, by 
 marriage of hereditary lords with heiresses, naturally tended 
 to this. Austria is a conspicuous surviving instance, but 
 many other states were in this condition, only the decay of 
 medieval representative institutions and the development 
 of monarchical power gradually obliterated federality. 
 
XXIX MODERN FEDERALISM 439 
 
 § 7. The future of constitutional monarchy I was unwilling 
 to prophesy : but I feel more disposed to predict a develop- 
 ment of federality, partly from the operation of the demo- 
 cratic tendency just noticed, partly from the tendency 
 shown throughout the history of civilisation to form con- 
 tinually larger political societies — as Spencer would say, 
 to "integration" — which seems to accompany the growth 
 of civilisation. This tendency we traced in the early 
 history of the Gr^eco-Italian city-states ; Eome and Athens 
 were obviously formed by the aggregation of elements be- 
 tween which a state of hostility had previously existed. 
 We noticed also that the history of the German tribes 
 showed them gradually combining in larger and larger 
 aggregates. And especially we noticed how, in the third 
 century B.C., after the Greek cities had been for forty years 
 tossed helpless in the strife among the successors of Alex- 
 ander — against whose armies they were, from mere size, 
 unable effectively to contend — the revival and extension of 
 the Achaean league, uniting several important city-states into 
 one body with the old, comparatively insignificant Achaean 
 towns, gave them a brief interval of real independence. 
 We have seen the same tendency in recent times in the 
 formation of Germany and Italy : and we have in North 
 America an impressive example of" a political society main- 
 taining internal peace over a region larger than Western 
 Europe. I therefore think it not beyond the limits of a sober 
 forecast to conjecture that some further integration may 
 take place in the West European states : and if it should 
 take place, it seems probable that the example of America 
 will be followed, and that the new political aggregate will 
 be formed on the basis of a federal polity/ 
 
 When we turn our gaze from the past to the future, an 
 extension of federalism seems to me the most probable of 
 the political prophecies relative to the form of government. 
 
 ^ Cf. Elements of Politics, ch. xiv. § 1. 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 Note A — to page 80 
 
 DECLINE IN THE NUMBER OF SPARTANS 
 
 The decline in the number of Spartans is phenomenal. Herodotus 
 (vii. 234) reckons about 8000 Spartans when Thermopylae was 
 fought (480 B.C.); Gilbert (Gh'iechischen StaatsaUerthilmer, vol. i. 
 p. 41, 2nd ed.) calculates that there were hardly more than 1500 
 in 371 B.C. ; Aristotle, "not even 1000" in say 330-322 B.C.; 
 Plutarch (Ag. 5), only 700 in 243 B.C., of whom 100 only y^v 
 KeKTrffxevoL kol kA-tJ^ov, the rest 6 8' aXXos o^A-o? o.TTopos kol arifios 
 €v rrj TToAet TrapeKadrjTo. On this it is to l3e remarked that (1) 
 the remarkable decline in Spartan population is in the years 
 480 to 371, and (2) the remarkable decline in fully qualified 
 citizens is in the years 330 to 243, because one may infer from 
 the language of Aristotle that the exclusion on the ground of 
 poverty had not gone very far. If so, the law of Epitadeus 
 cannot be the explanation of (1) unless Epitadeus lived earlier 
 than Plutarch thinks (Ag. 5). I am disposed to agree wdth 
 Curtius (Bk. ii. eh. i.) that citizenship was granted to trained non- 
 citizens — sometimes illegitimate children of Spartans, sometimes 
 fioOaKcs (cf. Phylarch, ap. Ath. vi. 271 e), i.e. Helots or strangers 
 (^evot Twv Tpochijxojv, Xen, Hell. v. iii. 9) brought up and educated 
 with Spartans. I think the numbers were kept up in this way 
 by adoption with the kings' approval. But the mere cessation 
 of this will hardly explain the paucity of Spartans in the 
 Peloponnesian war compared with Thermopylae. Is it possible 
 that the class afterwards called veoSafxAis were confounded by 
 Herodotus with Spartans, and served along with them; and 
 that afterwards the separation was made more strict ? 
 
 Busolt (Griechischen StaatsaUerthilmer, § 101) attributes the 
 rapid depopulation of Sparta (1) partly to the losses in the con- 
 
 441 
 
442 DE VEL OP ME NT OF E UR OPE AN POLITY 
 
 tinual wars, (2) partly to "das gestorte Familienleben und die 
 tjppigkeit." But (1) from Lyciirgus to the Persian war the 
 Spartans had had as much fighting ; (2) this cause could hardly 
 operate much in the fourth century, according to Busolt's 
 account of its causes and operation, and the great decline is 
 from 480 to 371 B.C. Busolt, however, holds, without, I think, 
 adequate grounds, that there were 6000 Spartans at Mantinea 
 in 418 B.C. {pip. cit. § 98). This would surely make the depopula- 
 tion from B.C. 418 to 371 quite inexplicable. 
 
 Note B — to page 84 
 
 CAVALRY AND OLIGARCHY 
 
 I think we must take Aristotle's generalisation about " the first 
 polity after the kings being Ik twv tTnreMv" (Pol. vi. (iv.) 13) as 
 having a substantial and general value as a historical generalisa- 
 tion, rather than as being formally and universally true. It may 
 have been true that the iTnreis in many states were coextensive 
 with the members of the general assembly, and that this had 
 some political functions. But in the only case in which we hear 
 definitely of such a constitution — Kyme in Aeolis — it is not the 
 original constitution but an enlargement. There is no reason to 
 suppose that the oligarchy — or group of oligarchies — in Thessaly, 
 which seems to have lasted an indefinite time under the probably 
 slight control of the common king — was an oligarchy of this 
 kind : or that the Thessalian cavalry consisted entirely of persons 
 who had, as such, political rights. In the fourth century 
 Demosthenes (Kar 'Apio-r. 687 and -n-epl Swraf 173) speaks of 
 Menon of Pharsalus joining an army with 200 or 300 " linrevo-L, 
 Treveo-rats ISlols" and I do not see why the cavalry of the fifth 
 century or earlier should not have been largely constituted in 
 this way. 
 
 Note C — to page 89 
 
 EARLY OLIGARCHY AND TRADE 
 
 There is a danger of antedating the sentiment against traders. 
 I see no adequate evidence that it was felt in the times of early 
 aristocracy or oligarchy. 
 
APPENDIX 443 
 
 In the Odyssey (i. 180) the character assumed by Athena 
 is that of a "ruler of the oar-loving Taphians" sailing on a 
 mercantile expedition "to Temese to purchase brass, carrying 
 bright iron as his freight." This passage seems to me to have 
 more importance than the expression of contempt for merchants 
 as unathletic in Od. viii. 156. Again Sappho's brother, who 
 appears to have been of good family, carried wine as a mer- 
 chant from Lesbos to Naucratis (Strabo xvii. 808). Solon, 
 again, is not represented as having lost caste by taking to 
 commerce (Plut. Sol. ii.). 
 
 Certainly in what we hear of the great Euboean cities in 
 the eighth and seventh centuries there is no sign of any such 
 jealousy between commercial and agricultural wealth. After 
 they have been colonising and commercial for nearly a century, 
 under the Hippobotae, Chalcis fights with Eretria in an antique 
 chivalrous manner about a fertile plain. So again in Megara — 
 after more than a century of commercial enterprise, in which 
 Megara has been competing somewhat with Corinth in Sicily and 
 more effectually with Miletus for the trade of the Euxine, and 
 founding successful colonies in both places, especially in the 
 Propontis — we find that about 630 B.C. the disturbance which 
 gives the opportunity for Tyrannis is a quarrel about the en- 
 croachments of the rich on public pasture -land (Ar. Fol. viii. 
 (v.) ch. v.). A century later the jealousy of "new wealth" is 
 bitterly expressed by Theognis, but this is after the Tyrannis : 
 and the bitterness is directed against low-born people, not against 
 traders as such. 
 
 It is noteworthy that in the disputes between debtors and 
 creditors, of which we catch a glimpse in Athens as leading to 
 the Solonian legislation, and in Megara not long afterwards 
 (Plut. Quaest. Gh^aec. 18), there is no hint that the creditors are 
 a different class from the wealthy landowners of old family : the 
 whole account (Plut. Sol. cf. also 'A^. ttoA.) suggests that it was 
 these apx^it^oirXovTOi — at any rate no less than any nouveaux riches 
 who had acquired land — who oppressed the poor farmer. I 
 agi-ee with Busolt {StaafsaUerthilmer, § 34) that all this conflict 
 was probably, partly at least, due to the change from " Natural- 
 wirthschaft" to " G-eldwirthschaft," when the coining of gold 
 and silver came in about the beginning of the seventh century ; 
 and doubtless one consequence of this was the intrusion of new 
 wealth into the circle of old families — the barter of wealth for 
 birth in marriage which causes the bitter complaint of Theognis 
 that "men take care of race in their horses but not in their 
 wives, and that women are as bad." (Theog. Eleg. 34. This 
 
444 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY 
 
 indicates, by the way, a somewhat unexpected freedom of matri- 
 monial choice on the part of women in Megara). The changes 
 such as those in the Solonian constitution by which wealth and 
 not old family was made the ground of the fullest political 
 privileges would also be a consequence. 
 
 We may note that the exclusion of handicrafts and retail 
 trades does not imply exclusion of merchants. For instance, the 
 practice in Thebes (Ar. Fol. vii. (vi.) ch. vii.) that political 
 privileges were only given a7rocrxo/x€j/ots \povov tlvo. rwv /Savavcroyv 
 epyiovf would not, I conceive, apply to large commerce. 
 
 Note D — to page 94 
 
 PRIORITY OF GREEK COLONIES IN CIVILISATION 
 
 Nothing is more remarkable than the priority of the Greek 
 colonies in civilisation. For instance, philosophy remains for two 
 centuries colonial : it begins and for some time is concentrated 
 in Asia Minor, then the historic interest of it passes, in the main, 
 to Italy and Sicily. It is not till near the middle of the fifth 
 century, in the predominance of Athens after the Persian Vv^ar, 
 that it finds its natural home there. 
 
 This priority of civilisation is doubtless partly due to greater 
 natural advantages, namely : — (1) fertility of soil, notably in 
 Italy (Magna G-raecia), where, consequently, the wealth and 
 luxury of Sybaris in the sixth century became and remains 
 proverbial ; and (2) greater power of expansion : the natives 
 being in too low a state of civilisation to be formidable — at 
 least for the first two centuries, from 735 B.C., when colonisation 
 mainly begins, to the end of the sixth century. (Afterwards 
 Samnites, Lucanians, Bruttians, become more formidable in war, 
 and restrict the Italic Greeks to the coast). Probably moreover, 
 colonies then, as now, tended to contain a larger proportion 
 of the energy and enterprise of the mother-state : and to start 
 with political institutions free from certain elements of antiquity 
 that impeded progress. Their danger would be that, cut adrift 
 from old political habits, their progress would be rapid, but lead 
 to less stable and satisfactory results. And this seems to be 
 the case — comparing Athens (e.g.) with Syracuse. 
 
APPENDIX 445 
 
 Note E — to page 183 
 
 CONTRADICTION BETWEEN JUS GENTIUM AND JUS NATURAE 
 RESPECTING SLAVERY 
 
 Slavery, says Florentinus, " is a constitutio of the jus gentium 
 by which a man is subjected to the mastery of another contra 
 naturam " {Dig. i. 5, 4) — " contrary to jus naturae" is said still 
 more explicitly in the Justinian Institutes (i. iii. 2). 
 
 The placid recognition by the jurists of contrariety between 
 the jus naturae and institutions universal in the actual com- 
 munities which they knew is rather remarkable, considering the 
 strong language in which the Stoics and Cicero and even later 
 jurisconsults affirm the immutable validity of the law of nature, 
 being as they conceive it the law of eternal reason. It was 
 actually a charge brought by Plutarch against the Stoics that 
 they recognised no validity in any positive laws of any states 
 except so far as identical with the true law of nature and reason 
 — and certainly Cicero's phrases about the Law of Nature bear 
 this out. But it is more surprising to find Gains (Dig. vii. 5) 
 saying that an argument of natural right (naturalis ratio) cannot 
 be affected by the audoritas senatus, and that " no consideration 
 of civil right can affect the force of natural right " (Dig. iv. 5, 8) ; 
 and Celsus affirming that " no law can render legitimate what 
 nature forbids" (Dig. 1. 17). 
 
 Note F — to page 280 
 
 GRADUAL RESTRICTION OF THE POWER OF THE DOGE 
 
 Venice — like Sparta in the earlier evolution of city-states — is 
 interesting to the modern student of politics, because it shows 
 the gradual reduction of monarchical power. For though the 
 Venetian Doge was elective — and not elective in one family 
 — he was, as Sismondi says, (vol. iii. ch. xx.), irremovable, 
 supreme judge, general of all the forces of the state, honoured 
 with ceremonial of something like oriental magnificence, and 
 often authorised to transmit his dignity to his children. Hence 
 the gradual process by which his powers were restricted may be 
 called a process from monarchy to oligarchy. 
 
 After the first appointment of a Duke or Doge in a.d. 697 
 there were three Doges and then the dukedom was abolished 
 
446 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY 
 
 and a yearly presidency tried : but this was found inadequate, 
 and in A.D. 747 the Doge was returned to. During the next 
 three centuries the Doges struggle for heredity but unsuccess- 
 fully. Then, as Sismondi tells us, in A.D. 1032, two counsellors 
 were given him, whose assent was requisite to any governmental 
 action : he was prohibited from sharing his power with a son, 
 and obliged to take counsel, on important occasions, with leading 
 citizens " invited " (jtregadi) to advise him. A hundred and forty 
 years later — without abolishing the general assemblies of the 
 people, which continued to be summoned on important occasions 
 until the fourteenth century — an annual council of 480 citizens was 
 formed, to which were entrusted all the powers not exercised by 
 the Doge, and, jointly with him, the sovereignty of the republic. 
 But in the case of this council, as in other Italian elections, the 
 choice was not directly made by the people. Twelve tribunes — 
 two from each quarter — had each to select forty members of the 
 council, being prohibited from choosing more than four of one 
 family. These tribunes, in the twelfth century, seem to have been 
 elected by the people ; afterwards the election fell into the hands 
 of the council, which then further claimed the right of confirming 
 or rejecting the selection made by the tribunes, before resigning 
 its annual office. Thus in the thirteenth century, the annually 
 elected — apparently representative — council had become a 
 practically co-optative body. The Venetian nobles, however, were 
 kept from the ordinary vj^pi^ of oligarchs, between the Doge on 
 the one hand, and the people on the other : since, in any struggle 
 of physical force with the people, they could count on no advan- 
 tage similar to that possessed by the Lombard nobles when it 
 came to fighting in the plain. Hence, whereas elsewhere in 
 Italian cities the administration of justice against nobles is a 
 matter of such difficulty that it has to be placed in the hands of 
 a single man armed with dangerous power, in Venice, on the 
 contrary, in A.D. 1179, criminal justice is taken away from the 
 Doge, and entrusted to a ^^ quarantia vecchia" composed of forty 
 members of the Great Council. 
 
 Then in A.D. 1229, the council of pregadi — corresponding to 
 the consiglio di credenza elsewhere — was fixed in number at sixty, 
 and made elective by the Grand Council, to which it became 
 " probouleutic," having for its special charge the supervision of 
 trade and foreign affairs. At the same time were appointed five 
 mrrettori della promissione ducale and three inquisitori del doge 
 defunto. The duty of the latter was to examine complaints of 
 his conduct, and in case of condemnation, to exact reparation 
 from his heirs. The industry of the "correctors of the ducal 
 
APPENDIX 447 
 
 oath " led to a large collection of promissioni ducali from A.D. 1240 
 onward, continued during the thirteenth century. The "promise," 
 as Sismondi says, comes to be a resignation of sovereign rights. 
 The Doge promises not only to observe the laws and execute the 
 decrees of the councils, but not to correspond with foreign 
 powers ; not to open letters addressed to him by his subjects, 
 except in the presence of one of his councillors ; to hold no 
 property outside the state of Venice ; not to intervene in any 
 judgment either of right or in fact ; never to try to increase his 
 power in the state ; never to let any of his relations hold from 
 him any office civil, military, or ecclesiastical, within the republic 
 or outside ; never to let a citizen kiss his hand or kneel before 
 him. This list is oddly unlike the retention of show without 
 substance, which usually characterises the transition to oligarchy 
 under monarchical forms. The explanation doubtless is that after 
 all the Venetians did not want the Doge to become a mere 
 ceremonial and symbol. 
 
 Note G — to page 392 . 
 
 ROUSSEAU'S VIEW OF THE GENERAL WILL 
 
 We must distinguish according to Rousseau {Contr at Social, 
 bk. II. chap, iii.) between la volontd de tous — which is a somme de 
 volonUs particulihes and has regard to private interests — and la 
 volontd gSndrale, which concerns only I'interet commun ; but if we 
 strike out of account the mutually neutralising elements in the 
 will of individuals, what remains will be the volont4 gdndrale. 
 The volonU gdndrale alone can legitimately guide the forces of 
 the state according to the end of the institution, which is ce qu'il 
 y a de commun dans les diffdrents inUrets (bk. ll. chap. i.). But 
 for this will to be really general, it must express itself in laws 
 which ohligent ou favmisent Sgalement tous les citoyens, not in 
 privileges or decisions directed to particular cases (bk. ii. chap, 
 iv.). Rousseau's mistake lies (1) in not seeing that the decision 
 of an aggregate must actually be the decision of the majority ; 
 and (2) that a law cannot be certain to affect all equally, unless 
 they are absolutely similar in condition and circumstances. 
 
 In book IV. chap, i., he explains that in a well-constituted 
 state, in which plusieurs hommes r4unis se considdrent comme un seul 
 corps, legislation is a simple matter : le Men commun se montre 
 partout avec Evidence et ne demande que du bon sens pom- etre apergu. 
 But when les intdrUs particuliers comm^ncent a se faire sentir et les 
 
448 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY 
 
 petites socUUs a influer sur la grande, the volonU gSndrale is not 
 destroyed or corrupted, but subordinated : elle est toujours constante, 
 inaltdrable et pure, but individuals prefer their private interests to 
 the general. Even the bribed voter has in him unextinguished 
 the volonU g4n6rale; but what he expresses is a volonU particuliere. 
 His vote answers a wrong question — not 'whether it is im- 
 portant to the state,' but ' whether it is important to me and 
 my party,' etc. La hi de Vordre public dans les assembUes est . . . 
 de faire que la volont6 ginirale soit toujours interrogie et qu^elle rdponde 
 toujours. We may remark on this that it seems surprising that 
 Rousseau could think that the end he has in view could be 
 attained by any loi d'ordre public. The real difficulty lies in the 
 opposition between sectional interests. And further it is a 
 psychological error to suppose that the abstract distinction which 
 Rousseau draws between the wlont4 yarticulihre and the volontS 
 g&adrale is actually realised in the minds of individuals. The 
 commoner case is that the individual's perception of the common 
 interest is really perverted by his strong desire of his own. 
 
INDEX 
 
 Achaea, 63, 64, 72, 80, 94 ; Achaean 
 League, 88, 119, 134 seq. 
 
 Aesymnetes, 90, 130 
 
 Aids (feudal), (see Taxation) 
 
 Alexander, limits to his powers, 38 ; 
 liberator of Ionian cities, 101 
 
 America, United States of, 168, 319 ; 
 their constitution, 418 ; federalism 
 of, 430, 435, 437 
 
 Anne, Queen, 403 
 
 Aragon, 309, 337 
 
 Arcadia, 72, 91, 92, 94, 101, 137, 138 
 
 Archons at Athens, 73 seq. 
 
 Areopagus, council of, 104 
 
 Argos, 72, 80, 94, 112, 117, 137 
 
 Aristocracy, aristocratic ; in Aristotle's 
 classification, 110 ; in ideal states, 
 123, 126, 127 ; Roman, 151 ; feudal, 
 205 seq. ; in France before Revolution, 
 385 seq. (see Oligarchy) 
 
 Aristophanes, 115 
 
 Aristotle ; on Carthage, 12 (note) ; his 
 idea of state as city, 68, 125 ; on 
 oligarchy and democracy in Sparta, 
 79 seq. ; on Crete, 80 ; on cavalry 
 and oligarchy, 84, 442 ; on tyrannis, 
 88 ; on Aesymnetes, 90 ; on de- 
 mocracy and on duration of govern- 
 ments, 101 ; on oligarchies, 102 ; on 
 democracies, 105 ; his classification 
 of governments, 107 seq. ; his ideal 
 state, 120 seq.., 347; his practical 
 ideal, 127 seq.; on monarchy, 129 
 seq., 188 ; his analysis applied 
 to Rome, 142 seq. ; influence on 
 Christian conceptions of government, 
 230 ; silent on taxation, 302 
 
 Arti (see Crafts) 
 
 Artisans ; Greek, 123, 125 ; medieval 
 (see Crafts) 
 
 Ashley, Professor, on craft -gilds, 251 
 seq. 
 
 Assembly, primitive, 29 seq. ; early 
 Greek, 75, 76, 80 seq. ; Spartan, 77 
 seq. ; in oligarchies, 102 ; Athenian, 
 
 payment for attendance iu, 104 ; its 
 functions, etc., 105 ; of Achaean 
 League, 139 ; different kinds in 
 Rome, 143 seq. (see Estates, Parlia- 
 mentary Government) 
 
 Athens, imitated, 23 ; as a type, 61, 
 103 ; early changes, 73, 75 ; formed 
 by integration, 82 ; favours demo- 
 cracies, 97, 99 ; constitution of, 103 
 seq. ; law-making in, 106, 175, 176 ; 
 religion in, 219 seq. 
 
 Augustus, 166 seq., 184 seq. 
 
 Austria, 318 ; federation of, 427 seq., 
 438 
 
 "Babylonian captivity," the, 231 
 
 Basileus (see Monarchy) 
 
 Bishops in medieval states, 224, 267 
 
 Blackstone, 371 (note) ; 417 seq. 
 
 Bluntschli, 320 seq., 397 seq., 419 
 
 Bodin, 328 
 
 Bolingbroke, 369 seq. 
 
 Boniface VIIL, 227 
 
 Boule (see Council) 
 
 Brienne, Walter de, iu Florence, 298 
 
 Buoni Uomini in Florence, 289 seq. 
 
 Cabinet Government, 401, 416 (see 
 Ministers) 
 
 Cajsar on early Germans, 32, 45 
 
 Capitano del Popool, 288 seq. 
 
 Castellani in Italy, 270 seq., 288 
 
 Castile, 309, 310, 337 
 
 Catalonia, 337 
 
 Cavalry, 84, 289, 442 
 
 Chalcis, a commercial centre, 72, 85 ; 
 Hippobotae in, 75, App, 443 
 
 Charles the Great, empire of, 192, 209, 
 224, 245, 317 
 
 Charles VIII. of France, 279 
 
 Christianity (see Church) 
 
 Church in relation to State, 7, 170, 196, 
 216, 220, 222 seq. ; early Christian, 
 221 ; its influence in favour of and 
 against monarchy, 193, 330 seq. ; 
 
 449 2 G 
 
450 
 
 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY 
 
 relation to cities in Germany, 246 ; in 
 Italy, 261, 267 seq. (see Theocracy) 
 
 Ciompi, revolution of the, 300 
 
 Cities, Greek, 75-141 passim ; medieval 
 in general, 232-243 ; English, 237 
 seq. ; French, 242, 243, 307 ; Spanish, 
 241; German, 244-258 ; Lombard,259. 
 276 ; Italian and Greek compared, 
 277-285; Tuscan (especially Flor- 
 ence), 286-301 ; their representation 
 in assemblies, 302-315 passim 
 
 City-State distinguished from Country- 
 State, 66 seq., 134, 148, 186 seq., 
 194 seq., 278 
 
 Cives sine suffragio, 153 
 
 Cleisthenes of Athens, 104 
 
 Clergy (see Church) 
 
 Climate as affecting political develop- 
 ment, 13, 14 
 
 Code, codifier, 89 seq., 177 
 
 Colonies, Greek, 60, 81, 87, 93, 94, 
 App. 444 ; Roman, 151 seq, 
 
 Comitia curiata, 145; centuriata, 143 
 seq. 
 
 Commons, House of (see Parliament) 
 
 Compact (see Social Compact) 
 
 Concilium plebis, 144 
 
 Constance, Treaty of, 270 
 
 Constantine, Emperor, 187, 222 ; dona- 
 tion of, 229 
 
 "Constitutional Government" (Polity) 
 in Aristotle's system, 110, 127 seq. ; 
 modern (see Parliamentary Govern- 
 ment) 
 
 Consuls, Roman, 160 seq. ; medieval 
 municipal, 243, 268, 287 ; of arti,^ 
 292, 297 
 
 Corinth, a commercial and colonising 
 state, 72, 85 ; tyrants of, 96, 97, 
 133, 138 
 
 Cortes (see Estates) 
 
 Council {Boule) of 500 at Athens, 105 ; 
 of Achaean League, 139 (note) ; of 
 medieval cities, from 232 passim 
 
 Country-State distinguished from City- 
 State, 66 seq., 134, 148, 186 seq., 
 194 seq., 278 
 
 Crafts and craft -gilds, 238 seq., 250,^ 
 251 seq., 281, 287, 288, 290 seq., 297,. 
 299 
 
 Crete, constitutions of, 80 seq. 
 
 Croatia, 428 
 
 Crown (see Monarchy) 
 
 Curiae, the Roman, 50 
 
 Cyclopean family, 54 
 
 Cypselos of Corinth, 96 
 
 Dante, 228 
 
 Democracy, democratic ; in Greek 
 
 States, 62 seq., 100-119, 120 seq,', 
 in Aristotle's ideal state, 126 ; in 
 medieval towns, 240, 253 seq., 260, r- 
 283, 300 seq. ; in medieval assemblies, 
 304 ; movement to federalism, 439 
 (see England, France, etc.) 
 
 Denmark, feudalism extending to, 211 ; 
 coup d'etat in, 189, 310, 322 
 
 Despotism (see Monarchy and Tyranny) 
 
 Dicey, Mr. A. V., 423 
 
 Diocletian, Emperor, 187 
 
 Divine right of kings, 368 
 
 Dorians, results of their conquest, 81 
 (see also Sparta) 
 
 Droit administratif, 4t.^'2. seq. 
 
 Empire, beginning of, in Rome, 165 
 seq. ; Roman, 184 seq. ; Eastern, 261 
 seq. (see Rome; Holy Roman E?npire) 
 
 England, feudalism in, 206, 211 ; early 
 monarchy in, 212 ; cities in, 237 
 seq., 306 ; parliamentary develop- 
 ment in, 310 seq., 341 seq. ; nobility 
 of, 312 ; Montesquieu on its con- 
 stitution, 375 seq., 413 ; its consti- 
 tutional development since 1688, 395- 
 410 ; constitutional type for nine- 
 teenth century, 415 seq. 
 
 Ephialtes, 104 
 
 Ephors in Sparta, 78 seq. 
 
 Estates, Assemblies of, 302 seq., 337 
 
 Ethnos distinguished from polis, 135 
 
 Exarch of Ravenna, 262 
 
 Executive, in relation to legislative and 
 judical, 171, 376 seq., 413 seq. ; in 
 England, 396 seq. (see Ministers) 
 
 False Decretals, the, 229 
 
 Federalism in Greece, 119, 134 seq. ; 
 
 modern, 426-439; modem tendencies 
 
 to, 439 
 Feudalism, 195, 201, 202-216 ; in re- ^ 
 
 lation to Assemblies of Estates, 304 ; 
 
 in England, 311 seq. ; decline of, in 
 
 France, 383 seq. 
 Filmer, controversy with Locke, 44 
 Florence, 265 ; polity of, 286-301 n 
 France, municipal development in, 242 ; ^ 
 
 estates (general and provincial) of, 
 
 306 seq., 337 ; part of, in European 
 
 changes, 395 ; later constitutions of, 
 
 397, 415, 438 
 Franchise, Roman, 147 ; in nineteenth 
 
 century, 422 
 Frankish monarchy, 199 seq., 204 (note) 
 Frederick Barbarossa, 270, 288 ^ 
 
 Freeman, E. A., on primitive polity, 
 
 15, 29, 30, 76 (note); on imitation in 
 
 politics, 21 (note) ; on Homeric polity. 
 
INDEX 
 
 451 
 
 35 ; on Achaean League, 137 stq, ; on 
 city communities, 244, 260 
 
 Gelo of Syracuse, 97 
 
 Genoa, 264 
 
 Gens, the Roman, 49, 57 seg. 
 
 George I., II., III. (see Monarchy, 
 Hanoverian) 
 
 Germany, earliest polity, 33 seq., 45, 
 66, 67; kingdom of, in relation to 
 -Empire, 196 seq. ; cities of, 235 seq., 
 244-258 ; estates of, 305 seq., 335 ; 
 Roman law in, 335, 336 ; constitu- 
 tion of, compared with English, 400 
 seq., 419 ; federalism of, 427 
 
 Gervinus quoted, 7 (note) 
 ^Ghibelins, 278, 281 seq., 288, 290, 300 
 
 Gilds (see Crafts) 
 
 Gladstone on Homeric polity, 35 
 . Gonfalonier of Justice in Florence, 295 
 seq. 
 
 Gracchi, Tib. and C, 150, 153, 154, 
 158, 163 
 
 Graeco- Roman politics, how differing 
 from modern, 7 
 
 Gregory VII. (see Hildebrand) 
 
 Grote, on Homeric polity, 35 ; on origin 
 of Greek oligarchy, 71 seq. ; on 
 Xenophon, 112 
 
 Grotius, 359 
 •« Guelfs, 278, 281 seq., 288 seq., 297, 
 300 
 
 Guizot on Third Estate, 307 
 
 Hadrian, Emperor, 185 
 
 - Hanseatic League, 236, 249, 256, 305, 
 
 431, 436 seq. 
 Heiots in Sparta, 76 seq., 207 (note) 
 Henry IV., Emperor, 227, 248 
 Herodotus on number of Spartan war- 
 riors, 76, and App. 441 ; on Spartan 
 kings, 77 (note) ; on Periander and 
 Thrasybulus, 96 ; on democracy of 
 Mantinea, 103 (note) 
 
 - Hildebrand, 225 seq., 332 
 Hindoo family, 55 
 
 History, its unity, its relation to ulti- 
 mate ends, 4 ; to practical politics, 
 5, 6 ; as furnishing analogies, 6, 7 
 
 Hobbes, 210, 329, 349-367 passim, 
 389 seq. 
 
 Holland (United Netherlands), 340, 
 341 ; federation of, 432 
 ^ Holy Roman Empire and Romano-Ger- 
 manic Empire, 196 seq., 225, 235, 
 256, 267, 317, 318, 325, 336, 431 
 
 Homer, Homeric ; his descriptions how 
 far historic, 31 , 32 ; polity, 34 seq., 
 65, 75, 83, 173 
 
 Hungary, 427 seq. 
 Hutcheson, 368 
 
 Icelandf constitution of, 46 
 
 ideal states, 120 seq. 
 
 Imitation affecting polity, 20 seq. 
 
 Industry, mechanic (see Cities, Medi- 
 eval) 
 
 Innocent HI., 227 seq. 
 
 Integration, Aggregation ; forming poli- 
 ties, 44 seq., 82, 85, 92, 131, 135, 
 439 
 
 Isocrates on democracy, 112, 117, 120 
 
 Italy, medieval cities in, 236 seq., 259 
 seq. ; constitution of, 420, 421 ; 
 unity of, 439 
 
 Janet, 372 
 
 Jews, their theocracy, 221 
 
 Judicature (Judicial, Judge, Jury, 
 Justice) in earliest polities, 40, 59, 
 173 ; in Athens, 106 ; feudal, 207, 
 208, 213, 225, 243; in England 
 before and after the Conquest, 212, 
 214, 312 ; independence of, 376, 413, 
 414, 422 seq. 
 
 Jus civile, 180 
 
 Jus gentium, 179 seq. ; App. 445 
 
 Jus naturale (see Mature, Law of) 
 
 Justinian, Emperor, 186, 222, ?48 
 
 King, kingship (see Monarchy) 
 Kinship (see Patriarchal Theory) 
 
 Law ; in relation to government, ancient, 
 168-383 ; Roman, development of, 
 176-186 ; its influence on monarchy, 
 192, 335 seq. ; on revolutionary 
 doctrine, 390 ; Roman in Italian 
 cities, 253 
 
 Lawyers, in France, 307, 339, 379 
 
 Legislative, 171, 376, 410, 413, 417 
 seq. (and see Law) 
 
 Libertun veto in Poland, 341 
 
 Licinio-Sextian Laws, 143, 149, 161 
 
 Locke, 44, 302, 357-369, 391, 417 
 
 Lombardy, cities of, 259 seq. 
 
 London in Middle Ages, 239 
 
 Lords, House of, 416 ; not imitated in 
 new constitutions, 421 - 
 
 Lot, appointments made by, 105, 128, 
 295 seq. 
 
 Louis XIV., 189, 321 seq., 334, 381, 
 396 seq., 412 
 
 Lycurgus (see Sparta) 
 
 Macedonia, its monarchy and assembly, 
 38 ; supremacy of, 132, 138 
 
 2 G 2 
 
452 
 
 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY 
 
 M'Lennan on Primitive Marriage, 52 
 
 se?., 58 
 Madwig, 176 
 
 Magistrates, appointment of, in Greek 
 oligarchies, 102 seg. (see Consuls, 
 Executive) 
 Maine, Sir Henry, his Patriarchal 
 Theory, 47 seq. ; Ancient Lmo and 
 Early History of Institutions, 172 
 seq., 177 seq., 180 seq. ; on Mont- 
 esquieu and Kousseau, 372, 378 seq., 
 384 seq. 
 Mantinea, democracy of, 103 (note) 
 Marius, C, 165 
 
 Matilda, Countess of Tuscany, 286, 287 
 ^ Medici in Florence, 301 
 
 Megalopolis, 92, 138 
 -Megara, 116, 138, 283 ; App. 443 
 Milan, 270 seq. 
 Mill, John Stuart, 114 
 Ministers, relation of, to Crown and 
 
 Parliament, 401 seq., 416 seq. 
 Modern history, whence dated, 320 
 
 seq. 
 Mommsen on original Roman constitu- 
 tion, 30, 41 ; on urban concentration 
 of Rome, 147 (note) ; on Roman 
 offices, 150 
 Monarchy (kingship, royalty), absolute, 
 defined, 10, why common, 10, 11 ; 
 movement to, in German primitive 
 community, 32, 33 ; in Homeric de- 
 scriptions, 34 seq. ; in early Greece, 
 62 seq., 72 seq. ; in Aristotle's sys- 
 tem, 110, 129, 130 ; beginning of 
 medieval, 191 ; absolute in Western 
 Europe, 194 ; German in connection 
 with empire, 196 seq. ; feudal, 209 
 ^ seq. ; in England, 212, 312 seq. ; 
 absolute, movement to, in Europe, 
 316-344 ; Hanoverian, 369 seq., 404 
 seq. ; French, 382 seq. ; defects of 
 absolute, 412 
 Montesquieu, 338, 371 seq., 380 seq., 
 413 seq. 
 
 Napoleon, 319 
 
 Nation defined, 26, 27 
 
 Nature, law of {jus naturale), 180 seq., 
 328 (note 3), 350, 357 seq., 379 seq. ; 
 Rousseau on, 387 seq. ; App. 445 
 
 Nature, state of, according to Hobbes 
 and Locke, 354-361 ; Rousseau on, 
 388 seq. 
 
 Nomothetae, 106 
 
 Norman kings (see Monarchy in Eng- 
 land) 
 
 Norway, 318, 421, 428 
 
 Numa, King, 56, 220 
 
 Oligarchy, early form of government 
 in Greece, 62 seq., 71 ; movement 
 against, 89, 90, 93-95 ; Aristotle's 
 classification of oligarchies, 102 ; in 
 Aristotle's system, 110 ; in German 
 cities, 249, 250, 256, 257 ; in Italian, 
 270 seq., 283 ; disruptive, feudal, 
 317 ; in England, etc., 318, 371 ; 
 Greek in relation to cavalry, App. 
 442 ; and to trade, App. 442, 443 
 
 *' Ordinances of Justice " in Florence, 
 294 seq. 
 
 Otto, Emperor, 196 seq., 229, 248, 265 
 
 Papacy, Pope (see Church, Theocracy) 
 
 Papal States, States of the Church, 261- 
 264 
 - Parlamento in Italian cities, 274, 279, 
 287 
 
 Parlements in France, 339, 394, 424 
 
 Parliament (see under Estates and 
 E7igland) 
 
 Parliamentary government, types of, in 
 nineteenth century, 420 seq. (see also 
 Ministers 
 
 Patriarchal Theory, the, 43 seq. 
 
 Patricians in Rome, 143 seq. ; Frankish,^ 
 262 
 
 Periander of Corinth, 96, 97 
 
 Pericles, 104, 114 
 
 Philip the Fair, 227 
 
 Philip II. of Spain, 322, 334 
 
 Phratriae at Athens, 50 
 
 Physiocrates, 392 seq. 
 
 Pisa, 264 
 
 Pisistratus, 96 
 
 Pitt, William, the elder, 408 
 
 Pitt, William, the younger, 371, 406 
 
 Plato, his idea of the state as city, 68, 
 125 ; on governments, 107 seq. ; on 
 degeneration of states, 113 seq. ; his 
 ideal state, 120 seq., 169, 346, 347 
 
 Plebeians in Rome, 143 seq. 
 
 Plutarch, 116 
 
 Podesta, the, 243, 273, 288 seq. 
 
 Poland, 341 
 
 Palis, 135, QXi^ passim 
 
 Political Science distinguished from 
 Political Philosophy and Political 
 History, 2 
 
 Political Society defined, 1, 25 (see 
 State) 
 
 Political thought, relation to facts, 345- 
 349 
 
 Polity defined, 1 
 
 Polybius on successive forms of govern- 
 ment, 62 seq. ; on overthrow of 
 Achaean monarchy, 72 ; on demo- 
 cracy of Mantinea, 103 (note 2) ; on 
 
INDEX 
 
 453 
 
 Achaean League, 139 (note) ; on 
 
 Roman constitution, 157 
 Polycrates of Samos, 96 
 Praetor y Praetor Peregrinus, 159, 161, 
 
 162, 166, 180 (note), 181 
 Praetorian Edict, 178 seq. 
 Prime Minister (see Ministers) 
 Primitive Polity, 29-42, 60, 62 
 Priori in Florence, 293 seq. 
 Private war, 208, 214, 237 
 Proconsul, proconsular, 158, 162, 165, 
 
 166 
 Provinces, Roman, 161 
 
 Referendum, 415 
 
 Reformation, 323, 333 
 
 Responsa prudentium, 185 
 
 Revolution, English, of 1688, 343, 356, 
 364, 401 seq. 
 
 Revolution, the French, the intel- 
 lectual source of, 392, 394 ; caused 
 by bankruptcy of France, 395 seq. 
 
 Rhodes, 116, 139 (note) 
 
 Robertson's Charles V. quoted, 338, 
 339 
 
 Rome, portions of its Empire broken 
 up and reconstituted to form modern 
 states, 8 ; its early constitution, 30, 
 41 ; early law, 48 seq. ; its polity, 
 141-167 ; development of law in, 
 176-186 ; Empire of, 192, 209 seq. 
 and passim ; religion in ancient, 220 ; 
 Roman derivation of craft-gilds, 251 
 (see also Holy Roman Empire) 
 
 Rousseau, J. J., 372, 378-394, 414, 
 438 ; idea of the General Will, App. 
 447 seq. 
 
 Salisbury, Council of, 206 
 Scandinavia, 213 (note), 310, 421 ; 
 
 federalism of, 428 
 Schism, the Great, 231 
 Second Chamber, 420 seq. 
 Seeley, Prof. Sir J., 396, 402 seq. 
 Senate, Roman, 146, 150, 154, 155, 
 
 159 seq., 162 seq., 166 
 Separation of Powers, 376, 377, 413, 
 
 422 seq. (and see Executive and 
 
 Legislative) 
 Serfs (see Slaves) 
 Servius Tullius, 143 
 Sicyon, tyranny in, 87 
 Slaves, slavery, serfs, 7, 76, 80, 106, 
 
 114, 125, 126, 183, 207, 240, 253, 
 
 324, 445 
 Social compact, 352 seq., 357 seq., 368 
 
 seq., 384 seq., 390 seq. 
 Solon, his constitution, 83, 90 
 
 Sovereignty according to Hobbes, 350 
 seq. ; of the people, 392 
 
 Spain, municipal development in, 241 ; 
 assemblies in, 306 ; growth of mon- 
 archical power in, 322 ; limitation of 
 monarchy by Cortes, 322, 337 ; dis- 
 ruption of Christendom strengthens 
 monarchy in, 333 ; modern con- 
 stitution, 420, 421 
 
 Sparta, its constitution, 38, 76 seq. ; 
 in favour of oligarchies, 97, 99, 
 100 ; its stability, 117 ; against 
 Achaean League, 138 ; its control 
 over citizens, 169 ; Spartans and 
 Helots compared to feudal lords and 
 vassals, 207 (note) ; note on decline 
 in number of Spartans, App. 441, 
 442 
 
 Spencer, Herbert, on origin of Govern- 
 ment, 41-45 ; on the Medicine Man, 
 56 
 
 Stasis in city-states, 121 
 
 State defined, 1, 25-28 ; country and 
 city, 7, 16, 18, 67 seq., 134, 148, 
 194 ; and Church, 7, 170 
 
 States, general (see Estates, assemblies 
 
 of) 
 
 Stoics, their influence on Roman law, 
 181, 390, App. 445 
 
 Stubbs, Dr. W., on absence of royalty 
 among early Germans, 32, 33 ; on 
 English feudalism, 206 ; on early 
 English monarchy, 212 ; on papal 
 supremacy, 228 
 
 Sulla, L. Cornelius, 161, 165 
 
 Sweden, 318, 421, 428 (see Scandi- 
 navia) 
 
 Switzerland, 340 ; federalism of, 428 
 seq. 
 
 Synoikism in Arcadia, etc., 92, 135 
 
 Tacitus on early Germans, 30 seq., 45 ; 
 on mixed government, 128 
 
 Taille (see Taxation) 
 
 Taine, 385 
 
 Taxation, Taxes ; Greek, 114 ; ancient 
 and modern views on, 302 ; medieval, 
 205, 303, 304, 308 seq., 314; ab- 
 solute monarchy and, 321, 322, 336, 
 337; Locke on, 302, 357, 361; 
 Montesquieu and, 376, 413 ; vicious 
 system of, in the Ancien Regime, 
 381 seq., 396 
 
 Teutonic (see German) 
 
 Thebes, its early oligarchical govern- 
 ment, 81 ; democracy in, 101 
 
 Theocracy, medieval, 215 seq. 
 
 Thessaly, nobles of, 81, 442 
 
 Third estate (see Estates) 
 
454 
 
 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN POLITY 
 
 Thrasybuhis of Miletus, 96 
 
 Timocracy, 102 
 
 Tocqueville, A. de, 382 seg-. 
 
 Tories, 370 seg., 405 seq. 
 
 Towns alien to feudalism, 216, 217 (see 
 
 Cities, also Germany, Italy, etc.) 
 Tribunes, Tribunate, Roman, 144, 161, 
 
 167 
 Turgot, 394 
 
 Twelve Tables, the, 177 seq. 
 Tylor quoted, 13, 60 
 Tyrannis, the Greek, 16, 85, 86-99,132 ; 
 
 the medieval Italian, 272, 275, 276, 
 
 284, 285 
 
 United Netherlands (see Holland) 
 United States (see America) 
 
 Venice, its Council of Ten compared to 
 Spartan Ephors, 78, 280 ; early 
 development, 238, 264 ; stable oli- 
 garchy of, 280, 340 ; restriction of 
 power of Doge in, App. 445 seq. 
 
 Walpole, 369 
 
 Warde Fowler, 104 (note), 120 
 
 Whigs, 370 seq., 405 seq. 
 
 William II., Emperor of Germany, 
 
 409, 427 
 William III. of England, 403 
 William IV. of England, 407 
 Wilson, Woodrow, 168 (note) 
 
 Xenophon, 108, 112 
 
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