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THE TEMPLE PRIMERS
A
HISTORY OF POLITICS
By
EDWARD JENKS, M.A.
Reader in Law to the University of Oxford
&c., &c.
HISTORYPF
POLITICS
BY- EDWARD
JEnKSmA
i^OO^ Z^i^^Q t,L^^UBS> STREET 'JjOI^DOr^
All rights reservft/
THE I.IRRARY
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
SANTA BARBARA
PREFACE
Some ten years ago, Sir Frederick Pollock published a
valuable and interesting little book on the history of political
speculation.! But the author is not aware that any one has
yet attempted to summarize, in a brief, popular form, the
record of political action. It has occurred, therefore, to the
promoters of this Series, that such a summary might prove
interesting, if only by way of comparison.
These pages profess to give, then, a brief account of what
men have done, not of what they have thought^ in that im-
portant branch of human activity which we call Politics, or
the Art of Government. But if it should be objected, that
what men do is really always the outcome, more or less
perfect, of what they think, the answer is, that we recognize,
for practical purposes, a distinction between what the world,
in theory at least, believes to be best, and that which it
actually succeeds in achieving. And a comparison of the
two objects can hardly fail to be instructive.
^ An Introduction to the History of the Science of Politics. By (Sir)
Frederick Pollock. London, 1890. A new edition has recently
been published.
vi PREFACE
To the other, and inevitable objection, tliat it is impossible,
within the narrow limits of a popular sketch, to deal with
such a subject as the History of Politics, the author will
reply with the doctrine which, paradoxical as it may sound,
is yet maintained by very able writers, that the greater the
subject, the smaller the space in which it can be treated.
Readers who care to see parts of the subject worked out in
greater detail, may be referred to the author's Laau and
Politics in the Middle Jges (Murray, 1898).
Oxford, Januarij 1900
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTORY
CHAP.
I. TYPES OF SOCIETY
PAGE
I
TYPE I.— SAVAGE SOCIETY
II. SAVAGE ORGANIZATION
TYPE II.— PATRIARCHAL SOCIETY
III. PATRIARCHAL SOCIETY IN GENERAL .
IV. THE DOMESTICATION OF ANIMALS
V. TRIBAL ORGANIZATION ....
VI. AGRICULTURE AND THE CLAN
VII. INDUSTRY AND THE GILD
15
22
43
60
TYPE III.— MODERN (POLITICAL) SOCIETY
VIII. THE STATE AND FEUDALISM
IX. EARLY POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS
X. THE STATE AND PROPERTY
71
81
93
viii CONTENTS
CHAP.
XI. THE STATE AND JUSTICE
XII. THE STATE AND LEGISLATION
XIII. THE STATE AND ADMINISTRATION .
XIV. VARIETIES OF POLITICAL SOCIETY
LIST OF AUTHORITIES . . . .
INDEX ......
GLOSSARY . ....
A SHORT HISTORY OF POLITICS
INTRODUCTORY
CHAPTER I
Types of Society
Politics, By Pol'Utcs we mean the business of Govern-
mentj that is to say, the control and management of people
living together in a society. A society, again, is a group or
mass of people, bound together by a certain common principle
or object, A mere chance crowd is not a society ; it has no
definite object, it collects and disperses at the whim of the
moment, its members recognize no duties towards one another.
It has no history, no organization.
Society. Societies are of many kinds. They may exist
for purposes of religion, commercial profit, amusement, educa-
tion, or a host of other objects. A good specimen of a
religious society is, of course, an ordinary church congrega-
tion, or a missionary society ; of a commercial society, an
ordinary trading company ; of an amusement society, a West-
end club ; of an educational society, an university or a college.
And the management and organization of any such society
may in strictness be considered a branch of Politics, But it
is convenient to reserve the term politics for matters concern-
ing one particular and very important class of societies, those
communities, namely, which are not formed for any special or
//WW objects, but which have grown up, almost spontaneously,
as part of the general history of mankind, and which are con-
cerned with its general interests. Men as a rule, live in these
B
2 A SHORT HISTORY OF POLITICS
communities, not because they choose to do so, but because
they are born into them ; and, until quite recently, they were
not allowed to change them at their pleasure. In their most
advanced forms, we call these communities States ; Great
Britain, France, Holland, Germany, Spain, Russia, etc., are
undoubtedly States. And these States are the proper subject
matter of Politics, in the modern sense of the term. But, as
we study their history, we become aware that these com-
munities have gradually developed out of societies of quite
another type, organized on different principles.
Modern social groups. Now-a-days, the principle
which binds together these communities of the modern type,
is the tie of military allegiance. In the States which practise
conscription, or universal military service, this is very obvious.
The most heinous political offence which a Frenchman or a
German can commit, is attempting to evade military service ;
or, possibly worse, taking part in military service against his
own country. But even in Great Britain, where conscription
is not practised, the tie is really the same. It is unquestion-
able that the Queen, through her Ministers, has the right, in
case of necessity, to call upon every one of her male subjects
to render personal military service ; and any British subject
captured fighting against his country, would be liable to suffer
death as a traitor. In the older conditions of society,
however, to which allusion has been made, the tie was not
that of military allegiance, but kinship, which was at first, no
doubt, based on actual blood relationship, but was afterwards
extended by fictitious methods. To men living in such a
community, the inclusion of strangers in blood would have
appeared a monstrosity. The mere facts that these strangers
were settled in the same neighbourhood, or carried on trade
with the community in question, or even were willing to fight
its battles, would have seemed to such a community no argu-
ments at all for admitting them to membership. The most
conspicuous example in the world of a community organized
on such principles is, of course, the Jews, who, in spite of
their world-wide dispersal, still maintain intact their tribal
TYPES OF SOCIETY 3
organization, at least in theory. The same ideas were at the
bottom of the famous struggle in early Roman history between
the patricians ^ and the plebeians ; and it is possible that some-
thing of the same kind may be unconsciously at the root of
the trouble between the Boers and the Uitlanders in the
Transvaal. The Welsh and the Irish before the Norman
Conquest, the Scottish Highlanders two or three centuries ago,
undoubtedly lived in communities of this type, which we may
call patriarchal, or tribal.
Still older groups. Until quite recently it was be-
lieved that this patriarchal type was the oldest type of
human community. Speculators on the history of society
started from the patriarchal household^ and worked down-
wards to the modern State. But the brilliant discoveries of
the last half century have revealed to us a still more primitive
type of society which, so far as the writer knows, has never
been described in a popular book, and which it takes some
considerable effort to realize, even when it is stated in the
simplest language. It is intensely interesting, both as adding
another whole province to the domain of scientific history,
and as revealing another step in the path by which man has
moved onward and upward. At present, too little is known
of its details to warrant more than a brief description ; but,
thanks to the labours of devoted students, who have faced
discomfort and hardship in order to examine this type of
society in its few surviving examples, the outlines are now
fairly clear. Unfortunately, it is hard to find a good name,
by which it may be distinguished. Its scientific name of
Totemistic is too elaborate and technical for popular use.
Perhaps it will be best to call it the savage type ; though it
must be clearly understood that the term implies neither con-
tempt nor blame. It merely signifies that the type in question
is Yery primitive or rudimentary.
Here then we have our three historical types of human
society — the savage , the patriarchal, and the military (or
"political" in the modern sense). And it will be the
^ A " patrician " is one who has a " pater," or chief of kindred.
4 A SHORT HISTORY OF POLITICS
business of A Short History of Politics to describe each of
them in turn, beginning with the oldest, and, if possible, to
point out the causes which led societies to abandon the older
for the newer types. To do this, we shall not require to
describe the histories of particular societies ; that will be the
task of other writers in the Series. But we shall endeavour to
trace a normal course for the development of societies, a course
which every community tends to follow, unless deflected from
its natural path by special circumstances. It is the fashion to
scoff at such attempts, and, doubtless, there is a danger in
** general views." But there is, likewise, a danger in special-
ization ; and a man who uses the microscope only, loses the
treasures revealed by the telescope. It is a wise ideal of
study : to know something of everything, and everything of
something.
Our plan. But, if we start on a story of this kind, it is
quite evident that we must have something in the nature of a
plan. To plunge recklessly into the facts of universal history
would be to invite failure. To what pathway shall we trust
to bring us safely out of the forest ?
Institutions. There is a large part of the history of
every community which seems to leave no permanent traces
upon it. No doubt the results are there ; but they are too
vague and too subtle to be easily described. On the other
hand, the effects of other parts of the community's history are
plainly discernible, in the permanent and visible results which
they leave on the community itself. These results we call
institutions J i. e. the machinery by which the business of the
community is carried on. Perhaps it would be better to call
them limbs or organs of the community, for they resemble
natural growths far more than artificial creations. They
correspond in the body social with the limbs or organs of the
body natural, i. e. with those instruments by which the business
of the body — its absorption, digestion, defence, attack, etc.,
are carried on. And so we use the metaphor organization, to
describe the development of institutions in the body social, or
community.
TYPES OF SOCIETY 5
Their relative importance. These institutions may not
really be the most important part of the body social, any more
than the limbs and organs are the most important part of the
body natural. The really important thing in each is that
indefinable existence which we call life. But as no one has
yet succeeded in explaining what life is, even in the natural
body, still less in the social body, we shall be wiser to describe
the institutions of society, to show, if we can, how they
appeared, grew, and gradually changed, till they assumed the
shape in which we know them now. Only, as every fully
developed society has many kinds of institutions, political,
industrial, religious, educational, and so on, with all of which
it would be impossible to deal, we must remember that this
is a book on politics, and deals only, or chiefly, with those
institutions which are concerned directly with the business
of government.
This, then, will be the plan of our work : to describe, as
briefly and clearly as possible, the origin and development of the
institutions of government.
Type I. — Savage Society
CHAPTER II
Savage Organization
Savages* In spite of the constantly increasing intercourse
between the most remote parts of the world, and the civilizing
influences of commerce, there remain quite a considerable
number of peoples who still live under primitive or savage
conditions. Among them may be reckoned, the Andamanese
of the Bay of Bengal, the hill tribes of Madras, the Juangs of
Orissa, the Veddahs of Ceylon, the Bushmen and Akkas of
Africa, the Colorado Indians of North America, the Caribs
of the centre and the Brazilians of the south, the Dyaks
of Borneo, and the Eskimos of Greenland and Labrador.
The Tasmanians of Van Diemen's Land were, until their
recent extinction, perfect specimens of unadulterated savagery.
But by far the most important examples, because the most
remote from admixture and the most scientifically and
recently studied, are the aborigines ^ of Australia, who, in the
centre and north of that vast continent, still roam untouched
and unreclaimed. Their numbers are considerable, and,
though they are probably destined to disappear at no distant
date, they are at present in full possession of their primitive
organization. Owing to the praiseworthy efforts of a gener-
ation of students, prominent among them being Mr. A. W.
Howitt, the Rev. Lorimer Fison, Professor Baldwin Spencer,
1 The reader is cautioned that the term "Australian Native" is
by local custom reserved for the descendants of the white colonists,
and is rarely extended to the " blackfellow."
6
SAVAGE ORGANIZATION 7
and Mr. Gillen, who have braved the hardships of the
Australian desert, and won their way into the confidence of
the savages by consistent kindness, we are now able to form
some tolerably correct ideas of savage life. Their accounts
may be profitably supplemented by the studies of the late Mr.
Lewis Morgan, who, in the Red Indians of America, found
a~people just emerging from savagery into the patriarchal stage
of society, and whose book on Ancient Society will ultimately
be recognized as one of the great scientific products of the
nineteenth century.
Savage life' The material side of Australian existence
may be best described in a series of negatives. The savages
understand neither the cultivation of the land nor the rearing
of sheep and cattle. Their only domestic animal (if "domestic"
it can be called) is the dog. They have no idea of dwellings
more advanced than a rude bough hut ; for the most part
they take shelter in caves, and behind pieces of bark propped
up against trees or rocks. They have no food but the scanty
game of the " bush " or forest, such as the wallaby and the
opossum, and the natural products of the earth. The art ot
fire-making, in a very primitive form, is known to them ; but
their notions of cooking are of the crudest. Still less have
they the knowledge of working in metals, either by hammer-
ing or by melting. The recently adopted iron tomahawk is
an article of barter, obtained from the enterprising traveller,
in exchange for natural products. The indigenous weapons
are the flint-headed spear and axe, and the wooden boomerang
or throwing-stick. Australian legends go back to a time
when even the use of stone knives was unknown, and opera-
tions, even on the human body, were performed with a charred
stick. The " pitchi " or bark-basket, and the digging-stick
of the women, appear to be almost the only articles which can
be classed as "tools." The clothing of the Australians may
be described as purely ornamental. It consists, in fact, of
certain decorations used in religious ceremonies ; in ordinary
life they are stark naked. The appalling feature of this
miserable existence, always bordering on starvation, is, that it
8 A SHORT HISTORY OF POLITICS
seems to have gone on during countless ages. The fauna and
flora of Australia are, it is well known, of a thoroughly
archaic type ; the naturalist discovers in its forests and rivers
forms which have long since been extinct in other parts of the
world. And as there is no evidence whatever of any inter-
course between Australia and other lands during the period of
recorded history, as, in fact, Australia was, until three cen-
turies ago, an Unknown Land, we can only suppose that the
Australian has led his present life during thousands of years.
His isolation has been, no doubt, the chief cause of his
stagnation.
Savage Institutions. This view is entirely confirmed
by a study of the non-material side of Australian life. Crude
and primitive as it seems to us, its elaborateness of detail and
complexity of ceremonial point to a history of great, but un-
recorded, antiquity. When we consider the terror which all
novelty has for the savage, especially in religious matters, we
are bound to think that the elaborate ceremonies described in
Messrs. Spencer's and Gillen*s valuable book ^ must have taken
centuries, perhaps even thousands of years, to work out.
We may be very sure that no sudden change was made ;
but that only little by little was the elaborate ceremonial
introduced. We cannot here do more than describe its
leading features.
"Tribe'* or ** paclc,** It is the custom to speak of
the Australians and other savages as living in "tribes."
But the term is most misleading ; for the word " tribe "
always suggests to us the notion of descent from a common
ancestor, or, at any rate, of close blood relationship. Now
there Is, as we shall see, a most important stage in human
progress, in which descent from a common ancestor plays a
vital part in social organization. But the Australian " tribe "
does not really play a very important part in savage life, at
least on its social side. It appears to be mainly a group of
people engaged in hunting together, a co-operative or com-
munal society for the acquisition of food supply. It would
^ The Native Trites of Central Australia. London, 1 899.
SAVAGE ORGANIZATION 9
really be better to call it the " pack ; " for it far more
resembles a hunting than a social organization. All its
members are entitled to a share in the proceeds of the day*s
chase, and, quite naturally, they camp and live together.
But they are not sharply divided, for other purposes, from
other "packs" living in the neighbourhood. On the con-
trary, they frequently mingle with them ; and a social free-
masonry extends over vast areas of the continent.
Totem group. The real social unit of the Australians
is not the " tribe,'* but the tolem group. The word " totem **
is not, of course, Australian ; ^ but it is generally accepted as
the name of an institution which is found almost universally
among savages. The totem group is, primarily, a body of
persons, distinguished by the sign of some natural object, such
as an animal or tree, who may not intermarry with one
another. In many cases, membership of the totem group
is settled by certain rules of inheritance, generally through
females. But among the Australians, new-born or (in some
cases) unborn infants are allotted by the wise men to par-
ticular totems ; and this arrangement has all the appearance
of extreme antiquity, for the savage has no idea of principles,
he requires hard and fast rules.
No marriage within the totem. The Australian
may not marry within his totem. " Snake may not marry
snake. Emu may not marry emu." That is the first rule
of savage social organization. Of its origin we have no
knowledge ; but there can be little doubt that its object was
to prevent the marriage of near relations. Though the
savage cannot argue on principles, he is capable of observing
facts. And the evils of close inbreeding must, one would
think, have ultimately forced themselves upon his notice. If
so, we can understand the rule, " Snake may not marry
snake." But this is conjecture.
Marriage with another totem. The other side of
the rule is equally startling. The savage may not marry
1 It seems to have been first used, in a slightly different form, by
the Ojibway Indians of North America.
lo A SHORT HISTORY OF POLITICS
within his totem, but he must marry into another totem
specially fixed for him. More than this, he not only marries
into the specified totem, but he marries the whole of the
women of that totem in his own generation. Thus, all the
men of the Snake totem are husbands of all the women of
the Emu totem in the same generation; and, as a natural con-
sequence, all the women of Snake totem are wives of all the
men of Emu totem. Of course, it must not be supposed, that
this condition of marital community really exists in practice.
As a matter of fact, each Australian contents himself with
one or two women from his marriage totem. But it is a fact,
that an Australian would see nothing wrong in a man living
as the husband of any woman of his marriage totem, provided
she were of his own generation. And if an Australian is
travelling from " tribe " to " tribe," he will, as a matter of
course, find a wife waiting for him in every " tribe " which
contains women of his marriage totem. It is facts such as
these which scandalized early missionaries, and often caused
them to shut their eyes to what was really a most valuable
object-lesson in social history.
No unmarried people. It will be obvious that, under
these arrangements, there are no bachelors or spinsters among
the Australian savages; but that, as Mr. Fison has well
observed, marriage is, among them, "a natural state into
which both parties are born.'*
Different generations. It has been hinted before,
that some classification is necessary to distinguish the different
degrees or generations within the totem group ; and this is
one of the objects of the mysterious corrohorees^ or ceremonial
gatherings, which play so large a part in the life of the
savage. Though it is extremely difficult, owing to the un-
willingness of savages to reveal the secrets of their rites, to
ascertain precisely the details of these ceremonies, it is fairly
clear that they serve more than one object. In the first
place, as was frankly admitted by an Australian mystery man
of repute, they effect the useful result of impressing the
ordinary members of the totem group with a sense of the
SAVAGE ORGANIZATION n
importance and power of the "Birraark" or sorcerers,
usually old men, who conduct them. In the second, they un-
doubtedly seem to keep alive the legendary history of the totem
group, and thus to bind its members closer together. The
songs and dances of the ceremonies in many cases are supposed
to represent great events which have occurred in the " Al-
cheringa," or distant past. Finally, at the ceremonies, often
lasting for several days, the youths and maidens who have
attained to maturity are initiated into some of the mysteries
of the totem, often to the accompaniment of painful rites,
such as circumcision and other laceration. It is possible that,
on such occasions, the initiated are subjected to tattooing, with
a view of establishing their identity, and of allotting them to
a certain totem, and to a certain generation within that totem.
System of relationship. By this, or some other
artificial means, the curiously simple system of Australian
relationship is constructed. AH the women of his marriage
totem in his generation are a man's wives ; all their children
are his children ; all the members of his totem in the same
generation are his brothers and sisters (whom he may not
marry) ; all the members of his mother's totem are his parents
(for descent is nearly always reckoned through females).
Parent, child, brother, and sister are thus the only relationships
recognized. Rudimentary as this system appears to be, it is
widely spread throughout the Malay archipelago, and Mr.
Fison tells an amusing story of a missionary who, to increase
his familiarity with his native converts, was made by the pro-
cess of adoption the brother of his man-servant. Happening
to meet the man's wife, the missionary pleasantly explained
that he was now her brother. Whereupon the lady instantly
corrected him by saying — " Oh no, you are not my brother,
you are my husband." Mr. Morgan, indeed, who has studied
the natives of Hawaii and Honolulu, as well as his own Red
Indians, thinks that there are traces of still older systems, in
which marriage between brothers and sisters, and even between
lineal relations, was practised. Be this as it may, the Australian
system prevails widely among savages, and even, with certain
12 A SHORT HISTORY OF POLITICS
modifications, among some highly civilized people, e. g, the
Chinese.
Totem questions. Whether the totem serves any
other purpose than that of prohibiting intermarriage of near
relations, and what is the precise connection which the savages
believe to exist between themselves and their totems, are much
disputed questions. With regard to the latter, it has been
suggested by recent observers, that the Australian believes
himself to be, in some mysterious way, the offspring of his
totem. There can also be little doubt that, in some cases at
least, the totem is an object of worship, a fetich which will
deal destruction if the rule of the intermarriage is not rigidly
observed. And, if this be so, we get an interesting glimpse
at the rudiments of two of the most powerful factors in human
progress — Religion and Lav/. It has been said that the
progress of religious ideas follows three stages. In the first,
Man worships some object entirely external to himself, a stone
or an animal. In the second, he worships a human being like
himself, usually one of his own ancestors. In the third, he
has risen to the idea of a God who is both divine and human,
unlike and distinct from himself, and yet like to and connected
with himself. The Australian totem would answer to the
first of these three stages. But it is somewhat significant to
notice, that the savage's view of his deity is usually that of a
malevolent Power, dealing disease and death, and thirsting for
human blood. It is to be feared that this view is largely the
reflection of the savage's only means of reasoning, viz. by
experience. He sees that any one of his fellows, who happens
to be exceptionally strong and clever, is apt to show his power
by the exercise of cruelty. He transfers this character to his
Savage Law. Closely connected with this viewt isThe
savage's rudimentary notion of Law. With him it is a purely
negative idea, a list of things which are prohibited, or taboo.
The origin of these prohibitions is often ludicrous, but they
are generally found to be connected with the apprehension of
danger. A man is walking along a path, and is struck by a
SAVAGE ORGANIZATION 13
falling branch. Instead of attributing the blow to natural
causes, he assumes it to be the result of the anger of the Tree-
Spirit, offended by his action in using the path. In the future,
that path is taboo^ or forbidden. A rude log bridge is made
over a stream. It gives way beneath a passenger, and the man
is drowned. That (the savage thinks) is the vengeance of
the Water- Spirit, incensed at the insult offered by the exist-
ence of the bridge, which deprives him of his due number of
victims. But the convenience of the bridge is so great, that
men are tempted to build it again. And then a cunning man
suggests that, if a victim be sacrificed before the bridge is used,
the Water-Spirit will be satisfied. And so some poor wretch
is bound hand and foot and thrown into the torrent. Probably
the bridge is better built this time, and does not break.
The charm has worked. In such a way arises the notion
of sacrifice y which has played such a ghastly part in history.
Jacob Grimm, the great German scholar, found the practice
of bridge sacrifices in use in north-eastern Germany, happily
only in a mock form, as late as the beginning of the present
century. The practice of burying alive a victim in the found-
ations of a house, as a sacrifice to the Earth-Spirit, whose
domain is being invaded, is widely spread in savage countries.
Doubtless it had a similar origin.
Whether the totem bond also serves the purpose of uniting
its members together for offence and defence, is also a disputed
question. There are traces of such a state of things, and its
existence would certainly explain the development of a con-
spicuous feature of the second or patriarchal stage of society,
the blood-feud gxovL"^. But the relations of one group of savages
to another are obscure and uncertain. Doubtless the members
of a eroup, whether it be the " tribe " or hunting unit, or the
totemistic marriage group, do not recognize any duties towards
strangers. But their actual attitude is probably determined by
the state of the food supply, and the amount of elbow-room.
If game is abundant, and hunting-grounds large in proportion
to the population, distinct groups of savages may exist side
by side in a given area without conflict. But if game is
14 A SHORT HISTORY OF POLITICS
scarce, and the land thickly peopled (in the savage state the
two things would probably go together), wars and murders
are, probably, frequent. Even the revolting practice of
cannibalism probably originated in hunger ; though there are
some races which seem unable to abandon it, even in times of
plenty, and plausible reasons are invented for its continuance.
But it is one of the surest laws of progress, that, with each
forward step, the same area is able to maintain an ever-increas-
ing number of people. And so, the temptations for war, or at
least the excuses for war, are happily ever diminishing.
Summary. It is a somewhat dark picture that we have
had to draw of the life of primitive man. And indeed the
noble savage, who passed his days in a sort of perpetual picnic,
surrounded by his family, who sported in the flowery meads
while he discoursed sweet music, was a last century fiction
which did more credit to the hearts than to the heads of an
unhistorical generation. The actual savage is usually a miser-
able, underfed, and undersized creature, naked and shivering,
houseless, in constant terror of dangers seen and unseen, with
no family ties as we understand them, with no certain food
supply, and no settled abode. And yet, even the savage life
contributes something to the total of civilization. The savage
hunter, dependent for his very existence on success in the
chase, learns to endure hardships without murmuring, in the
pursuit of his prey. Constantly on the look-out for danger,
he developes powers of observation which are the admiration
of his more civilized brother. He can trace the footsteps of
an enemy in a thicket, where a modern detective would declare
it impossible to read any sign. He can foretell the approach
of a storm from warnings which would escape a scientific
weather-prophet. He can hear sounds which to a civilized
man are simply inaudible. He has infinite patience, provided
only that the prospect of reward is palpable and immediate.
These are no mean contributions to the store of civilization.
Type II. — Patriarchal Society
CHAPTER III
Patriarchal Society in General
Distinguishing features. We now approach the
consideration of the second stage of social development,
in which the binding ties are more distinctly marked, and
the organization more perfect, than in the preceding stage.
All patriarchal society is characterized by certain well-
marked features, which distinguish it from earlier as well as
from later types of society. These features are : —
1. Male Idnstllp, We saw that, in the savage type
of community, while something that might be called kinship
prevailed, it was so arbitrary and artificial, that it might be
regarded as a superstition rather than a fact. So far as there
was any recognition of blood relationship at all, it was relation-
ship through women, not through men. But, in the patriarchal
stage, paternity is the leading fact. Men are counted of kin
because they are descended from the same male ancestor.
Sometimes, no doubt, the relationship is fictitious rather than
real ; as when deficiencies in a family are made up by adoption
QV fosterage. But the very existence of such devices shows the
importance attached to descent through males. Leaving for
the present the question of how this important change came
about, we notice another feature of patriarchal society closely
connected with it.
2. Permanent marriage. Without such an addition,
i6 A SHORT HISTORY OF POLITICS
the first feature could hardly develop. In a state of society
such as that of the Australians {^ante, p. lo), no one could
be certain who his father was. It is not until a woman
becomes the wife of one man only, that anything like cer-
tainty of fatherhood appears. But it must not be assumed
that marriage, as we understand it, /. e. permanent union of
one man with one woman, is a feature of all patriarchal
society. On the other hand, polygamy, i. e. the marriage of
one man to several women, is very characteristic of patriarchal
society in its earlier stages. Only in its later developments,
does it approach to the modern system of marriage. But the
existence oi polygamy is no bar to the recognition of kin-
ship through males ; on the contrary, it renders it increasingly
certain, by providing against a superfluity of unmarried women.
Finally, a third essential feature of patriarchal society must be
mentioned.
3. Paternal authority. The principles upon which
patriarchal society is conducted require, as we shall see,
the existence of groups presided over and controlled by the
well-nigh despotic ^authority of a male ancestor. This
ancestor controls, not only the business affairs of the group,
but its religion, and its conduct. He alone is responsible for
it, to the larger group of which it forms a part. The precise
limits of this authority differ in different stages. In early
Rome, as is well known, the patria potestas extended to all
the descendants of a living ancestor, no matter how old they
were, and even survived, in a modified form, over the female
descendants after his death. Moreover, it comprised even the
power of life and death, to say nothing of control and
chastisement. In later forms of the patriarchal system, this
power becomes greatly modified, but an interesting record of
Welsh society at the end of the patriarchal stage says of the
Mab, or youth under fourteen: (He is) "at his father's
platter, and his father lord over him, and he is to receive no
punishment but that of his father, and he is not to possess a
penny of his property during that time, only in common with
PATRIARCHAL SOCIETY IN GENERAL 17
his father." In fact, for legal purposes, he has no separate
existence.
Actual examples. These are the universal features of
society in the patriarchal stage, whether we look at it among
Jewish tribes, or the early Greeks {e.g. the Homeric heroes)
or Romans, or among the Arabs of the desert, or the Hindus
and Mahommedans of Northern India, or the Afghans of the
frontier, or, better still, among our Teutonic forefathers in
their German homes, or, perhaps best of all, among the
branches of the Keltic race, the Welsh, the Irish, and the
Highland Scotch, with whom it lingered until a comparatively
late period.
Two stages of patriarchal society. But the study
of patriarchal society has, until quite lately, been rendered
very difficult by the practice, adopted by writers and
speakers, of treating all patriarchal society as though it were
of one kind. As a consequence, the picture has been con-
fused, inconsistencies and difficulties have arisen, and
impatient critics have been tempted to regard the patriarchal
stage of society as an ingenious fiction.
Tribal. As a matter of fact, a patient study of the
evidence soon reveals the truth, that patriarchal society falls
into two subordinate stages, represented by two different
groups or social units. The first of these may properly be
called the tribes the second the clan (or sept). The former
(the tribe) is a large group, consisting of several hundred
individuals, the fully qualified among whom certainly believe
themselves to be descended from a common male ancestor,
and are certainly bound together by the ties of kinship through
males. But, in most cases, if not all, the common ancestor
of the tribe is a fictitious person, invented to satisfy the
etiquette which has now come to regard descent from a
:ommon male ancestor as the only true basis of society ; and,
IS a matter of fact, the lawfully born children of all male
Tiembers of the tribe are entitled to be classed as tribesmen.
Clannish. The c/an, on the other hand, is a much
i smaller body, consisting of some three or four generations only,
c
i8 A SHORT HISTORY OF POLITICS
in descent from a perfectly well-known male ancestor, and
breaking up, automatically, into new clans or septs, when the
proper limits have been reached.
Mistaken {older) theory. This distinction has been
perceived by many writers, who, however, have failed to
understand its true significance, and, consequently, its value
as a help to the study of patriarchal society. They have
been misled by the old theory, now definitely exploded, that
the beginnings of society are to be found in the single house-
hold^ or group of descendants of a living man. When such a
house-father died, they say, his sons would set up households
of similar pattern for themselves, and these households,
remembering their relationship, would form a clan ; when the
clan grew so big that its actual relationships became obscure,
it would become a tr'ile. To the Scottish historian, Mr. W.
F. Skene, may be attributed the merit of having shown, by
actual demonstration, that this account really reverses the
historical order of things. The tr'ihe, or larger unit, is the
oldest ; as it breaks up, clans are formed ; and the break up of
the clan-system leaves as independent units the households
formerly comprised within it. Finally, but not till long after
patriarchal society has passed away, the household is dissolved,
and the indhidual becomes the unit of society.
Supported by evidence of savage society. This
view, put forward by Mr. Skene in his Celtic Scotland (vol.
iii.) has been strengthened, in the most remarkable way, by
the discoveries concerning the nature of savage society
described in the preceding chapter. By these discoveries it
has been proved, that the earliest social group, so far from
being a small household of a single man and his wives, is a
large and loosely connected group or "pack," organized for
matrimonial purposes on a very artificial plan, which altogether
precludes the existence of the " single family." If it were
necessary, it could easily be shown that the origin of society
in " single families " is inherently impossible ; but it is
sufficient to point out that the evidence is against it.
Origin of ttie distinction. Although, however, the
PATRIARCHAL SOCIETY IN GENERAL 19
author acknowledges his debt to Mr. Skene for the estaWish-
ment of the true relationship between the tribe and the clan,
he is not aware that the causes of the appearance of either
have been stated anywhere in brief form. He thinks it
better, therefore, even at the risk of anticipating matters a
little, to state clearly his own view, which is this : t/jai the
domestication of animdls converted the savage pack into the
patriarchal tribe ; and that the adoption of agriculture broke up
the tribe into clans.
Distinguishing marlcs of patriarctial society.
If this view be correct, obviously the first thing to do in
attempting the story of patriarchal society is to consider the
domestication of animals and its immediate results. But, as
this will require a chapter to itself, it will be well once more
to emphasize the distinction between patriarchal society and
modern or political society, in the strict sense, in order
that the reader may realize that he is going to deal with
ideas completely foreign to his own. Patriarchal society,
then, is distinguished from modern society by four leading
qualities.
Personal union. i. It is personal^ not territorial.
Although, as has been said, the basis of modern society is
military allegiance, the great factor which determines that
allegiance is residence in a fixed area. Doubtless, for certain
purposes, a citizen of State A may reside in the territory of
State B ; yet he is looked upon as an alien^ and he takes
no part in the political life of State B. On the other hand,
if a man qualifies as a citizen of a State by residence, we ask
no questions about his blood or race. " Every one born in
France is a Frenchman," says the Code Napoleon ; and,
broadly speaking, that is the rule in civilized countries at the
present day. But patriarchal society cares nothing for resid-
ence or locality. To be a member of a particular group, a
man must be of the blood of that group. If he is not, he
may pass his whole life in its service, but he will not be a
member. In fact, the whole group itself may move its
quarters at any time, without affecting its constitution in any
20 A SHORT HISTORY OF POLITICS
way. At least, this is so in the earlier stages of patriarchal
society.
Bxclusiveness. 2. It is exclusive. Modern society
believes in large numbers. In spite of certain grumblings about
** immigrant aliens,'* modern States are really anxious to
increase their numbers as much as possible, because they know
that an increase of numbers means an increase of ivealth and
oi Jighting-poiuer. To a community in the patriarchal stage,
an Immigration Bureau would appear to be a monstrosity. To
its members the immigrant is simply a thief, who comes to
stint the pasture and the corn land ; a heathen, who will
introduce strange customs and worships. If he is admitted,
he is admitted only as a serf or slave.
Communal character. 3. It is communal. In a
modern State, the supreme authority deals directly with each
individual. Of course there are intermediate authorities, but
they act only as subordinates or delegates of the supreme
power, which can set them aside. But, in patriarchal society,
each man is a member of a small group, which is itself a
member of a larger group, and so on. And each man is
responsible only to the head of his immediate group — the son,
wife, or slave to the housefather, the housefather to the head
of his clan, the head of the clan to the tribal chief. The
practical results of this principle are vitally important, as we
shall see later on.
No competition. 4. It is non-competitive. We are
accustomed to a state of society in which each man works at
what he thinks best, and in the way he thinks best. Subject
to certain laws, mostly of a police character, each man "does
as he likes." If a farmer thinks he can get a better crop by
sowing earlier than his neighbours, he does so. If a carpenter
thinks he can make a better box by using nails where screws
have hitherto been employed, he does so. If a draper thinks
he can attract customers by selling tea, he does so. But
patriarchal society would have looked on such practices with
horror. Its life was regulated by fixed custom, to deviate
from which was impiety. How this idea arose, and how it
PATRIARCHAL SOCIETY IN GENERAL 21
gradually disappeared, we must inquire hereafter. At present,
we must simply bear it in mind in thinking of patriarchal
society. In patriarchal society, every one found his duties in
life prescribed for him ; and not only his duties, but the way
in which he should perform them. Any deviation from
customary rules was looked upon with disfavour.
We now come to deal with the great discovery which made
patriarchal society possible and inevitable.
CHAPTER IV
The Domestication of Animals
The art of taming wild animals and making them serve
the purposes of man, is one of the great discoveries of the
world. Just as it is quite certain that there are some races,
e.g. the Australians, who have never acquired it, so it is
equally certain that many other races have learnt it, with
results of the greatest importance. But as to the man or
men who introduced it, we have no knowledge, except
through vague and obviously untrustworthy tradition. Like
many of the greatest benefactors of the human race, they
remain anonymous. In all probability, the discovery was
made independently by many different races, under combina-
tions of favourable circumstances.
Origin of domestication. But, if we cannot speak
with confidence of names and dates in the matter, we can
make certain tolerably shrewd guesses as to the way in which
domestication of animals came about. We start with the
fact, that the most valuable of the world's domestic animals,
the sheep, horse, ox, goat, etc., are known to exist, or to
have existed, in a wild state. It is, practically, impossible to
suppose that these wild animals are (except in rare cases) the
result of the escape from captivity of tame animals. It
follows, therefore, that the start which a pack of savages
could obtain in the matter of domestication would depend
upon the character of the wild animals in its neighbourhood.
For it is fairly obvious by this time, that many wild animals
are not suitable for taming. Thus, it is hardly possible that
the lion, tiger, or bear will ever really become domestic
THE DOMESTICATION OF ANIMALS 23
animals, in spite of the fact that their strength and endurance
would prove valuable qualities if they could be used. And
so some peoples may have remained utterly savage, because of
the fact that their country does not produce animals capable of
domestication. Again, some races, like the Eskimos, appear
to have had only the wild ancestors of the dog and the
reindeer, and thus to have been very limited in their oppor-
tunities. Other races have been able to tame the sheep, one
of the most valuable aids to civilization ; others, again, have
had the still more valuable ox.
Superfluity of game. But still the question remains
— How was the process of domestication discovered ? Here,
again, we can only proceed by speculation ; but a most valu-
able account of his experiences in Southern Africa (Damara
Land), published by the late Sir Francis Galton in the middle
of the century, affords us most suggestive hints.i
Two of the most striking features of the savage character
are recklessness and greed. Being quite unable to make pro-
vision for the future, or even to realize the wants of the
future, the savage consumes in disgusting orgies the produce
of a successful hunt. A stroke of luck, such as the capture
of a big herd of game, simply means an opportunity for
gorging. But even the savage capacity for food has its
limits ; and, in exceptionally good seasons, there is a super-
fluity of game. A civilized man would strain every nerve
to store the surplus away against future wants. The savage
simply wastes it ; partly because he knows that meat will not
keep, partly because he cannot realize the needs of the future.
The " pemmican " or sun-dried meat of the Red Indian,
and his " caches," or buried hoards, are the limits of the
savage capacity for storing up against a rainy day.
Pets, But, if the savage is reckless and greedy, he is
often affectionate and playful. If he has had as much food
as he can eat, he will amuse himself by playing with his
captives, instead of killing them. At first, no doubt, there
is a good deal of the cat and the mouse in the relationship ;
^ Narrative of an Explorer in Tropical South Africa. London, 1853.
24 A SHORT HISTORY OF POLITICS
but, in time, the savage comes positively to love his captives,
and even to resist the pangs of hunger rather than kill them.
In other words, the earliest domestic animals were pets ; pre-
served, not with a view of profit, but for sport, or amusement.
And it is most important to observe, that animals so selected
would naturally be the handomest and finest of the catch,
whose appearance would delight the eye. The history of
the process is neatly summed up in the two meanings of the
English verb "to hke." In the primitive sense, "to like''
means, " to like to eat " ; later on, it means " to like to keep,"
or have by one. " I like mutton," or, " I like my dog." ^
Food supply. But, of course, feelings of affection
would be bound to give way in the long run to feelings of
hunger. And then the tame animals would be slaughtered
for food. And so it would ultimately dawn on the savage,
that the keeping of pets was really a profitable business,
because it afforded some protection against y^w/W. Gradually
it would become more and more common. Finally, the
savage would learn by experience that, even without destroy-
ing them, his pets could be put to valuable use. Thus the
wool of sheep, the hair of goats, the milk of cows, would
be to a savage like a gift from an unknown Power. Still
more, the young of his captives would add to his delight in
his possessions ; and his forest lore, his keen observation of
the habits of animals in their wild condition, would come in
most usefully for his new occupation as a breeder and keeper
of flocks and herds. But, when he had got thus far, the
savage would have ceased to be a savage ; he would have
become a pastoralist.
Results of change. We must now notice the chief
effects upon social arrangements produced by the adoption of
pastoral pursuits.
Kinship through males. In the first place, it is not
very difficult to see how it would lead to the establishment of
^ It has been suggested that the reverence of the savage for his
totem may also have had something to do with the preservation of
animals.
THE DOMESTICATION OF ANIMALS 25
kinship through males. In the savage, or hunting stage, the
hunting was chiefly done by the men ; the women, though
in many cases they took part in the chase, being employed
chiefly in carrying weapons, setting traps, and other sub-
ordinate offices. Their real tasks were to mind camp, dress
the food, and, what has always and inevitably been woman's
work, to look after the children. Quite naturally, though
not, perhaps, very justly, the superfluous animals which were
left over after the hunger of the camp had been satisfied,
were looked upon as connected in some special way with the
man who had captured them. And he, therefore, would
have the training and management of them ; and, in course
of time, they would come to be looked upon as his property.
In speculations as to the origin of the important institution of
property^ it is often said, that capture is the first title to owner-
ship. This is hardly true ; for accounts of savage societies
generally show that the captured animals, so far as they are
required for foody are treated as the common stock of the
camp. But, when the claims of hunger have been satisfied,
the actual captors are allowed to retain the remainder as pets ;
and, as they become fonder and fonder of them, they resent
more and more any interference with them by other people.
It is just what happens with children ; who are, in many
respects, very like savages. What a child thinks of is not,
hoiv the toys came there ^ but who uses them. " I always play
with this doll, so it is mine.'* That is the feeling of the
savage for his ox or sheep.
Pastoral pursuits. And then, as all the advantages
of the rearing of animals come to be realized, the savage
" pack " gradually changes into a society of shepherds or
herdsmen, in which the men are engaged in tending cattle,
sheep, or goats, while to the women fall the subordinate
offices of spinning the wool, milking the cows and goats, and
making the butter and cheese. The men drive the flocks to
pasture and water, regulate the breeding, guard the folds
against enemies, decide which of the animals shall be killed
for food, and break in the beasts of burden.
26 A SHORT HISTORY OF POLITICS
Value of labour. But in these tasks it gradually
becomes apparent to the men that labour is a valuable thing.
A man who has been very successful in cattle-rearing requires
a number of " hands " to keep his herds in order. Besides
the domestic labour performed by women, he requires the
outdoor labour of men, to prevent the cattle from straying or
being stolen, to drive them to pasture in the morning and
bring them back at night. To this demand for labour we
probably owe two of the great institutions of the pastoral age ;
permanent marriage and slavery. There is really, as we
shall see, nothing out of place in taking these two together,
odd as the connection may sound to modern ears.
Permanent marriage has been alluded to before as one
of the essential features of patriarchal society. By superficial
writers, its appearance is often attributed to some vague
improvement in morality or taste. Unhappily, the facts point
to a much less exalted origin, viz. the desire of the man to
secure for himself exclus'i'vely the labour of the ivoman and her
offspring. If the change had come about from exalted ideas
of morality, we should probably have found two features in
the new system — (i) equality of numbers between the man
and the woman ; ( 2 ) free consent to the marriage on both
sides. It is notorious that just the opposite are the facts
of the patriarchal system, at any rate at its earlier stages.
Polygamy, or plurality of wives, is the rule ; and, while the
husband is not at all particular about the conduct of his wife
with other men, he is intensely strict about appropriating the
whole of her labour ; and all her offspring, no matter who
is the real father, belong to him. Again, the ancient forms
of marriage, viz. marriage by capture and marriage by pur-
chase, point irresistibly to the conclusion that the woman had
little or no voice in the matter. In the case of marriage by
capture, the husband carried off his wife by force from a
neighbouring tribe; and, long after the reality of this practice
has disappeared, it survives, as is well known, in a fictitious
form all over the world. It is considered barely decent for
the girl to come to the marriage without a show of force.
THE DOMESTICATION OF ANIMALS 27
Even in polite modern society the " best man " is said to
be a survival of the friends who went with the bridegroom in
ancient days to help him to carry off his bride, while the
bridesmaids are the lady's companions, who attempted to
defend her from the audacious robber, and the wedding
tour is a survival of the flight from the angry relatives of
the bride. In the more peaceful form of marriage hj purchase,
the lady has become an article of marketable value, whose
price is paid, usually in cattle or sheep, to her relatives or
owners. It is a refinement of modern days that the " bride-
price'^ should be settled on the lady herself, or contributed,
in the form of marriage gifts, to stock the future home. In
ancient times it was paid, if not in hard cash, at any rate in
solid cattle, to the damsel's relatives, who, by the marriage,
lost the value of her services. Jacob, we know, paid for his
wives by labour ; but this was probably an exception. In
patriarchal society, the father of a round dozen of strong and
well-favoured daughters is a rich man.
Slavery arises from the practice of keeping alive captives
taken in war, instead of putting them to death. In savage
days, wars are usually the result of scarcity of food, and, as
was pointed out previously (p. 14), result in the killing and
eating of members of a stranger "pack." But, with the
increasing certainty of food supply, resulting among other
benefits from pastoral pursuits, cannibalism becomes unneces-
sary, and captives are carefully kept alive, in order that they
may labour for their captors. It may sound odd to speak of
slavery as a beneficent institution, but one of the first lessons
which the student of history has to learn is, that things which
to us noiv seem very wicked, may have really been at one time
improvements on something much worse. Slavery is an ugly
thing, but it is better than cannibalism. Again, however, we
notice that the upward step was due, not to exalted morality,
but to practical convenience. Morality is the result, not the ■
cause, of social amelioration.
The pastoral tribe. Thus we have seen that pastoral
pursuits have converted the savage "pack," with its loose
28 A SHORT HISTORY OF POLITICS
system of association and marriage, into the pastoral tribe,
with its fixed marriages and its relationship based strictly on
kinship through males. The woman leaves her own tribe or
household, and becomes a member of that of her husband.
The clumsy expedients of capture and purchase are resorted
to, in order to continue the instinct, developed (as we have
seen) in the savage period, which forbids intermarriage between
near relations. The precise distance of relationship required
probably settles whether the woman is to be captured from a
neighbouring tribe, or bought from another household of the
same tribe. And this rule probably varies according to cir-
cumstances. But in either case the husband is the sole
authority in the household. His wives, children, slaves, and
animals are under his absolute control, and all stand pretty
much on the same footing.
Mode of transition. The precise steps in the moment-
ous change from the loose marital relationship of savages to
the definite (if somewhat brutal) institution of the pastoral
household, are very hard to trace. The process has been
very ingeniously suggested by the late Mr. Robertson Smith
in his Kinship and Alarriage in Early Arabia, where the
author points out the clear traces among the patriarchal Arabs
of the former existence of a savage state of society. It is
there suggested, that the existence of a long condition of war
and disturbance would have had a similar result ; by drawing
together the fighting males into groups for military purposes,
each male jealously guarding his own women and children.
But there are inseparable difficulties in the way of such an
explanation. The patriarchal household would have been
the last thing that a warrior would have cared to encumber
himself with ; and times of military licence are hardly times
in which the permanence of the marriage tie is developed.
On the whole, it seems tolerably certain, that the budding
institution o{ property has been the main factor in creating
the patriarchal tribe and family. Our very word " family "
is said to be derived from an old Italian V40xdi famel, meaning
" slave."
THE DOMESTICATION OF ANIMALS 29
Other results of pastoral pursuits. To conclude
this chapter, we may just hastily mention one or two other
important contributions made to the progress of civilization
by the domestication of animals. Obviously it would tend
largely to increase numbers and to improve physique^ by the
greater abundance and regularity of food supply, and the
increase of clothing and shelter. But also it would have the
important effect of d'lfferentiating in strength and importance
one tribe from another, and one family from another. Savages
are, in the main, very much alike ; one savage tribe is a good
deal like another. But circumstances of climate, and skill
in breeding and rearing animals, would soon produce differ-
ences in the pastoral age. One tribe would become wealthy,
while another would remain poor. Even in the same tribe
some households would become richer than others, according
as, by superior strength or skill, one housefather acquired more
cattle than another. Early Irish society was elaborately
organized into classes, which distinguished between the ordinary
freemen [Neme) and the rich cattle owners [Boaire)^ and
between the various degrees of wealth among the latter. And
the primitive uniformity of membership ultimately became
quite broken up by the practice, adopted by the rich Boaire,
of lending their superfluous cattle to the poorer tribesmen in
return for rents or regular payments, as well as feasthigs or
occasional entertainments of the cattle-owner, who visited his
borrower from time to time, no doubt under the pretence of
seeing how his cattle were getting on.
New ideas. Once more, the domestication of animals
is responsible for two very important ideas, without which
civilized society could not hold together in its present form.
These are the ideas of profit and capital. The former is
now looked upon as the net gain in any commercial trans-
action. Originally it was the offspring of domestic animals.
The household which had a dozen goats in one year,
might find itself, without any further captures, in possession
of twenty in the following. The idea gradually spread, and
all modern industry is based on it. Again, even if there were
30 A SHORT HISTORY OF POLITICS
no births in his flock, the pastoralist would find that, at any
rate for a time, he could go on living on the produce of his
animals, the milk of goats and cows, the wool of sheep,
without reducing his numbers. This discovery would tend
very powerfully to induce him to save his animals, /*. e. not to
slaughter them, in order that they might produce constant
income. That is precisely what we mean by the term capital.
It is wealth saved to produce future wealth. But there was
no room for these great ideas in savage society. They are
the direct outcome of pastoral pursuits. So we see that the
lazy and overfed savage, who amused himself by taming and
petting his superfluous captive animals, was really beginning a
revolution in the world's history. It is rather curious that
the power of taming new animals seems to be almost extinct
among civilized men. Is this because all the tamable animals
have been tamed, or because civilized man has become so
unlike wild animals, that he has lost the art of understanding
them ?
CHAPTER V
Tribal Organization
We now come to deal with the way in which society organ-
izes itself to satisfy the requirements of this pastoral existence
which we have tried to describe. And, in dealing with this
subject, by preference we will borrow our illustrations from
the Keltic peoples of the British Islands, who, until compara-
tively recent times, occupied the patriarchal stage, and from
those subjects of our Indian Empire, such as the natives of
the Panjab, who, even at the present day, afford most valuable
opportunities for the study of patriarchal institutions. Occa-
sionally we may refer to other examples, such as the Homeric
Greeks, the ancient Romans, the Maoris of New Zealand,
and the Arabs, in order to broaden our horizon, and to
realize how widely spread is this phase of development.
But we shall gain in vividness by keeping close to one model.
The tribe. In society of the patriarchal type the im-
portant group is, as we have said, the tribe, or body of people
believing themselves to be descended strictly in the male line
from some far-off ancestor. We say " believing themselves,'*
advisedly ; for if our account of the origin of the tribe be
correct, the rule of male succession only developed after the
group had been in existence, perhaps for thousands of years.
But the intense belief in the existence from the beginning of
the so-called agnatic i rule of succession, is evidenced by the
amusing attempts of the tribesmen themselves to discover a
1 The term is derived from Roman Law, which contrasted agnatioy
or connection through male ancestors, with cognatio or ordinary
blood relationship.
31
32 A SHORT HISTORY OF POLITICS
single male ancestor, or, as he is called by scientific writers,
an eponynii for their tribe. Thus, we find the chroniclers of
British history deriving the descent of their tribe from Brutus
of Troy, the grandson of ^neas ; the Cymry of Strathclyde
are, in an early document, said to be all descended from one
Coel Hen, whose name is supposed to survive in various
place names in Ayrshire ; each of the Teutonic tribes which
settled in Britain alleged its descent from the Scandinavian
hero Odin ; the Beluchis of the Panjab profess to be the
offspring of Mir Hamzah, an uncle of the prophet Mahomet ;
while the Pathans of the same neighbourhood claim descent
from Saul, the first king of Israel !
Membership of the tribe. Such being the importance
attached to male kinship, it is not surprising to discover that,
in tribal society, no one can be regarded as a full member of
the tribe, unless he is the lawful child of a full tribesman.
Such a person is alone entitled, as of right, to a share in
the tribal possessions ; he alone can take part in the re-
ligious ceremonies of the tribe. But, as a matter of fact,
all patriarchal tribes are found to have living among them,
considerable numbers of strangers, who, though separated by
a great gulf from the full tribesmen, yet rank in various
degrees of social importance. There are, for example, the
mere "strangers,'* the Fu'idh'ir (as the Irish called them),
the Alltuds (as they are called by the Welsh Laws), who
appear to be broken men from other tribes, adopted or pro-
tected on more or less hospitable terms. Along with these,
probably, go the offspring of the tribeswomen through
marriages with such resident strangers. Occasionally, in
return for very great services, or after a residence of many
generations, such persons are fully adopted into the tribe.
Serfs. Then there were the various degrees of serfs or
bondmen ; for, as we have said, pastoral society was anxious to
secure cheap labour. These were, probably, the results of
forays upon neighbouring tribes, or people whom we should
call "convicts," who had become such through failure to pay
compensation for injuries committed by them, according to
TRIBAL ORGANIZATION 33
the system to be afterwards explained. These servile persons
were either employed as herdsmen or (somewhat later) as
farm-labourers, such as the Sencleithe of Ireland, or the Taogs
of Wales ; or they were treated as domestic slaves {^Bothachs
or Caeths).
Ranks within tlie tribe. But it must not be supposed
that, even among the full tribesmen, equality of ranks was
the rule. True it is that every free tribesman was entitled to
his share of the grazing land, to his hunting in the waste, to
his oath of kindred (/. e. the protection of his immediate
relatives), and to his armour. But it is probable, as we have
said (p. 25), that, from the very first, the chief wealth of the
tribe, viz. its cattle and sheep, its camels and goats, were
looked upon as individual property ; and the tribesman who
was not fortunate enough to inherit or to capture a stock of
these was in a somewhat unenviable position. As the Irish
Laws put it, he was only a Fer Midba^ or "inferior man,"
not a Boaire, or " lord of cattle." In fact, he was very
much in the position of the modern "free" workman, who
often finds that his boasted freedom means freedom to
starve.
Tile nobles. In this state of things, he very frequently
resorted to an expedient which is intensely interesting, as being
the earliest development of an institution which was destined
to play such a large part in the world's history : the institution
o£ landlordism. Only, it was not, in these early days, applied
to landy which was not regarded as capable of appropriation
by individuals, but to cattle. The rich Boaire loaned some
of his cattle to the poor Fer M'ldha^ who agreed to take some
of them for a certain period, and to pay an annual Bestigi or
food rent, being part of the produce, and to feast the Boatre
and his friends a certain number of times in the year. Having
the right to feed a certain number of cattle on the tribal land,
the borrower of cattle (or Ceile^ as he was called) could
probably make enough to live on out of the transaction. If
he had some cattle of his own, he was called a Saer Cede, or
free tenant ; but, if his whole herd was borrowed, he became
34 A SHORT HISTORY OF POLITICS
the Daer Ce'ile of the owner ; not, technically, an unfree man,
but a man in a very inferior position.
Degrees of nobility. Among the rich men, or nobles,
of the tribe, there were also many social degrees, according
to their wealth ; these, however, are not of great importance,
except in relation to the system of blood fines, of which we
shall say something later.
Officials of ttte tribe. But, besides these divisions
into free and unfree, nobles and ordinary freemen, the tribe
had a very important official organization.
I . Ttie Ctlief, who was understood to represent the founder
of the tribe, and who was usually the oldest male in a particular
branch. Messrs. Spencer and Gillen have pointed out that
among the Australians, whom we have taken as our types of
savage society, there is nothing that can be called a chieftain-
ship, though there are, doubtless, often certain individuals
who, from their physical strength or supposed wisdom, have
great influence. But in patriarchal society, there is always a
representative of the tribe. The Irish called him a Ri\ the
Welsh a Perif the Scotch a Monnaer^ the Teutonic tribes a
Cyning (whence our " king "), the Biluches a Tumandar^ the
Pathans a Khan. He was hereditary, not in our sense, but
in the sense that the eldest male in the privileged line was
entitled to the office, unless disqualified by feebleness or
disease. The Welsh Laws picturesquely describe him as
"the oldest efficient man in the kindred to the ninth descent,
and a chief of household ; '' and they go on to enumerate his
duties thus : —
(^3[) He must speak on behalf of his kin, and be listened
to;
(Z-) He must fight on behalf of his kin, and be feared ;
(f) He must give security on behalf of his kin and be
accepted.
In other words, he must be eloquent, brave, and honest ; and
if a candidate for the position did not manifest these qualities,
he might be set aside. This is probably all that is meant by
certain writers, when they say that the tribal chief is "elective."
TRIBAL ORGANIZATION 35
Of course he was long before the days of votes and ballot-
boxes.
But, by an arrangement which shows a good deal of wisdom,
some patriarchal tribes do not wait until the death of a chief
before accepting his successor. Amongst many of them
there is —
2. An Heir" Apparent, called by the Irish the Tanist^
by the Welsh the Teishanteuleu, who is the person who will
next succeed to the chieftainship, in the ordinary way, after
the death of the existing chief. After the break-up of the
tribes into clans or septs in Ireland, this practice continued in
the smaller bodies ; and it was its existence which did more
than anything else to scandalize the Elizabethan statesmen
who tried to bring the Irish to English notions. In Russia,
the institution lingered for a long while in the person of the
Veliki Knia%, or Grand Prince, the eldest male of the house
of Rurik, the chief of the Varangian or Norman tribe which
conquered Russia in the ninth century. Still longer it con-
tinued to be a feature of the Holy Roman Empire, which,
in addition to its head, or Emperor, had of right also his
destined successor, the " King of the Romans." During the
life-time of the chief, the heir-apparent acted as his deputy,
and was, so to speak, "learning the business."
3. The Champion. This person, called among the
Irish and Scotch a Toisech, among the Welsh a Dialtvr (or
" avenger "), among the Teutonic tribes a Heretoch (or " host-
leader"), is very interesting, both on account of his ultimate
destiny, as well as because he is an early instance of what is
called "specialization of functions." Originally, as we have
seen, the hereditary chief was also the head warrior of the
tribe. But, as the chief was hereditary, it would often happen,
in spite of the power of rejection claimed by the tribe, that
the chief was unsuccessful as an actual warrior. He might
be wise and venerable, much respected and loved, but no
soldier. In times of stress, the tribe would naturally turn to
1 one of its members who had shown great bravery and skill in
fighting, and, by a sort of informal election, appoint him to
36 A SHORT HISTORY OF POLITICS
lead them in battle, much as the Romans did, at a much later
stage, with their Dictator. Apparently, after this event had
occurred two or three times, the champion or head warrior
became a recognized institution.
All these three officials, the Chief, the Heir- Apparent, and
the Champion, seem to have been provided for by the endow-
ment of special rights in the tribal land, by an extra share
of the booty captured by the tribe on its plundering expedi-
tions, and by customary presents made on certain days of the
year by the members of their tribes. The first of these three
privileges is of special importance in the History of Politics.
4. The Councilf or group of seniors, called by the Irish
Brehons, by the Welsh Henadivr^ by the Teutons RachimbiirgSy
by the Mahommedan tribes Jirgah, and by the Hindus
Panchayat. This seems to have been a body of persons
gradually formed from the heads of the subordinate groups
in the tribe, by a process which we shall have to explain
in dealing with the formation of clans. Its great function was
to record the custom of the tribe, and regulate its ceremonies
and religion. It was, obviously, a most necessary institution
after the tribe had become numerous, and in days which could
boast no written records. It is most interesting as the germ
of future constitutional government, and may be regarded,
historically, as the mother of Law' Courts, Cabinets, and even
of Parliaments. Sometimes, as amongst the Welsh, and some
of the Teutonic tribes, it seems to have consisted of a small
number (seven); at others it was obviously larger, and may
have consisted of all the heads of households within the tribe.
Later on, its members appear to have developed individual
functions, as pedigree-keepers (called by the Irish and Scotch
Synnachies), priests (possibly, among the Welsh, Druids) y
medicine men, and so on. But it is with the elders as a body
or council, that we are most concerned : and the mention of it
brings us to the consideration of two closely connected topics,
viz. Tribal Religion and Tribal Law, with an account of
which this chapter may fitly end.
Tribal Religion is a striking testimony to the truth of
TRIBAL ORGANIZATION 37
the view previously quoted (p. 12), that the second stage
of religious thought is that in which Man worships as his
gods beings who are, or have been, men like himself, who
are, in fact, his deceased ancestors. Ancestor ivorship, which,
even at the present day, is the religion of multitudes of the
human race, especially in the East, seems to arise from two
sources. The one is a profound belief in the existence of the
spirit-world, in which the dead live and move as in life ; and
which may, therefore, be fairly claimed as a crude form of
belief in the immortality of the soul. The second is the
profound deference to parental authority rendered during life
to the head of the patriarchal household, and which, after his
death, takes the form of ceremonial worship. In its more cruel
shape, this worship is celebrated with sacrifices, either by way
of vengeance upon the men who have caused, or are supposed
to have caused, the death of the ancestor, or by way of
providing him with comforts in the spirit-land. In its more
refined form, it is a continuance oi domestic tvorskipfSLS exhibited,
for example, in the picturesque ceremonial of the offerings of
cake and water, the sacrificial meal and the commemoration
hymns, of the Code of Manu and other Hindu rituals. The
centre of ancestor worship is the family hearth, with its sacred
fire and solemn festivities ; and its continued practice is thus
calculated to keep alive, in the most vivid way, that spirit of
kinship which is the very essence of patriarchal society. It
may, perhaps, be doubted whether ancestor-worship plays
quite such an important part in the daily life of the Hindu as
the Sacred Books would lead us to believe ; but it is un-
il i[ doubted that its existence accounts for much that is otherwise
h I obscui-e, not only in Oriental Society, but in the history of the
early Greeks and Romans. Readers who are interested in
pursuing this line of thought, may be advised to consult the late
Mr. Fustel de Coulanges' famous book La Cite Antique ;
here it will be sufficient to state, by way of contrast, two
or three of the leading features in which the ancestor worship
of patriarchal society differs from religion as understood by
the modern world.
38 A SHORT HISTORY OF POLITICS
1 . It is not proselytizing. The great religions of the
modern world — Christianity, Mahommedanism, even Bud-
dhism — profess to be of universal application, and their mis-
sionaries seek to make converts in all lands. To an ancestor
worshipper, such a course would appear, not merely ridiculous,
but positively treacherous. His gods are for him and his
kindred alone ; he looks to them for favour and protection, as
one of their devout descendants. How could strangers possibly
have any share in their worship ? As a consequence, the
patriarchal man, who wandered away from his kindred, found
himself not only among strange people, but among strange
gods. To him, expulsion from the tribe meant the break up
of religious as well as social ties. An Englishman of the
present day who settles in France, Germany, Italy, or Spain,
enters a place of worship, and finds the same God worshi])ped,
under slightly different forms and in a different tongue (unless
he be a Catholic), but by worshippers of the same faith. To
an ancestor worshipper, such an experience would seem
incredible.
2. It is not theological. That is to say, it does not
profess to account for the origin and constitution of the universe.
No doubt the patriarchal man had certain crude ways of
explaining the existence of the world and its contents. But
these were not part of his religion. It was not until the later
speculative spirit, introduced into Europe by the Greeks,
attempted to link intellectual belief with religious duty, that
the modern kind of religion began. Even then, as we learn
from more than one passage in the New Testament,^ concern-
ing " meats offered to idols,'* some of the early Christian
converts considered it quite possible to combine an intellectual
acceptance of Christianity with a continuance of their ancestral
rites. Ancestor worship, in fact, was a purely practical
religion, imposing a code of duties on its followers, but
making no demands upon their belief.
3. It is secret. The view that their ancestors belonged
to them alone, naturally made the tribesmen very jealous of
^ £. g. Acts XV. zj.
TRIBAL ORGANIZATION 39
strangers acquiring any knowledge of their forms of worship.
Consequently, the most rigid care was taken by each tribe,
and, after the tribe spHt up into sections, by each section, to
prevent a knowledge of these ceremonies leaking out ; and
many of the most dramatic stories of ancient history turn upon
the vengeance taken upon interlopers who had succeeded in
penetrating the mysteries of religious celebrations. In each
household, the particulars of its sacred rites were passed on
from father to son in the greatest secrecy. The secrets of
the tribe were in the custody of the elders or wise men, who,
in somewhat more advanced times, formed themselves into
hereditary bodies, or colleges^ for their preservation and practice.
The very existence of the tribe was believed to depend upon
the safeguarding of these mysteries; and, if a disaster happened,
one of the readiest suggestions to account for the mishap was,
that the ancestors were offended, because " strange fire " had
been offered on their altar.
Tribal Law, Closely connected with Tribal Religion,
in fact originally part of it, was Tribal Law. One of the
direct results of ancestor worship was a religious adherence to
ancestral custom, that is, to the practices observed in life by
the revered ancestors. And this was the main idea of LatUf as
conceived by patriarchal society. The notion of Law as the
command of an absolute ruler, whether an individual or a body,
was yet far in the future. Law was not a thing to be made,
but a thing to be discovered. The old savage notion of taboo,
which, as we saw, was purely negative, had been largely super-
seded by the positive notion of custom. What was customary
was right, what was uncustomary was wrong. The desperate
tenacity with which patriarchal society clung to a practice,
merely because it was a practice, is illustrated, among hundreds
of other examples, by the well-known Roman custom of ex-
amining the entrails of victims to ascertain the prospects of an
expedition. Originally, no doubt, it was a practical expedient
adopted by the nomad tribes from which the Romans were
descended, in their wanderings through unknown country.
To test the fitness for food of the new herbs with which they
40 A SHORT HISTORY OF POLITICS
came into contact, they caused a few of their cattle and sheep
to eat them, and then, by a sort of rude post-mortem, judged of
the result. The real origin of customs is often very hard,
however, to discover. Sometimes it seems to have been mere
accident. The ingenious account of the origin of roast
sucking pig, given by Charles Lamb in his well-known Essay,
though intended by him as a joke, may really be a brilliant
guess at the truth. In other cases, no doubt, an exceptionally
able man deliberately made an innovation, which was after-
wards copied by others, as it was found to be useful. But
such enterprise must have been very dangerous. The first
man who drank the milk of his cow probably paid for his
luxury with his life. In patriarchal society, innovation and
crime are almost co-incident. So little, indeed, is deliberate
departure from custom anticipated, that there seems to be no
regular punishment for it. The chief or elders will declare
the custom ; that is, or ought to be, sufficient. But if an
offender persists in his impiety, the outraged community will
banish him from its ranks. In the expressive language of the
Welsh Laws, he will be a " kin-shattered man," an outlaw,
in fact. If the tribe lives near the sea, he will probably be
set adrift on an open raft; this was the method with the
South Welsh. Other codes speak of turning the offender
" into the forest.'' In either case, the result would be much
the same.
The blood feud. For injuries to individual fellow-
tribesmen, the universal remedy was the lex talionis, adminis-
tered by the blood feud. Barbarous as such an institution
seems to us, it is probably one of the most important steps
ever taken towards civilization. A man is killed. Instead
of the murder producing indiscriminate slaughter, it gives rise
to an ordered scheme of vengeance, conducted by the imme-
diate relatives of the slain man against the murderer and his
immediate relatives. If there be any doubt about the facts,
certain rough tests are applied, which to us would appear very
unsatisfactory. The accused brings a certain number of his
relatives to swear to his innocence, or some rude sort of ordeal
TRIBAL ORGANIZATION 4^
is used.i If the accused is deemed guilty, the feud goes on,
unhappily for a very long time.
Blood fines. A great step further is taken, when, for
the right of vengeance, is substituted the payment of compen-
sation. The circumstances of pastoral society permit of this.
The existence of cattle and sheep form a standard! of value, by
which the life of a man can be measured. Starting with the
simple idea that a man is worth what he owns, and taking the
ordinary free tribesman as the unit, the tribe sets up an elaborate
scale of money Jines (the eric of the Irish, the galanas of the
Welsh, the<:ro of the Scotch, the nver of the Teutons) carefully
graduated according to ( i ) the importance of the injured party,
( 2 ) the extent of the damage. Apparently, the proceedings
begin as before. The marks on the dead man's body are
examined, the bloody weapon is traced, the trail of the stolen
cattle is followed until it leads to the thiePs hut ; and then,
just as t\iQ feud is going to begin, the elders intervene, and urge
the acceptance of a Jine. At first, it would seem, the ac-
quiescence of the injured party is voluntary. Until quite late
in history, the ultimate right to battle cannot be denied. But
every effort is made by the elders to induce the parties to
" swear the peace." In the world-wide habit of shaking hands,
we probably have a dim survival of a practice insisted upon by
the early peace-makers, as a guarantee that the parties would
not use weapons against one another, at least till all other
remedies had been tried. For if the hand is clasped in
another's, it can hardly strike a blow.
No general rules of Tribal Law. It is obvious
from what has been said, that, while we may describe the
general character of Tribal Law, no enumeration of its rules
can be made. Each tribe has its own Law, binding only
upon members of its own tribe. General principles will, no
doubt, be found running through it all ; inheritance in the
1 One of these probably survives, in backward countries, to the
present day. Each of the mourners touches the body at a funeral.
The ancient belief was, that, if the touch was that of the murderer,
the corpse would bleed afresh.
42 A SHORT HISTORY OF POLITICS
male line, prohibition of marriage outside the tribe (or inside,
as the case may be), relationship of classes, rights in pasture
land, and so on. But in details these will differ from tribe to
tribe, and even in branches of the same tribe. The investiga-
tions of the British Settlement Officers show, for example, that
there are at least several hundred different systems in force in
the British Panjab alone, though the population of that
country is a little less than the population of England. Long
before there is a Law of the Land, there is a Law of the
Tribe; and by his own Law alone will a tribesman consent to
rule his actions.
CHAPTER VI
Agriculture and the Clan
Origin of Agriculture. As In the case of the taming
of wild animals, so in the case of tilling the ground, we are
left in the dark as to the benefactor who first made the price-
less discovery. Such scanty legends as exist on the subject,
are evidently the work of later times ; or refer to an importation
rather than to a discovery of the secret.
But, if we have no evidence on the subject, it is one on
which we may fairly indulge in scientific speculation.
Although the Australian aboriginals know nothing of
agriculture, they gather the seeds of a wild plant known as
nardoo^ and, after bruising them in a rude mortar, make them
into cakes. Let us suppose, in some country endowed with
greater natural wealth than Central Australia, that a pack of
savages, having gathered a greater store of wild seeds than it
could possibly consume, buried the surplus in some earth-heap
or mound, and left it in the summer camp till the return of
spring. Suppose an unusually wet winter, or an exceptionally
early spring. Returning to its summer quarters, the pack
might well discover that the stored-up grains had sprouted,
and assumed something like the shape in which they had
known the ears when they had gathered them in the forest
the previous autumn. Such an object-lesson would hardly be
lost, even on the savage mind. The same thing might well
happen to the wild yams or other edible roots which are some
of the earliest food of man.
Character of Agriculture. Whenever the savage
had begun to act upon the idea this suggested, agriculture, in
43
44 A SHORT HISTORY OF POLITICS
its most primitive form, would have come into existence. The
rest was only a question of time. And it is quite possible
that agriculture, in a very imperfect form, was practised as
early as pastoral pursuits, at least in the majority of cases.
But it is not difficult to see why agriculture takes rank as a
development of human industry distinctly later than the tend-
ing of cattle and sheep. It is very much more laborious ; and
man, especially primitive man, has no love of work for its own
sake. Compared with the hard toil of the husbandman, the
life of the shepherd is easy and enjoyable. The capture and
breaking-in of wild animals is, to the savage nature, a
fascinating task ; the one gratifies his love of excitement, the
other amuses his hours of idleness. Even the driving abroad
of flocks and herds to daily pasture is no exacting task. The
milking, the dressing of skins, and the spinning and weaving
of the pastorahst's life are chiefly done by the women and
children. But the primitive curse is upon the tiller of the soil ;
" in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread.*'
Reasons for its adoption. Agriculture, therefore,
remains for ages, even after its rudiments are known, a mere
supplementary pursuit, practised for the purpose of providing ai
few luxuries, rather than the substantial occupation of Man. It
is not adopted on a large scale till the increase of population
(always the result of a step forward in civilization) begins to
press upon the means of subsistence. One of the most
striking facts about agriculture is that, though its service is.
hard, its produce is infinitely greater than that of pasturage. A
learned German writer. Dr. August Meitzen, who ha»
devoted his life to the study of questions connected with land
settlement, calculates that an area which, used as a cattle-run^
will maintain one hundred people, will, if brought under the
plough, feed three or four times that number, and leave a
substantial margin over. Probably the practice of agriculture,.
on a large scale, began in the Delta of the Nile and the
Mesopotamian countries, where the barren desert affbrdedi
little pasturage for cattle, but the rich alluvial valleys of the
great rivers rendered agriculture easy and profitable. From
AGRICULTURE AND THE CLAN 45
thence it spread through Asia Minor, northwards and west-
wards, till it became known throughout Europe, and was
gradually adopted as the needs of the population demanded it.
When Cassar says of the Germans that they do not " study "
agriculture,^ he probably does not mean that they had never
heard of it, but that they found it easier to satisfy themselves
with milk, cheese, and flesh, the produce of pastoral pursuits.
There is a very interesting passage in the Book of the Ahhey of
Clonmacnohe, which tells of Ireland that " there was not ditch
nor fence nor stone wall round land till came the period of the
sons of Aed Slane (seventh century a.d.), but smooth fields.
Because of the abundance of the households in their period, there--
fore it is that they introduced boundaries in IrelandJ*^ Some
writers [e.g. Mr. Seebohm) take this passage to refer to the
breaking-up of open arable fields into small enclosed holdings.
But there seems little doubt that what the chronicler is really
referring to is, the general adoption of agriculture in the place
of pasturage, because of the abundance of the households. There
is, in fact, plenty of evidence to prove that Ireland was once
a purely pastoral country.
Early methods of Agriculture. But we must not
suppose that the adoption of agriculture meant the adoption, all
at once, of farming as we understand it. Perhaps it will be
interesting to give a hasty sketch of the different stages
through which the cultivation of the ground has passed.
Afterwards we may pass to the still more important subject of
the results of the adoption of agriculture.
I. Forest clearings. The beginnings of agriculture
nearly always involved clearing the ground, for the simple reason
that the most fertile land is sure to be covered with the rank
growth of ages. Doubtless, much land had already been
cleared for pasture ; but people are unwilling to sacrifice this
for the apparently uncertain prospects of harvest. Sometimes
the forest is cleared by burning, the ashes being used as a sort
of primitive manure, and the seed being simply thrown in and
left to come up with the forest weeds. In other places, the
^ Agriculture nan student. (^De Bella Gallico, vi. 21.)
45 A SHORT HISTORY OF POLITICS
axe is used, and the ground, when cleared, broken up with the
mattock, or primitive hoe, which seems to have been an early
modification of the savage's digging-stick.
Extensive Cultivation. The ground thus cleared
is cropped year after year, until one of the fundamental laws
of nature begins to assert itself, viz. that a repetition of the
same crop on the same land tends to produce barrenness. The
returns are less and less each year, till the ground is abandoned
in despair (probably being deemed accursed), and a new patch
is taken into cultivation. This agriculture is technically called
extensive^ and is, of course, very extravagant, both in labour and
land.
2. Field=grass system. Although the clearings are thus
abandoned for purposes of sowing, they act as a sort of rough
pasture, or fal/o'w, for the cattle of the community, who pick
up a scanty subsistence from the shoots and weeds remaining
after the reaping of the last crop. In tropical countries, such
as India, and even in sub-tropical lands, such as the fertile
districts of southern Australia, abandoned patches speedily
become again converted into " jungle " or " bush," and ex-
plorers of later generations are startled to find, in the depths
of the forest, traces which point indisputably to the existence
of former cultivation. ^
Alterations of crop and fallow. But, in temperate
zones, the land is not covered again with trees, and, after the
newly reclaimed patches have been themselves exhausted, the
tribesmen return to their old patches and plough these again,
to save themselves the trouble of further clearing. Then is
discovered another great secret of Nature, viz. that, though
successive crops of the same kind will exhaust a piece of land,
yet, if that same piece is left to lie falloiv for a time^ it tuill
recover its fertility. This discovery leads directly to —
3. The two-field system, in which the community
keeps two distinct patches of land at work, sowing one in each
alternate year, and leaving the other to lie fallow. This system
1 No doubt this fact accounts for a good many of the so-called
" discoveries of pre-historic races."
AGRICULTURE AND THE CLAN
47
of agriculture is widely prevalent in backward countries at the
present day.
4. The three-field system. This, which is really an
improved variety of the last system, is due to the still further
discovery that, although a continuation of the saine crop on the
same piece of land exhausts it very quickly, an alternation of
crops will not exhaust it so quickly. The plan is, therefore, to
have three Jields and two different crops going on at once, the
third Jield lying fallozu once in every three years, instead of once
in every tavo. Thus in a course of three years —
I St year — Field A = oats B = beans C = fallow
2nd ,, — ,, B = oats C = beans A = fallow
3rd „ — ,, C = oats A = beans B = fallow
and so on for each triennial period.
Question between the two-field and the three-
field system. The advantages of this plan, in the increased
variety of crops, was early perceived ; but, for a long time,
people preferred to work it with the two-field system, by
dividing the ploughed field each year into two parts. In
fact, they were afraid that the other system would require too
much ploughing. During the later Middle Ages this was a
" burning question " in Western Europe. But the three-field
people won the day, as they were bound to do ; and their
argument is so triumphant and so neat, that it is worth while
to set it out. We take first an imaginary area of 1 80 acres,
divided into two fields, one of which lies fallow every year,
while the other is partly under oats and partly under beans
or pease. Thus —
A (90 acres).
B (90 acres).
A I.
(45 acres).
B I.
(45 acres).
A 2.
(45 acres).
B2.
(45 acres).
48
A SHORT HISTORY OF POLITICS
Now take an imaginary course during any one year.
September. Plough A i, and sow oats... =
March. Plough A 2, and sow beans ... =
June. Plough B (whole) tivice ^ and leave
fallow ... ... =
45 acres
45 acres
= ISO acres
Total 270 acres ploughinj
Now take the same area divided into three Jields.
A (60 acres) B (60 acres) C (60 acres)
Again a year's ploughing : —
September. Plough A and sow oats
March. Plough B and sow beans...
June. Plough C tzvice, and leave fallow
= 60 acres
= 60 acres
= 120 acres
240 acres
i.e. actually 30 acres /ess of ploughing. But that is not all.
For, if we look back we see that, if we have worked our
lands on the two-field system, we have only harvested the
crops of 90 acres ; but, if we have used the three-field system,
we have taken the produce of 120 acres. Thus, the three-
field system beats the two-field, hands down ; and it is not
surprising to find that, in medieval Europe, it became the
rule in the most progressive countries, and developed a regular
1 This is necessary after the crop, to get rid of stubble.
AGRICULTURE AND THE CLAN 49
set of names. Thus, in England, the autumn-sowing was
called the tilth grain, the spring-sowing the etch grain, and
the idle field t\\2 fallow; and there are corresponding terms in
many other countries.
5. Convertible husbandry. The three-field system
reigned supreme in Western Europe, until, at a comparatively
recent date, it was abandoned in favour of a still more economi-
cal plan, by which fallows are practically abolished, and, by a
great increase in the number and variety of crops, and the tise
of artificial manures, the land is never (in good hands) allowed
to get exhausted. This change, which came about in England
in the i8th century, and which was greatly due to special
circumstances, such as the Dutch connection and war prices,
is, however, closely connected with an important change, not
merely in the methods, but in the organization of agriculture,
that is to say, in the institutions by means of which agriculture
is worked.^ To this we must now turn our attention.
Organization of agriculture. At the end of the
Middle Ages (as we call them), that is to say, when the
revival of learning in Europe and the Reformation began to
break up the old order of things, the typical agricultural unit,
not only throughout Europe, but among the vast populations of
India, Egypt, and Persia, was the village or township* At
first sight, a village appears to be merely a collection of
farmers and labourers, cultivating pieces of land which happen
to be near together. And such, in fact, the modern village
of Western Europe generally is. The inhabitants are, in
fact, merely neighbours, nothing more. But the medieval
village was a great deal more ; and the difference is usually
expressed by describing it as a village community. There has
been a good deal of nonsense talked about the village community,
as if it necessarily meant a socialistic group of people, who do
their work and hold the proceeds in common. Such an asser-
tion cannot possibly be made of historical times. Whatever
may be our view of the origin of the medieval village, it is
^ All these five stages of agricultural method may be observed at
work in Svireden at the present day.
B
so A SHORT HISTORY OF POLITICS
quite clear that, in historical times, we have practically no
evidence of an agricultural group (larger than a single house-
hold) cultivating its field in common and dividing the pro-
ceeds. So far as our evidence goes, each farmer has his own
land, and reaps and stores his own harvest. Nevertheless,
there is a real meaning in the phrase 'village community, and we
shall best bring out that meaning by enumerating half-a-dozen
points in which the average village of the sixteenth century
differed from the average English (or French or German)
village of the nineteenth century.
1. Open fields. In the first place, we notice a purely
physical difference. There 'were practically no hedges in the
medieval village. The arable land of the village lay in great
open Jields, many hundreds of acres in extent, separated from
one another and from the meadow and ivaste only by balks,
or banks of unploughed turf, on which grew trees here and
there. The beautiful hedges of the modern English country-
side are the result of the great enclosure movement, of which we
shall have to speak later on. This difference, of course, need
not have been connected with a difference in the methods of
agriculture. As a matter of fact it was so connected.
2. Equality of holdings. In a modern village, the farms
will be of all sorts of sizes, determined by the circumstances of
the case. But if we examine the terrier, or ground-plan, of a
medieval village, in which the lands worked by each farmer
are distinguished, we shall notice a curious thing. We shall
see that there is a tendency towards equality of holdings.
There will be a great many farmers with about 30 acres of
plough-land each. There will probably also be one or two
much larger holdings, e.g. 120 acres, also more or less equal
among themselves, and, what is still more curious, bearing a
fixed proportion to the smaller holdings, usually of 4 to i .
There will also be a number of people, obviously in an
inferior position, holding little plots or patches cleared from
the waste. Finally, there will probably be a great man, who
has a big house and park (or enclosure), as well as a great
deal of land in the openjields.
AGRICULTURE AND THE CLAN 51
3. Forced labour. Corresponding with this strongly
marked division of classes, there will be found, if the affairs of
the medieval village be further investigated, a curious system,
by which the two poorer classes in the village render labour
services to the richer, not, as agricultural labourers do now,
for wages, but as part of the terms on which they hold their
lands. The poorer class, or cottagers, will, practically, be
working almost entirely for the lord, as he would be called in
Europe, for the agha in Persia, for the zamindar in India,
possibly also for the few rich farmers, if such existed. But
the ordinary small farmer, the yardling, as the English called
him, will also have to work for the lord, though, probably,
only a comparatively small part of his time. Indeed, in many
cases, he will probably have compounded for his labour dues by
payment of a fixed money rent, and so will be what we
should call an ordinary tenant farmer. Nevertheless he will
clearly at one time have been a serf ; i. e. a man who has to
work for another, whether he likes it or not.
4. Intermixed plots. Now-a-days, the land of each
farmer in a village lies in a more or less compact mass. The
farmer would consider it a great hardship and waste of time if
it did not. But the farmer in a medieval village not only had
his holding divided amongst the two (or three) great fields
into which the arable land of the village was marked off (for
cultivation according to the rotation of crops previously de-
scribed), but, even in each of these three fields, his holding
was not compact, it was split up into a large number of small
strips (usually about half an acre each) scattered all over the
field. Besides his 30 acres or so of arable, he would also
have the right to turn so many cattle and sheep into the
meadow of the village, except at the time of hay growth,
when the meadow would be temporarily enclosed with hurdles,
and then he would get the hay of a small plot. Finally, he
would have the right to turn so many inferior beasts — donkeys,
geese, swine — on to the waste, or uncultivated land of the
village, and also to cut turf and wood therefrom for fuel and
repairs. Thus we see that his holding, which always included
52 A SHORT HISTORY OF POLITICS
a house in the village, was a complete outfit, so far as land
was concerned.
Closely connected with the " intermixed " character of the
farms, was the practice of shifting, or redistributing, the plots
held by a farmer at stated intervals. This practice had
ceased in the more progressive parts of Europe, long before
the end of the Middle Ages ; but in Sweden and Denmark
there were clear traces of its existence ; in India, under the
name of vesh, it was well known, and, in Persia, even at the
present day, it frequently takes place under the management of
the headman of the village.
5. Customary management. This feature which,
perhaps, distinguishes the medieval village more clearly than any
other from the modern village, was a necessary result of the
system of intermixed holdings. All the work of the village was
settled by a rigid system of rules, handed down from remote
ages, which prescribed exactly when and how each operation
should be begun, done, and ended. Now-a-days, each farmer
manages his lands as he thinks best, subject to the terms of
his agreement with his landlord. If farmer Jones thinks it
wise to cut his hay on Monday, he is not obliged to wait for
farmer Smith, who thinks that Thursday will be better.
Each farmer cuts his hay when he thinks best. But this sort
of independence would have been impossible when the lands
of all the different farmers were mixed up together. The
village was fixed in the grip of custom, and one of the chief
reasons why agriculture was for so many centuries unprogres-
sivc, was just because the enterprising farmer could not act
without convincing the nvhole of his fellow-villagers.
6. Officials, Now-a-days, the ordinary village perhaps
has its policeman, and, maybe, its ma'tre or chairman of parish
council ; but the policeman is probably appointed and paid by
a distant authority, and the maire or chairman has very little
real power. In the Middle Ages, each village had an
elaborate staff of officials, whose duty it was to work for the
whole village. First, there was the headman or reeve,
chosen from or, it may even be, by the villagers, who repre-
AGRICULTURE AND THE CLAN 53
scnted the villagers as a whole, was responsible to the lord
for their labour dues, enforced the customs, and was the
mouthpiece of the village in its dealings with the outside
world. The position, though it doubtless carried (as it still
does in India and Persia) certain privileges, was not without
its drawbacks ; and there are some traces of a rule that its
acceptance was compulsory. Then, too, there was a constable
or beadle, whose duty it was to carry messages round the
village, to summon the villagers to meet under the sacred tree,
and generally to enforce the orders of the reeve and mooty or
meeting of the villagers. Then there was the pound-keeper,
who seized straying beasts and kept them in custody till their
owners made fine to the village chest ; the parker, or com-
mon-keeper, whose duty it was to tend the cattle and sheep in
the meadow, and to see that no one put in more than his
proper share or stint ; the stvine-herd, who led the swine of the
village daily to the wood to grub for acorns ; the goose-herd,
and so on. In many villages, all over the world, it was the
duty of the village to provide ivatchmen, at least during certain
times of the year, to guard the flocks at night. We find
our English Edward I. in his great Statute of Winchester,
insisting that the custom should be kept up; and the "Watch**
were a standing joke in Shakespeare's time. In India and
other Oriental countries, even at the present day, the village
carpenter, potter, blacksmith, cobbler, etc., are real ojicials,
provided for, like the other officials, by an allowance of land,
which is ploughed and sown for them by the farmers, while
they, in return, must give their labour to any villager who may
require it. Doubtless it was so at one time in Europe.
Origin of ttie village. This description will have
been sufficient to show that the medieval village, though
not that socialistic community which platform orators have
delighted to describe it, was a very highly organized and
closely compacted body, something utterly different from the
mere groups of independent farmers in modern Europe, usually
held together, if at all, only by the fact that they are tenants
of the same landlord.
54 A SHORT HISTORY OF POLITICS
Two views. Now, concerning the origin of this village
community y a conflict fierce, and, it is to be feared, somewhat
acrimonious, has raged. For, whilst we have had great con-
troversiaHsts, such as Mr. Seebohm, Professor VinogradofF,
Professor Maitland (who can hardly be called a controver-
sialist at all), and M. Fustel de Coulanges, who have all
combined great learning with perfect courtesy, we have also,
unhappily, had inferior controversy from apologists of par-
ticular theories, who have not always observed the courtesies
of scholarship. Briefly speaking, and putting aside minor
details, the rival views are ( i ) that the typical village was
originally a band o^ kinsmen working for themselves; (2) that
it was originally a group of serfs (or slaves) working for a
master. Mr. Seebohm and M. Fustel de Coulanges take the
latter view; Professor VinogradofF and (with reservations)
Professor Maitland take the former. It is so extremely un-
likely that the views of any of these eminent and learned men
are totally baseless, that it is a pleasing task to the author to
suggest a solution of the difficulty which shall combine the
views of both sides.
Glancing back for a moment at our account of Tribal
Organization, wc shall remember, in the first place, that,
though what may be called the average tribesmen were free-
born kinsmen of each other, there was also attached to each
tribe a body of strangers , in a more or less inferior and servile
position. Furthermore, we shall remember that, among the
Irish and kindred races, the rich tribesman frequently loaned
out part of his cattle to poorer freemen, in return for an
annual payment or rent, and cena.in /eastings or entertainments.
Finally, we shall remember, that each tribe had its chief or
head, who was endowed with special privileges, and who
received various gifts and offerings from the tribesmen. Here
at once we have a division of patriarchal society into ranks,
which correspond in a most curious way with the divisions in
an ordinary village community, as described in this chapter.
The tribal chief corresponds with the village lord or agha, the
rich tribesmen with the holders of large farms, the poor tribes-
AGRICULTURE AND THE CLAN 55
men with the yardlingsy or thirty-acre men, the " strangers '*
with the cottagers or serfs of the village.
Similarity between tribal and village organiz-
ation. But, after all, such a coincidence may be merely
casual. We have no right to say that it proves the connec-
tion between the tribe and the village. As a matter of fact,
there are substantial differences to be accounted for ; and it
is by the neglect to explain such differences that historians
claiming to be scientific incur ridicule. For example, in the
tribe, the poor Cei/e, or holders of stock, pay their rents, not
to the chief, but to their individual cattle-owners, while, in
the village, the labour services of the yardltngs are rendered
almost wholly to the lord. As a matter of fact, there is an
important transition step between the tribe and the village^
namely, the clan ; and it is for evidence of the nature and
origin of this body that we must look.
The Flaith. Fortunately, it is not very hard to find.
If we look once more at our ^Indent Laivs of Ireland, we
shall find an important person known as the Flaithy who is
permanently connected with a definite territory upon which
are settled —
[a) His Ciniud, or agnatic kinsmen, grouped together in
an apparently artificial way, known as Fine ;
[b) His Ceile, or, as we should call them, tenants, who,
though tribesmen, have accepted stock from him in
manner before described;
[c) His Futdhtr, or strangers, who, apparently, have become
his peculiar charge, either by some kind of distri-
bution within the tribe, or by voluntary arrangement.
Apparently, in order to attain this position of Flaith, or land'
lord, the ordinary Boaire, or rich cattle-owner, must have
held his position for three generations. The third in descent
from the Boaire, if he is still rich and has maintained his
position on the same land, becomes a Flaith, But how did
he come to be settled permanently on this land ?
No sub'divisions of land in the pastoral period.
It is fairly clear that, during the purely pastoral epoch, there
56 A SHORT HISTORY OF POLITICS
were no permanent divisions of the land within the tribe.
Each man's share of the tribal land was reckoned, not in
acres or other land measurement, but in cattle and sheep. It
was, obviously, much easier to reckon this way, than to go to
the trouble of measuring out the land and allotting a portion
to each man. The cattle wandered about, according to the
season of the year, followed by the tribesmen with their tents
and scanty goods ; and it is probable that this is all that a
good deal of the so-called nomadism amounted to. But now
we have to suppose the practice of agriculture slowly adopted,
" because of the abundance of the households." Gradually,
this wandering existence became more and more impossible.
Granted that, at first, the cultivators of the soil cleared and
broke up any part of the forest land not actually occupied
by their fellow-tribesmen. Sooner or later, the improve-
ments in agriculture described at the beginning of this chapter
rendered people unwilling to abandon their land. But who
were the earliest cultivators of the soil ? Obviously, the
strangers attached to the tribe, upon whom the rough work of
the community fell, and who would be the first to suffer from
scarcity of food. Gradually, the tribal territory thus got
broken up among the rich tribesmen, each with his Ce'ile or
dependents and his Fuidhir or strangers ; and, after three
generations of holding, he could not be dispossessed. This
view is strikingly suggested for Ireland by the famous poem
of Finntann on the battle of Magh Lena. He tells us that
of old Ireland was divided into one hundred and eighty-four
Tr'tcha Cedsy i. e. tribal territories, that each of them was sub-
divided into thirty Ballys, or clan lands, each maintaining
three hundred c^\.\\q, and having twelve setsrtghsy or ploughlands^
each of one hundred and twenty acres. We are not bound
to suppose that the poet was entirely accurate in his figures ;
but he was not likely to have made a glaring misstatement of
obvious facts. We may accept his general description as
true, the more so as it is substantially supported by the
evidence of the Welsh Laws.
The Welsh evidence. For, in the Welsh Laws, we
AGRICULTURE AND THE CLAN 57
have not only the i/«, or tribe, settled in its cantred, but we
have a subdivision known as the gnuely, under a hreyr, or
uchelwr, who is a sort of minor patriarch, at the head of a
Hving family of three generations. The term gively, which,
literally, means a bed or couch, is strongly suggestive of family
ties; and, as a matter of fact, we have in the Welsh Laws a
very interesting description of the ancient Welsh patriarchal
house, which seems to have been much of the same type as
the ordinary Gothic Church. Behind the pillars (gavels)
which supported the roof and formed the nave, were what we
should call, in modern architecture, the "transepts,'' but which
the Laws call the givelys, or couches ; and the Tir Gwelyaiug,
or ancestral land, is, like the Irish Orba, the land of a family
which has remained in possession of the same district for three
generations, and has tenants and serfs under it. In the Welsh
evidence too, it is also worth noting, that, primarily, the agri-
culture is supposed to be done by the Alltuds, or strangers;
the free tribesmen occupying themselves principally with
cattle-rearing.
The Scottish evidence. Lastly, in the Scottish evi-
dence, especially that part of it which relates to the High-
lands, we find the clan, or section of the tribe, permanently
settled as a land-occupying unit engaged in agriculture. Thus,
even after the feudalizing process, which began in the four-
teenth century, had made some little way, the davoch is found
to consist normally of four parts, viz. the thaneston, or lord's
demesne, the tenandries, or holdings of the superior class,
significantly known as " kindly tenants," usually on very pro-
fitable terms, the steelbotv lands, occupied (usually in holdings
of two oxgangs, or a husbandland of about twenty-six acres),
by small farmers who receive their stock from the thane, or
lord, and the servile lands, occupied in small patches by
cottagers who spend most of their time in working on the
lord's demesne. This looks extremely like the Orba of the
Irish Laws, and the Tir Givelyaivg of Wales.
Kinship in the village. Thus, we have seen, if our
account be correct, that those writers who contend for the
58 A SHORT HISTORY OF POLITICS
origin of the village in a group of kinsmen, have a good deal
of truth on their side. And their contention is indirectly
supported by many significant, if indirect, survivals. One
of these is the widespread practice of fosterage in early
agricultural society, /'. e» the practice of the richer members of
the community putting out their children to be brought up by
the poorer. As is well kTio^fJJ^, fosterage ties were looked
upon in early times as almost equivalent to kinship ; and it
would seem that by this practice the community wished at
least to pretend that all its members were of kin. Then, too,
there is the equally widespread practice of the " maiden fee "
(Mercket as the Saxons called it, ylmobyr as it was known to
the Welsh). This consisted of a payment made to the chief
or lord on marriage of a villager's daughter, and represents,
no doubt, the ancient " bride-price " received by the wife's
kindred. Finally, expressions such as the " brotherhood,"
to signify the village in certain parts of India, and the known
unwillingness in primitive countries at the present day to permit
a stranger to acquire lands in a village, all point to the same
conclusion.
Lordship in the village. On the other hand, the
writers who assert the origin of the village to be in lordship
rather than in kinships have much on their side. To say
nothing of the important part which, as we have seen, was
played by the subject stranger in the clan, we must not forget
that, wherever we find primitive agricultural society, we
always find something in the nature of dues or rents paid by
the farmer. Even if we put aside such obviously later intro-
ductions as the Danegelt in England, and the Khiraj of the
Mahommedan conquests, about which we must speak at a
later stage, we have still t\it food- rents and f eastings (see p. 33)
due from the receiver of stock to his lord, and from the latter
to his chief; while from all lands something in the nature of
tribute is paid to the tribal chief. The latter also, as well
as the heads of clans, has his special allotment of land for his
support, and this he frequently loans out to people who pay
him part of the produce in return, just as, in the earlier
AGRICULTURE AND THE CLAN 59
pastoral days, the rich cattle-owner took food-rents and feast-
ings from his Ce'iley or receivers of stock. Once more, there
can be little doubt that, whilst land was still plentiful, any
enterprising clansman might colonize the tuaste lands of the
:lan, and found a new village with a band of followers whom
he collected round him ; and, in such a case, he would,
doubtless, become the lord of the new village.
The fact is, that in kinship and lordship we have two very
:'arly and very powerful principles of association. The former
appeals more to sentiment, and tends to produce harmony ;
;he latter is founded upon respect for superior strength and
nasterful qualities, and tends to produce obedience. Both
larmony and obedience are essential to the successful ordering
3f a social unit, such as the agricultural village.
CHAPTER VII
Industry and the Gild
Metal -working. By a somewhat unfair use of the term,
the word " industry '* is usually applied only to pursuits other
than hunting, cattle-tending, and agriculture. In a sense,
therefore, there is "industry" even in the savage epoch,
when the women of the pack skin and dress the captured
animals in the cave or bark hut ; still more so, in the pastoral
epoch, when the wife and daughters of the shepherd weave
the wool of the flocks into garments, and make the milk of
the herds into butter and cheese. But the great spur to
industry comes with the development of agriculture, when
there is a demand for ploughshares, reaping-hooks, spades,
mattocks, and hoes ; and this is itself connected with one of
the most important subjects in the history of civilization, viz.
the art of ivorking in metals. The primitive implements of
husbandry are, no doubt, made of wood and stone ; but no
great progress in agriculture can be made until metal tools are
employed.
Use of Iron. Now it is tolerably clear, that even
pastoral races have some knowledge of working in metals.
The brazen helmets and corselets of the Homeric heroes,
their swords and spears, the uncoined money (reckoned by
weight) of the Jewish patriarchs, the gold and silver orna-
ments of the African tribes, and the numerous bronze relics of
great antiquity constantly dug up, all point to the fact that the
art of working in metals is very ancient. But it is to be
noticed that all these are soft metals, which can be worked
with the stone hammer, and beaten out, whilst cold, into the
60
INDUSTRY AND THE GILD 6i
; required shape. The real revolution comes when men learn
! to work in /><?//, which can only be moulded by being swelled
in the Jire, but which, when so worked, is infinitely harder
than the older metals, and can produce results which they
could never have produced.
There is a good deal of ground for conjecturing, that this
I important art of smelting metals did not originate in Europe,
' but was imported from the East, possibly from Egypt, where
I iron was worked in very early times. A brilliant German
\ writer, who has endeavoured to draw a picture of primitive
Aryan society from the evidence of language, has pointed out,
i there is no general or widely-spread word for " iron '' among
the Aryan-speaking races. And from this fact he draws the
! conclusion, that the knowledge of iron was acquired by the
European nations, after their migration into western Europe.
Be this as it may, it is quite certain that the European races
have long ago surpassed all the rest of the world in the art of
ivorking in iron.
The smith. It is evident then, that industry (in the
, modern sense of the term) begins with the important craft of
I the smithy from which, indeed, almost all other crafts may be
' said to have sprung. The smith it was who forged and
\ mended the ploughshares and reaping-hooks of the village, and,
I still more important, its swords and spears. He it was who,
i as later improvements came, made the iron nails which took
I the place of the old bone and wooden skewers, and the metal
knives which superseded the old stone axes and sharp flints,
who substituted the iron hammer for the rude lump of quartz
i with a shaft stuck through it. If any one with the necessary
\ knowledge and patience would write a history of the craft of
• the smithy tracing its development in all ages and in all
; countries, he would do yeoman service to the cause of social
, history. What little is known is very significant. For
! example, it seems tolerably clear, that for many ages in
I Europe the craft was in the hands of travelling strangers,
perhaps the ancestors of our modern gypsies, who jealously
guarded their valuable secrets, and made no end of mystery of
62 A SHORT HISTORY OF POLITICS
their calling. The many legends which have grown up round
the calling of the smith (of which the Wayland Smith episode
in Scott's Kenilivorth is a skilful adaptation) are fertile matter
for a thorough investigation. The gypsy idea is, of course,
quite in accordance with the suggestion, that the art of smelting
iron was brought into Europe by strangers.
Specialization of industry. But, as might have been
expected, the Indo-European peoples, with that capacity for
adaptation which has been one of the great secrets of their
brilliant success in the world, ultimately acquired the art ; and
the numerous families of the Smith name (^Schmidt in German,
Favre in French, etc. ) testify to the popularity of the pursuit.
Some other crafts branched off from it, e.g. the carpenter, who
worked in wood with the smith's nails, hammer, and chisel ;
the cobbler, who borrowed his needle and his knife ; the tailor^
who adopted his shears and his needle ; the loriner (or leather
worker), the turner, the luheelwright, the cooper, and so on.
Even the older crafts felt the tendency towards specialization,
and, instead of each family doing its own weaving, thatching,
baking, and brewing, we get these crafts undertaken by special
bodies, the iveavers, tilers, bakers, and breivers.^
Commerce, But, in remembering the makers or pro-
ducers, we must not forget another equally important class of
industrial workers, viz. the merchants or exchangers. Indeed,
there is some reason to believe that exchange precedes pro-
duction in the order of ideas. The Australian savages do not
make anything worth speaking of, but they exchange certain
of their natural advantages, for others which they need.
Thus, a pack which hunts a country abounding in a peculiar
green stone, greatly valued for the purpose of stone axes, will
send some of its young men with lumps of the precious article,
to exchange against the feathers of certain birds collected by
another tribe, which are greatly valued for decorative purposes.
These primitive merchants observe certain formalities in their
approach to the stranger camp ; and are, by immemorial
1 It is an interesting fact that, in England at least, the earliest
professional brewers (or should we say breweresses ?) were women
INDUSTRY AND THE GILD 63
custom, entitled to be treated as giiesfs, not as enemies. The
custom of making presents on approaching an African chief as
a stranger, is said to be a survival of this ancient practice ;
for, it is to be noted, the chief always observes the etiquette
of offering return gifts. At any rate, we get here the earliest
appearances of the laiv of the market j which is again a notable
factor in the history of civilization.
Barter and sale. Trade is, of course, for long ages
conducted in its primitive form by means of barter, i. e. the
exchange of one article against another. The disadvantages
of such a form are obvious. One tribe or clan may have
plenty of ostrich feathers, for example, to dispose of, but may
not require the only articles which another has to offer. It
is clear that no business can be done between them. Inside
a community, the matter could be adjusted by a sort of debtor
and creditor account ; but between stranger, possibly rival
communities, such a course would not be possible. Occa-
sionally, some token, such as the African cowry shell, is
adopted as a standard of value, in which payments can be
made. But the objection to this course is, that these articles
are not really in themselves valuable, and may, therefore,
involve the community which takes them in a loss. A great
advance is made when some article of universal demand, such
as the ox, is adopted as a standard of value. We then get the
difference between barter and sale. The community which
requires the ostrich feathers, but which has no article specially
required by the other community to dispose of, pays so many
oxen in exchange for the feathers. The oxen are thus the
price, which, as economists tell us, is value expressed in terms
of money. A curious testimony to the truth of this account
is found in the fact that, when oxen are superseded as money
by the precious metals, which, as being more portable, and
less easily subject to depreciation, are really more suitable,
the earliest coins are often found to be stamped with an ox^s
head. But we must not suppose that coined money at once
takes the place of oxen. There is an intermediate stage of
uncoined money, which passes by nveight. Abundant evidence
64 A SHORT HISTORY OF POLITICS
of this fact survives ; but we need not look farther than our
own word pounds which may mean either a iveight, or a coin
of a particular value.
Organization of Industry. Having now seen some-
thing of the way in which industry^ in its two branches oF
production and exchange, arose, we turn, in dealing with agri-
culture, to examine how industry was organized, i. e. what
institutions were developed to work it.
Village craftsmen. There can be little doubt that, at
first, there was an attempt to fit industry into the village
system. Although the smith, as a stranger, would not readilv
be absorbed in a group of kinsmen, although, as a matter of
fact, we generally find the smithy at a little distance from the
village, yet the "village blacksmith" became, and, indecil,
still is, a recognized village institution. So also with the
other early crafts. The carpenter, cobbler, and tailor, the
weaver, tiler, and baker, are, in Oriental countries at the
present day, and formerly in European countries were,
integral parts of the village system. As for the primitive
merchant, we find him in tlie humble guise of the pedlar, or
huckster, going about with his pack from village to village,
and 80 being, it not a villager, at least a connecting link
between villages.
Tlie market. But, as industry became more and more
specialized, as new crafts developed out of the old, it gradually
became clear that more rapid progress was made, and better
work done, if the workers in a particular craft collected
together in a centre, perhaps specially suited for the particular
industry ; and thus we get the beginning of that tendency for
industry to gravitate towards towns, which is so marked a
feature of modern industrial life. It may be that the gradual
collection of craftsmen formed the toivn, or it may be that the
existence of a fortified town attracted the craftsmen. That is
a much-disputed question. But it is tolerably certain, that one
of the earliest institutions in connection with towns was the
market, and that the existence of the market was closely con-
nected with the development of industry. The neighbouring
INDUSTRY AND THE GILD 65
villages would not want to come to market for agricultural
produce ; but they would want to come for the produce of
what is specially known as *' industry.'*
Now, the very essence of the market is, that it is neutral
ground, on which the members of different communities can
meet without trespassing on one another's territories. As its
name implies, it was frequently on the march or boundary of
two or more districts. And, whether it was so or not, in any
particular instance, it was essential that it should be a place of
peace. The existence of the market cross in later days shows
that the Church took the market under her special protection.
And, also later, kings and emperors made a special point of
protecting the peace of their markets. How the peace was
guarded in the ancient days before Church and State, it is
difficult to say. In savage times, the essential point is, that
seller and buyer shall never actually come into contact. The
seller brings his article near the strange camp, lays it down on
the ground in full view, and retires. The intending purchaser
comes out, inspects the article, places beside it what he is
willing to give in exchange, and also retires. The seller once
more comes up, inspects the proffered exchange, and, if
satisfied, takes it away, leaving his own article to be fetched
by the purchaser. If he is dissatisfied with the offer, he takes
his own article away. Needless to observe, savage barter is a
trifle tedious ; but time is of no value to savages, who, indeed,
do not understand what it means. In patriarchal times, the
" gods of the market place " probably are supposed, in some
mysterious way, to guard the peace of the market. At any
^ rate, the bazaar, which is the Oriental market, is a typical
I feature of town life in patriarchal countries at the present day.
I The gild. But it is totally contrary to the ideas of
primitive man to live as an individual, isolated and unprotected,
in a large society. We have seen that pastoral pursuits
developed the tribe, with its strong blood bond, its mutual
-;(; protection of its members by the blood feud, and its ancestor
worship. We have seen, too, that agriculture led to the
existence of the clan, with its strongly organized family
F
66 A SHORT HISTORY OF POLITICS
system^ its elaborate arrangements of land occupation^ and its
reciprocal duties of protection and service between chief and
followers. Just in the same way, the appearance of industrial
pursuits produced the gild. The craftsman, finding himself
in a strange place, cut off from his own kindred, formed with
his fellows an association resembling as closely as possible the
association of kindred which he had left behind him. Perhaps
at first it was merely a peace-association, a frith-gild as the
Saxons called it; then it took on a religious character,
doubtless in imitation of the old ancestor ivorship of the clan.
The medieval gild always had its patron saint ; and, if its
members did not really believe themselves to be descended
from their patron saint, they often spoke as if they did.
Finally, the gild became more industrial in character ; busying
itself more and more with such matters as the regulation of
work and prices, the inspection of workshops, the fixing of
measures and qualities, the exclusion of strangers, and so on.
But, the more we study the gild, the more we see its likeness
to the old clan. Like the clan, it was strongly hereditary.
The best title to admission to the full privileges of a gild was
the fact that the applicant's father was, or had been, a member.
Failing birth, apprenticeship was the only alternative. But
apprenticeship is very like adoption. In the days of gilds, the
apprentice lived ii his master's house, fed at his master's table,
shared in his worship, was clothed and taught by him, just
like a son. Just as the member of a clan took the name of
the founder, and put before it or after it some sound which
indicated " son of," so the member of the gild called himself
by the name of his craft. While the clansman called himself
"7IfjfDougall,"or"Bill/«§'," ox'^ap Tudor," or "5^«hadad,"
the craftsman called himself " Smith," "Turner," "Carpen-
ter," and so on. In fact, it is said by some competent
observers, that the Indian caste system is merely an elaboration
of hereditary craft-gilds. Moreover, the gild in later days
provided schools and orphanages for the children of its mem-
bers, attended their funerals, provided masses for their souls,
spoke of its members as "brethren," had an "elder man"
INDUSTRY AND THE GILD 67
{^Ealdorman) for chief, settled disputes amongst its members,
and forbade its members to compete with one another, just as
a well-conducted association of kinsmen would do. Finally,
on its strongly developed social side, in its frequent drink-
ings, feastings, and merrymakings, the medieval gild strongly
resembled a great family group.
Thus we have seen, that patriarchal society had succeeded,
more or less completely, in making provision in its own way
for the needs of advancing civilization. As each new de-
velopment of human ingenuity brought a new occupation to
light, patriarchal society was equal to the task of organizing
itself to receive and carry it on. Obviously, patriarchal
society rested on principles which are, or were, very deep in
human nature, very capable of making themselves felt under
all sorts of circumstances. Once more, as we are leaving the
subject, it will be well to summarize briefly the distinctive
features in which patriarchal society differed from modern
or political society, the consideration of which lies immediately
before us. We cannot too clearly realize the contrast ; the
more clearly we realize it, the more shall we really understand
modern conditions.
1. Personal basis. Now-a-days we regard territory or
locality as the great basis of society. But, as we have seen,
despite the fact that nomadism or wandering life practically
ceased with the adoption of agriculture, patriarchal society
always considered itself as a body constituted by race, not by
territory. Even the ^ild, as we have seen, regarded itself as a
brotherhood, not as a mere neighbourhood. Though, doubtless,
the members of a particular gild often lived near to one another
in the same town, they lived together because they were
members of the gild ; they were not members of the gild
because they lived near together. Still more obviously are
the clan and the tribe personal, not territorial associations.
2. Bxclusiveness. This feature of patriarchal society
is a natural result of the former. Normally speaking, the only
means of obtaining membership of a race is by being born
68 A SHORT HISTORY OF POLITICS
into that race. Patriarchal society went so far as to admit
the case of adoption, or fictitious birth, under carefully guarded
rules. But it would have recoiled in horror from the casual
hospitality which a modern State extends to all tolerable
immigrants. Modern States believe in large numbers ;
patriarchal communities do not. Some people are inclined
to think that patriarchal society was right. It is a question
of whether it is preferable to maintain purity of race, and be
extinguished as an independent community, or to admit alien
blood, and prosper. The history of the world shows that
these are the inevitable alternatives. Racial exclusiveness
wrecked the so-called " City State " of the Greeks ; it very
nearly wrecked the budding destinies of Rome. All the
world over the rule applies ; the pure-blooded races are weak,
the mixed races are strong.
3. Fixity of Custom, Custom plays, as we shall see, a
large part in modern life ; but modern custom is continually
being modified and changed. The custom of patriarchal
society is rigid. No doubt it changes a little ; but a society
whose chief moral duty is to continue the traditions of its
ancestors, is hardly likely to admit novelty if it can help it.
Sir Henry Maine tells a delightful story of an Indian village
which had had a water supply provided for it by a paternal
British Government. The villagers were notified, as a matter
of course, of the official regulations laid down for the proper
use of the water. An East End district of London would
be only too glad to get a good water supply on such terms.
But, to the patriarchal society of India, the notion that cus-
toms could be manufactured by an official pen was simply
incredible. And it was not until a wise official induced the
village elders (by what means is not stated) to persuade the
rank and file that the rules in question were really of im-
memorial antiquity, though their existence had only just been
discovered, that the difficulty was solved. Even the gild
prided itself on the antiquity of its statutes, though the gild
is, of course, the most modern form of patriarchal society.
The caste system of India is the extreme outcome of the
INDUSTRY AND THE GILD 69
rigidity of patriarclial custom. When we speak of the
"unchanging East," we allude to countries which are still in
the grip of patriarchal principles.
As a consequence of its unchanging character, patriarchal
society is also, to a great extent, non-competitive. Competition
involves innovation at every turn ; the successful competitor
usually succeeds because he does things in a superior way of
his own. Doubtless it is also possible to succeed by doing
things in the same way as one's rivals, but doing them better.
And to this extent, presumably, patriarchal society is com-
petitive. But the trade offences known as " engrossing " and
"forestalling," which are recognized in quite the last stage of
patriarchal society, are amusing illustrations of the limited
extent to which that society allowed competition. " Fore-
stalling " merely means buying earlier than your neighbours,
in order to control the supply of commodities, and get better
prices. As its name implies, it is an attempt to buy goods
before they reach the market. " Engrossing " is simply
dealing in a large number of articles, instead of observing the
customary restrictions, in order to be able to sell cheap, and
so attract custom. It is pathetic to think that the harmless
and indeed useful " grocer " of modern times is, in origin, a
member of a criminal class.
4. Cotntnunalism, Observe, we do not say Communism.
Patriarchal society is not communisticy i. e. it does not refuse to
recognize individual rights, nor does it pool the productions
of its members and divide them equally. But it is communal,
in the sense that it is always organized in groups. The
smallest group of which it takes direct notice is the household,
which is, probably, very much larger than our modern house-
hold, and may contain two or three generations, with wives,
apprentices, and serfs. Within that household, the higher
authority does not penetrate. The same rule is observed in
an ascending scale. What the household is to the clan or
gild, that the clan is to the tribe. With us, the supreme
authority can control directly the actions of any individual.
The reason for that change will shortly appear. But in
70 A SHORT HISTORY OF POLITICS
patriarchal society the tribal chief, after the break-up of the
tribe into clans, communicates directly with the clan chiefs
only, except that he probably has a clan of his own of which
he is tribal head as well as clan chief. The clan chief, like-
wise, communicates only with the heads of households within
his clan ; to the heads of households belongs the control over
the dwellers within their walls. But we really err in com-
paring the position of any patriarchal authority with that of
a modern State official. The latter is wielding the power of
a despotic ruler, whether that ruler be an individual or a
parliament. The former is merely administering the customs
of his race.
Type III. — Modern (Political) Society
CHAPTER VIII
The State and Feudalism
The origin of the State, or Political Society, is to be found
in the development of the art of luarfare. It may be very
sad that this should be so ; but it is unquestionably true.
Historically speaking, there is not the slightest difficulty in
proving that all political communities of the modern type owe
their existence to successful warfare. As a natural con-
sequence, they are forced to be organized on military princi-
ples, tempered, doubtless, by a survival of older (patriarchal)
ideas. Happily, there is a good side, as well as a bad one,
to military life.
Development of warfare. The question may naturally
be asked at this stage — How came military principles to receive
such a startling development after society had, apparently,
succeeded in organizing itself on more peaceful lines ? Fight-
ing there had always been, of course ; wars between tribe and
tribe, clan and clan, even between village and village, town
and town. But this was more in the nature of a feud, a sort
of standing quarrel which broke out again and again, and then
slumbered for a while ; it was nothing like the organized and
determined warfare which resulted in the formation of States.
It may be described as amateur rather than professional
fighting.
Increase of population. Although we cannot speak
with certainty as to the causes of this development, it is not
71
72 A SHORT HISTORY OF POLITICS
difficult to suggest one or two facts which may have led to it.
First and foremost comes the increase of population, with its
consequent pressure on the means of subsistence. This increase
is always, under normal circumstances, steadily going on; and
it is dealt with in various ways. Sometimes, a pestilence
breaks out ; and the super-abundant population, enfeebled by
short allowance of food, is swept away by disease. Some-
times, wholesale migrations take place to less thickly populated
districts ; this may be regarded as a real remedy, though
perhaps only a temporary one, for the trouble. Sometimes,
again, a great new invention enables a largely increased food
supply to be produced : the changes from hunting life to
pastoral life, and again from pastoral life to agriculture, are
examples. Finally, war may break out on a large scale; and
the weaker peoples may be either exterminated or (more
probably) reduced to subjection by the stronger.
Increase of wealth. Another cause may have been,
the great increase of realized tuealth attendant upon successful
agriculture, and, still more, industry. Pastoral wealth has
this advantage, that it can be moved about with tolerable ease.
A weak tribe can fold up its tents, and drive its cattle and
sheep out of harm's way. But the wealth of the husbandman
cannot be so disposed of. His wealth is in his fields, which
he has patiently cultivated, and in his barns and presses which
he has filled with corn and wine. He has built himself a
permanent house, and he will not leave it while a chance of
safety, or even of existence, remains. He is a very tempting
bait to the military adventurer. Still more is the craftsman,
with his rich store of wealth, a tempting object of plunder.
The sack of an industrial town, with its shops and its stores
of goods, is the dream of the freebooter. JVass fiir Plunder!
was Bliicher's exclamation, when he was shown London from
the dome of St. Paul's. It was the old instinct of the
professional soldier.
Improvement In weapons. Once more, it is natural
to suppose, that the improvement in the art of working in
metals did much to stimulate the military spirit. The
THE STATE AND FEUDALISM 73
superiority of iron, still more of steel weapons and armour,
over the old wooden bows and arrows and leather shield and
corselet, would give a natural impetus to warfare. Above all,
with the tendency towards specialization which, as we have
seen, is one of the master principles of development, this
improvement in the means of warfare would tend to produce a
special military class, the professional warrior of the modern
world. In primitive times, every man was a soldier ; as
civilization progressed, the bulk, of people became interested in
other things, and fighting became the work of specialists.
This fact is directly connected with the origin of the State.
The German war^bands. In the interesting account
given by Tacitus of our Teutonic forefathers in their ancestral
homes, we notice one very significant feature. Not only does
the historian distinguish between the princeps, or tribal chief,
who was chosen for his noble birth, and the dux, or war
leader, who was chosen for his valour ; he shows us the latter
surrounded by a band of adventurous companions, who took
no part in the ordinary pastoral life of the tribe, but were
constantly engaged in warfare, either in defence of their own
tribe, or in plundering expeditions against strange tribes.
These " companions," as they are called, were fed at the
leader's table, were furnished with food and garments by the
women of his household, and shared the booty of their leader's
expeditions. The devoted loyalty which they displayed
towards their leader is described in a spirited and well-known
passage. They counted it a disgrace to leave the field alive,
if he was dead ; their dead bodies were found thickly piled
around his in the disastrous day of defeat. It is probable
that, at first, this band of companions was composed mainly
of the kinsmen of the leader, his gesiths, as the Saxons called
them ; but ultimately, they became simply volunteers who
joined the band from love of adventure and a military life.
They were the thanes (or servants) of the heretoch (or host-
leader).
Foundation of states. A State is founded when one
of these host-leaders with his band of warriors gets permanent
74 A SHORT HISTORY OF POLITICS
control of a definite territory of a considerable size. And,
practically speaking, this always occurs in one of two ways.
Consolidation. The host-leader, after firmly establishing
his position as ruler of his own tribe, extends his authority over
neighbouring tribes, until he becomes ruler of a large territory.
This is what seems to have happened in the England of the
ninth century, when the so-called " tribal kingdoms " of the
Heptarchy, after fluctuating for many years between the
Bretivaldaship of the various tribal chiefs, became more or
less consolidated by conquest in the time of Egbert. The
same movement showed itself also in the neighbouring country
of Scandinavia, where, also in the ninth century, the innumer-
able tribes became gradually consolidated, as the result of hard
fighting, into the three historic kingdoms of Norway,
Denmark, and Sweden, under Harold Fairhair, Gorm the
Old, and Eric of Upsala, who, as the Heimsknngla strikingly
puts it, subsued all rival chiefs "with scatt (taxes), and
duties, and lordships." Much the same appears also to have
been done in the gradual consolidation of the Celtic tribes of
Scotland under the line of Malcolm Canmore, and of the
tribes of Wales under the hereditary Princes who were found
to be ruling the country at the Norman Conquest. In Ireland,
the trouble was, that no successful warrior succeeded in making
permanent a powerful dynasty. And, in central Europe, the
too ambitious efix)rts of the Prankish warriors, Clovis and his
successors, though brilliantly successful at first, resulted finally
in a similar period of anarchy, which is known by the expres-
sive name of the "Dark Ages." In fact, the State formed
by consolidation is always rather liable to break up into its
former elements.
Migration, Or a State is founded by the successful
migration and conquest by a band of warriors to and of a
strange country. This was the history, in very early times,
of the foundation of the kingdom of Lombardy (a Teutonic
conquest of a Latin land) ; likewise of the Visigothic king-
dom of Spain. Somewhat later it was the brilliant history
of the Normans or Northmen ; who, in the ninth century,
THE STATE AND FEUDALISM 75
became the ruling power in Russia ; in the tenth founded the
practically independent Duchy of Normandy ; in the eleventh
the new kingdom of England ; in the twelfth the kingdom of
the Sicilies, and the short-lived kingdom of Jerusalem.
Character of the State, The new type of community
formed by these events differed fundamentally from that which
preceded it. In the first place, it was essentially territorial in
character. Though its rulers for some time continued to call
themselves by tribal names (" Kings of the English," "Kings
of the French," and so on), in reality the limits of their
authority were the limits of their territories. Whosoever
lived, nay, whosoever happened to be, within their dominions,
was their subject, their subditus, or subdued man, bound to
obey their commands, and, especially, bound to obey their call
to arms. The life of the new community was military alle-
giance, that faithful obedience to the orders of a commander
which had enabled the conqueror, with the aid of his devoted
followers, to place his foot on the necks of the conquered
tribes. Race feeling, no doubt, long counted for much ; no
prudent ruler could afford to neglect it. But it was no longer
the essential bond of unity. To begin with, the ruler and his
chief followers were probably of different blood, perhaps even
of different religion and speech, from the mass of the subject
population. Apart from this fact, the successful warrior,
knowing the value of numbers, was always trying to import
new followers, about whose race he cared little, provided only
that they could be relied on to do good service, either with
the sword or the pen. Finally, being generally a man of
superior enlightenment, the new ruler was often anxious to throw
open the country to foreign adventurers, whether merchants,
ecclesiastics, or teachers, believing that his fame and wealth
would thereby be increased. This policy was, as is well
known, the cause of much trouble in the early days of the
State ; but the new spirit ultimately got its way.
New type of religion. Again, the exclusiveness of the
old tribal systems was rudely broken down. It had rested
mainly, as we have seen, towards the end of its history, on the
76 A SHORT HISTORY OF POLITICS
system of ancestor ivorship. But the establishment of the
western State was curiously coincident with the triumph of a
new type of religion, the chief characteristic of which was
universality. It may sound, at first hearing, ridiculous to
associate the meek religion of Christ with the aggressive
military institution of the State. Yet it is quite certain, that
Christianity had a great deal to do with breaking down tribal
prejudice, and with the establishment of great political com-
munities. To take the first and most glaring example which
presents itself. The conversion of Clovis to Christianity was
intimately connected with the formation of the brilliant, if
short-lived, Prankish empire. The heathen Burgundians and
Saxons were overcome by the Christian Franks. In the name
of Christianity, Charles the Great rolled back the tide of
Saracen invasion from the Pyrenees, and established the frontiers
of Christendom. Though Christianity, in its earliest days, had
been a mission to the poor and lowly, its great conquests in
Northern and Western Europe were due to the conversion of
kings and princes. The conversion of ^thelbirht of Kent
was the signal for the conversion of England. Christianity
passed from Court to Court of the Heptarchic kingdoms.
And Christianity well repaid the favour of princes. Under
the cry of " one church and one king," the older tribal
divisions were ultimately wiped out, and England became one
nation ; with Church and State in intimate alliance. Even
more obviously had Mahommedanism the result of breaking
down tribal divisions, and establishing mighty kingdoms, like
the kingdom of Akbar in India, the kingdom of Ismail in
Persia, and the kingdom of Mahomet at Constantinople.
The new nobility. Once more, the new political
organism, the State, no longer regarded custom as its guiding
star. By its very nature, militarism is competitive ; for
competition means strife, and strife is of the very essence of
war. Mimic warfare may be conducted according to fixed
tradition ; but, in that case, it is rather sport than war.
Real war is a death-struggle, and each combatant will strain
every nerve to gain the advantage. If any one will show
THE STATE AND FEUDALISM -]■]
him a new dodge for defeating his enemy, he will take it
and be thankful. He will not ask if it is consecrated by the
wisdom of his ancestors. Even the very modern human-
itarian spirit has only succeeded in making slight inroads upon
the fierce competition of war ; and if it succeeds in making
further or serious inroads, it will destroy war, or reduce it to
the level of a sport, which is, of course, its object. The
founders of the State were, as we have seen, all successful
warriors, who had won success by new combinations, new
methods, daring disregard of tradition. It was hardly
probable that, under their regime^ the old traditional, customary
life would be continued. Their watchword was ahilttyy not
custom. If they saw a man who could fight well, or write
well, or sing well, they called him to their courts, regardless
of his race or social rank. They knew that their position
was precarious ; they could not afford to leave any stone
unturned to ensure their safety. And one of their surest
measures was to surround themselves with the ablest men on
whom they could lay their hands. All over Europe, the
break-up of patriarchal society is marked by a striking change
in the idea of nobility. The old noh'ility of birth, and wealth,
the members of the sacred families of the tribe and clan, the
great lords of cattle, are replaced by the royal nobility, whose
hall-mark is the choice of the king. In the Barbarian Codes
which tell us so much of early Teutonic society, the Atheling,
or hereditary noble, is displaced by the antrustion, or royal
servant. The latter may even have been at one time a slave;
it is enough that the king has recognized him as a comes, a
member of his band of followers. In England, the tribal
ealdorman, in Scotland the Ri or Mormaer, give way before
the Earl or simple thane. Doubtless, in many cases, the
change was more apparent than real. Doubdess the tribal
chief was willing to accept a title of nobility from the king ;
I just as the Irish chiefs of the fifteenth century, the O'Donnells
and the O'Neills, became the Irish earls of the sixteenth
century, the Tyrconnels and the Tyrones. But the difference
! was, none the less, significant ; and it paved the way for further
78 A SHORT HISTORY OF POLITICS
change. It marked the triumph of the State over the older
patriarchal society.
Feudalism, And, finally, the State was individual^ not
communal. Again we must be careful not to misunderstand
terms. The dream of the despot, who would like to govern
every man in his dominions by the immediate action of his
caprice, is, happily, never realized. But the tendency of the
State, from its very inception, was to break down all inter-
mediate barriers between itself and its individual subjects.
Every wise ruler is, however, aware that this can only be
done by degrees. The warriors who founded successful
States, whether they were alien adventurers, or enterprising
war-leaders of neighbouring tribes, found various degrees of
authority in existence among their subjects, exercised by men
who had been accustomed to deference, if not actually to
obedience. These men were rarely dispossessed by the
conqueror, unless they persisted in refusing all overtures.
The conqueror merely insisted that they should acknowledge
their authority to he derived from him. This seemed to be
such a purely theoretical matter, that the transaction was
usually attended with little difficulty. Even where the
demand oi fealty or faithfulness was accompanied by a demand
for tribute, there was little practical difficulty ; the conquered
chief reckoned with shrewd accuracy on getting the money
out of his followers, the humbler members of his tribe or clan.
If the conqueror chose to regard the land occupied by his
tribe or clan as a gift or trust for the conqueror himself, it
did not seem to matter much ; the important point was that
the tribe or the clan still kept its land. Where the native
chief was irreconcilable, or had been killed in the struggle,
the conqueror put one of his own "companions," his comes
or thane, into his place ; and thus, of course, obtained a really
stronger hold on the conquered territory. Quite naturally,
the conqueror's immediate vassals (as we may now begin
to call them) found it convenient to repeat the same process
with their inferiors. We have seen, in fact, that there were
the germs of such a relationship in the practice of cattle lending
THE STATE AND FEUDALISM 79
practised by patriarchal society (p. 33). But then the
adoption of agriculture made land the important factor in
society; and so loans of land became the signs of subordination.
Sometimes the transaction was genuine ; as where one man
loaned to another land which he was really entitled to keep for
himself. Very often, however, it was merely fictitious ; as
when the inferior yielded up his own land to his superior, and
received it back again from him as a loan. This practice,
known technically as commendation, was very common in
Continental Europe in the Dark Ages, and was primarily
due to the fact that, in times of disturbance, the best chance
for the weak man is to acknowledge himself the vassal of a
strong man, who will protect him. But the tendency spread
beyond cattle and land. The customs of a gild, or a number
of gilds, their cherished rights of controlling their own
members, and excluding strangers from the town, came to be
held as privileges granted by a ruler ; and so town life was
brought within the same idea. Finally, even such a thing as
spiritual office (with the emoluments attaching thereto) was
held as a gift or loan from a superior ; and so indeed the
technical name for such a gift or loan, a benefice, came to be
specially associated with spiritual office. Thus the whole
social organism gradually assumed what we call a feudal
aspect, in some respects resembling the old patriarchal organ-
ization of groups within groups, but differing from it in the
important principle, that the rights of the individual were no
longer acquired by birthright, by membership of a social
group, but were at least deemed to be the grant of a superior,
in return for promised service. In the higher ranks, of course,
that service was military ; and in this the new system showed
its connection with the newer type of society. But, in the
lower ranks, money and labour service were more common.
The peasant rendered labour or paid rent to his lord, in return
for his land ; the craftsmen of a town paid an annual sum to
the king or earl for the charter of their privileges. Even
the beneficed clerk owed to his patron the duty of saying
prayers for the good of his soul.
So A SHORT HISTORY OF POLITICS
Evidence* We shall see more, as we go on, of the
nature and consequences oi feudalism. Here it is sufficient to
notice its place in the History of Politics. // is the connecting
link hetiueen purely patriarchal and purely political society. The
brilliant historical labours of M. Longnon have, to all intents
and purposes, established the geographical identity of the
great fiefs of the West Prankish Empire, with the tribal
settlements of early Gaul. Mr. Skene has been equally
successful in showing that the Scottish earldoms and thanages
of the eleventh century were really the old tribal and clan
chiefships in a feudal dress. Could we but get sufficient
evidence, we should, no doubt, find that the same was the
case in England and other countries. Feudal society has
often been reproached with vagueness and inconsistency.
These are precisely the qualities which we should expect
in a phase of development which is not in itself essential or
universal, but which is an easy and convenient means of
softening a change. In the popular form of entertainment
known as "dissolving views," one picture is not suddenly
replaced by another ; but the old picture gradually melts into
the new by a nebulous and misty process, rather fascinating to
watch, but not conveying any very clear ideas. In the
panorama of History, feudalism represents the blurred out-
lines and motley colours of the " dissolving view."
CHAPTER IX
Early Political Institutions
Following our accustomed plan, having seen how the State
came into existence, we proceed to examine its organi-zatiorif
that is to say, the institutions by which its business is carried
on. Foremost amongst these institutions stands, of course —
I. The Kingship. It is a simple historical fact, that the
kingship of the modern State is the direct outcome of that
process of conquest and migration which founded the State
itself. Till the general break-up of things established, which
followed immediately on the French Revolution, many of the
descendants of the original conquerors of Europe continued to
sit on the thrones which their ancestors had established.
Now that the chain of hereditary succession has, in most
cases, been rudely broken, the position established by the
founders of the modern State still exists under other names.
Kingship is, perhaps, the most successful institution of Politics.
But we must be careful not to suppose that the first kings
were institutions ; they were merely individuals. The earliest
kings were, as we have seen, successful military adventurers,
who had managed to conquer territories of considerable size.
By their own personal skill and prowess they maintained their
I position, and enforced what they considered to be their rights.
What these rights were, we shall enquire a little later; here we
are concerned to notice, that the communities conquered by
! the early host-leaders probably regarded the latter as temporary
} nuisances, who would in due course be removed by the hand
of death. Their position was totally opposed to the old ideas
of society ; they were much too stern, much too enterprising,
%i G
82 A SHORT HISTORY OF POLITICS
much too neglectful of time-honoured practice, to suit the
easy-going ways of patriarchal society. They represented the
future, as the dying patriarchal society represented the past.
Permanence of the Kingship. The kings them-
selves were perfectly aware of this view. Probably, from the
very fact that they were successful warriors, they were men of
exceptional ability, not merely in war, but also in the manage-
ment of men. Leaders like Clovis, and Theodoric, and
Alaric, and Egbert, were not likely to make the mistake of
supposing that they could permanently maintain their positions
by the mere force of military prestige. And so, although they
clung tenaciously to their military powers, although the
military origin of modern kingship has never really been
forgotten, they began to buttress up their authority by appeals
to other sanctions.
Absorbs the chief ship. One of the most skilful of
these appeals was the appropriation by the kings of the character
and attributes of the tribal chief whom they had conquered or
dispossessed. It is possible that, in a few cases, they were,
really and truly, members of tribal aristocracies, though
probably not of the aristocracies of the tribes whom they had
conquered. In most cases, they were simply adventurers,
who had obtained their positions by sheer hard fighting. But
they soon, by a series of fictions which could only have been
accepted in a simple age, persuaded their subjects that they
really were members of the ancient families whom they had
overcome. The pedigree of an early European king generally
led up to some well-known Hero, who had long been
regarded with reverence as the mythical ancestor of the tribe
or tribes over which he was ruling. A simpler method by
which a conqueror attached himself to the tribal instincts of
his subjects was, by marrying the daughter of the greatest of
the conquered chiefs. Although by strict patriarchal law
none of the rights and privileges of a patriarch could go in
the female line, the union was valuable for sentimental purposes ;
and such a policy undoubtedly helped, as it has often done in
later times, to strengthen the position of an intruder.
EARLY POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS 83
The great result of this skilful borrowing of patriarchal
ideas was, that the kingship quickly became hereditary. We
have seen that the position of host-leader was originally
elective^ not, of course, in the sense that it was balloted or
even voted for, like the chairmanship of a modern committee,
but in the sense that no one was entitled to it by right of birth.
The host-leader was chosen by the informal adherence of those
who admired his valour. But it was essential to the success
of kingship that it should become hereditary ; and, fortunately,
the desire to hand a great position over to one's children is
one of the deepest instincts of average humanity.^ So all the
energies of the early kings were bent towards this end ; and
their success was due chiefly to their skilful borrowing of
patriarchal ideas. The dream of an elective motiarchy is one
of the chimaeras of the political Utopian. According to his
amiable theory, freedom of election secures the best possible
man. In sober truth, as evidenced by the facts of history,
it results in one of three consequences. Either the country is
torn in pieces by contending factions — the fate of Poland.
Or the kingship is gradually shorn of its rights and
possessions, which are given away as bribes to important
electors by ambitious candidates — the fate of the Holy
Roman Empire. Or, finally, the electors deliberately choose
a nonentity, who has no enemies, and who will be an obedient
puppet in the hands of wire-pullers. This is the fate of
the electoral Presidency of the modern Republic, which is
a kingship in all but name. Only in times of extreme and
obvious danger, and even then only when the electors are
thoroughly honest, does an election produce a really good
king.
Traces of elective monarchy. As a matter of fact,
in the great majority of the European monarchies, the
tradition of an elective leader lingered for a few generations,
with just suflicient vitality to show that it had once been
genuine. It resulted, practically, in the notion that an heir-
1 Modern instances, of course, are to be found, e.g. Cromwell, and
Napoleon, both of whom tried to make their positions hereditary.
84 A SHORT HISTORY OF POLITICS
apparent might be rejected for positive infirmity, whether of
body or mind. But, though the hereditary principle was
accepted, it was not the modern but the ancient or patri-
archal form of it, which for a long time prevailed, and
which gave the succession to the eldest male of the royal
house, not to the son of the last occupant of the throne. This
older form of hereditary succession lingered in Russia until
the seventeenth century.
Becomes religious. By these means, the kingship
became an institution, or permanent machine for carrying on
the business of government. People came to look upon it as
natural and inevitable that a king should rule over them. But
the early kings made another admirable move when they
assumed a religious position, by allying themselves with
the Church. We have seen something of the origin of
this alliance (p. 76) ; here it is only necessary to call
attention to the well-known fact of the close connection
between the kingship and the Church, in the early days of the
State. Throughout all Christendom, bishops and priests
were the most intimate counsellors and most enthusiastic
supporters of the Crown ; and the rich gifts of the kings were
amply repaid by the halo of sanctity which the grateful
Church threw around the person and office of the king.
From the day of his accession, when the sacred oil was
poured upon his head, to the day of his death, when his grave
was blessed by the Church, the monarch was surrounded and
guarded by ecclesiastics. In Oriental countries, in Mahoni-
medan States, the union is even closer ; for there the Head
of the State is also Head of the Church. But there is actu-
ally an example in outlying Christendom, in which the arch-
bishopric of the Church has become hereditary in the line of
secular rulers. And, even in Europe, the intimate connection
between the king and the Church was the best possible safe-
guard against any revival of patriarchalism, in connection with
ancestor worship.
2. The Council. We have seen (p. 73) that in the rude
beginnings of monarchy, the host-leader is found always to be
EARLY POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS 85
surrounded by his follotuers or companions^ men devoted
entirely to his service, on the terms that he shall provide them
with maintenance, and opportunities for distinction. As the
host-leader developed into the king, this body of followers
became the council of the kingdom. Placed in the midst of
a hostile country, the king and his followers were absolutely
essential to one another's safety. Without their support, the
king could not hold his conquest ; without his master mind,
they would fall victims in detail to racial hostility. The
success of the king meant the enrichment of his followers ;
the contentment and prosperity of his followers meant the
safety of the king. We may put aside as premature any
definite theories about the right of the council, in those early
days, to control the actions of the king. All our accounts of
the relationship between the early king and his council go to
show, that the former, if he chose to run the risk of becoming
unpopular, could do what he liked. Although, perhaps, the
council gained somewhat in the eyes of the king's subjects
by being regarded as the successor of the old tribal council of
elders, yet, in reality, it was the body of the king s servants,
chosen by him at his pleasure. Nevertheless, the existence
of the council did soon undoubtedly become a substantial
check on the despotic tendencies of the king. A theory
grew up, that a good king consulted his council frequently,
that he listened to its advice. And from this point the
step was comparatively short, to the doctrine that the king
ought to consult, and, finally, that he must consult his council.
And thus, in reality, the council is the germ of what we
call constitutional go'uernment. But, long before it became
a bulwark of popular liberties, the council had rendered
invaluable service to the kingship as an institution, and this
in at least four ways.
(«) It preserved the continuity. Kingship may be
perpetual ; but, in fact, the individual king dies. And,
between the death of one king and the succession of another,
there lies a critical moment. The forces of anarchy are
ready to break out. " The king died on the following day
86 A SHORT HISTORY OF POLITICS
. . . then there was tribulation soon in the land, for every man
that could forthwith robbed another," says an old chronicler.
There is always the chance that old ideas may revive, and set
people longing for the good old days when every one did that
which was right in his own eyes. We must remember that a
successful monarchy really does run counter to a good many
cherished practices. It does not, for example, permit of
blood-feuds or tribal forays ; it probably has incurred the
resentment of old religions ; it has sanctioned practices which
ancient prejudice regards as monstrous ; it has, probably,
exacted a good deal of tribute. So there are always people
waiting for a good opportunity to revolt against it. But the
existence of the council tides over the dangerous moment.
Though, in strict theory, the death of the king dissolves his
council ; in fact, the members of council hold together, in
hopes of being appointed by his successor. And, in the
meantime, they keep the political machine going.
(b) It preserved the traditions. One of the greatest
dangers to the newly-established kingship is, the risk of
offending its subjects by exhibitions of caprice. It has to
deal with a community living according to immemorial custom.
It is bound to effect alterations to a certain extent ; but, if it
is wise, it will do so as little as possible. Above all, it must
avoid unnecessary changes. It is almost better, under some
conditions, to persevere in a bad policy, than to change it for
a good one. The average man, especially if he be of a
patriarchal type, suspects and hates change. But a body of
councillors is far less likely to be capricious than a single ruler ;
its members will, possibly, have something to lose by a change
of policy. Its influence will, in the vast majority of cases,
be against change.
[c) It brolce ttie obloquy. As we have said, govern-
ment, especially a newly-established government, is bound to be
unpopular, at least to a certain extent. If the whole of the
criticism provoked by its acts were to fall on the head of a
single individual, his position would become very precarious.
But if the blame can be distributed amongst his advisers, or if
EARLY POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS 87
even, in extreme cases, one or more of these advisers can be
sacrificed to the popular discontent, much will be gained by
the Head of the State. Being an impersonal authority, a
council can stand criticism much better than an individual.
This may not be a very dignified or enjoyable function of the
council, but it is a very valuable one from this point of view of
the State.
{d) It increased the activity. The limits of the
activity of a single individual are soon reached. Even a king
like Frederick the Great cannot know, personally, very much
of what is going on in his dominions. But he would know still
less if it were not for his councillors. By their own observa-
tions, and through their agents, they find out things which are
going on, and repeat them to the king. As with knowledge,
so with action. The king can, personally, do but little.
Even in early days, when the king was still, in the main, a
warrior, he could not personally protect all his dominions at
once. Still less could he, when the business of his position
became (as it did become) enormously increased, conduct it
all himself. But his council could be increased to any size ;
and thus he could, as it were, provide himself with an unlimited
number of hands.
3. Tlie local agents. Hitherto we have assumed
that the king's councillors have, save for short intervals of
absence, surrounded his person, either on the battle-field
or in the palace or hall. This was, as we have seen, the
old idea. The war-leader's companions, in time of peace,
fed at his table and lived in his house. And the idea
has never been abandoned. The Court of the monarch,
even in modern times, is actually in attendance on the person
of the king. But, when the freebooting leader became the
king of a territory, he required supporters, not only round his
throne, but also all over his territory. We have already, in
the preceding chapter, had a glimpse of the readiest plan.
The conqueror accepted the allegiance of such of the old
patriarchal authorities as were willing to submit to him, and
continued them in thqir old positions, as his representatives.
88 A SHORT HISTORY OF POLITICS
It was a dangerous practice, though, perhaps, less dangerous
than forcible dispossession. The king felt safer where the
circumstances allowed him to place one of his own trusted
followers in the room of a dead or banished chief. And,
as the old nobles died out, the polic}'- of replacing them by the
" king's thegns " was steadily pursued, until, by a silent but
revolutionary process, the country had been mapped out into
districts, each in charge of a representative of the central
government. In all probability, the districts themselves would
be little changed. In England, for example, the local divisions
which existed until the beginning of the present century,
represented in the main the ancient units of patriarchal society.
The county or shire was, in many cases at least, the district of
a tribal settlement — Sussex of the South Saxons, Dorsetshire
of the Dorsaetas, Somerset of the Somersaetas, and so on.
In other cases, as Dr. Freeman pointed out, it was an artificial
district commanded by a fortified town, such as Bedfordshire,
Huntingdonshire, Derbyshire, and so on. But this was a
much later formation. And there are strong reasons to believe
that the hundred^ the other great local division of the Middle
Ages, will ultimately be proved to have been the territory of
a clan. In later times, of course, the subdivision becomes
more minute, and we get the single manor,, under its lord ;
but enough has been said to show how feudalism began.
We must not, of course, suppose that the man who was
placed in charge of a local district was entirely excluded from
the Council which surrounded the person of the king. On
the contrary, there seems to be little doubt that the greatest
of the king's subordinates, the earls in England and Scotland,
the dukes and counts on the Continent, always sat, as of right,
in the Council, at any rate on its solemn days of session. We
distinguish in the Witan of the Anglo-Saxon kings, beside
the royal princes and the great ecclesiastics, two classes of
people, the ealdormen and the thegns. The former undoubt-
edly had a local position as heads of the shires ; the latter
were, probably, the humbler followers of the king, who lived
permanently at his court. But it is unlikely that the smaller
EARLY POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS 89
local representatives, the " landed thegns *' (as we may call
them) sat in the Council.
To conclude this chapter, we may ask. What were the
duties imposed upon these local representatives by the early
kings? And we shall hardly get a better answer than by
referring once more to the picturesque words of the Heims-
kringla, which describe Harold Fairhair as subduing all
Norway " with scatt, and duties, and lordships/'
{a) Scatt or Tribute is, of course, one of the prime objects
of the conqueror. Historians sometimes speak of primitive
warriors as though they fought simply for the love of fighting.
No doubt there are some races — for example, the Maoris of
New Zealand half a century ago, — to whom the excitement of
the battle seems really to be an end in itself. But in the
majority of cases, ancient and modern, the stimulus of an
aggressive war has been either revenge^ or, in one form or
another, plunder. Sometimes the plunder has been merely of
a temporary kind, as in the raids of the Vikings. But the
warrior who is a little more far-seeing than the Viking, looks
forward to systematic and continuous plunder. To this end,
he establishes a kingdom ; and when he has established it,
he sets to work to exact a steady supply of tribute. Doubt-
less, to a man of the temperament we have tried to describe,
there is something in itself attractive in ruling over a mass
of subjects. But the notion that a ruler lives for the good of
his subjects is a very rare development in the early days of
the State. The real importance of tribute in the beginnings
of political organization may be most vividly realized in the
Mahommedan States of the East, such as the Empire of
Akbar in India in the sixteenth century, and in the Persian
and Turkish Empires at the present day. As Mr. Baden
Powell has well pointed out, it is, in its origin, primarily a
levy on agricultural produce, a " share of the heap on the
threshing-floor ; " and, in the case of the Moghul Empire, it
rose as high as one-third of the produce. In the harder-won
conquests of the founders of the European States, a more
decent disguise was adopted. The conquerors appropriated
90 A SHORT HISTORY OF POLITICS
the customary offerings made by the tribesmen to their ancient
chiefs, the food rents^ and feast'ings of patriarchal times.
Also they appropriated the lands which had been set apart
for the maintenance of the patriarchal chiefs, and let them
out to tenants of their own who paid them a return in money
or kind. They established, probably also by virtue of ancient
custom, their privileged claims to certain profitable incidents,
such as "royal" fish, mines of precious metals, the contents
of wrecks, and the great game of the forests. All these
miscellaneous items, lumped together, were known in England
as the " farm of the shire ; " and long formed the bulk of the
royal revenue. Sometimes a more direct demand was made
of an additional sum for a special purpose, e.g, the Danegelt
in England, and the Dime in France. Privileged towns paid,
as we have said (p. 79), substantial sums in return for guarantees
of their trade privileges. Only, in Western Europe, there
was always some decent excuse, such as custom or bargain,
for a demand of tribute ; the Oriental meekness, which submits
to the absolute demands of the States tax-gatherer, has hardly
been known in the arena of modern civilization.
(^) Duties. Besides tribute, the conqueror has one other
imperative need, viz. military service. He has, of course, his
own special followers, his " professional soldiers " as we
might say ; and he takes care to recruit their ranks, by making
it worth the while of the most enterprising young men among
his subjects to join the service. But, besides this volunteer
army, he must have a reserve defensive force, in case some
rival warrior should attempt to repeat at his expense the
experiment which he has successfully conducted at the
expense of others. And so he lays it down generally, that
every man is bound to serve if called upon — the able-bodied
as combatants, the feebler as makers and repairers of roads,
bridges, and forts. Often an invidious distinction is drawn
between those who are actually expected to serve, and those
who are debarred by reason of social inferiority or heterodoxy
in religion. But these do not escape ; they are subjected to
a special tax in lieu of service. The practice afterwards
EARLY POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS 9»
spreads, and a general commutation of war-service for tax-
ation is adopted. Then, perhaps, after a few generations, a
reforming i<.ing renews the liabihty to personal service — but
the taxation is not remitted.
(c) Lordships. These were,in fact, the great and character-
istic engine by which the head of the State obtained his taxes
and duties. In days in which means of communication were
very imperfect, it was impossible for the central government to
keep in touch with all its subjects. And so, as we have seen
(p. 78), the conquered territory was parcelled out among
the followers of the king, either his own fellow-adventurers,
or patriarchal authorities who had accepted his rule. From
the point of view of the king, these officials were servants ;
but, from the point of view of the inhabitants of their districts,
they were lords. In order that they might fulfil their tasks
of collecting tribute and soldiers, they were allowed to
exercise a good deal of authority over their districts. This
authority, no doubt, in many cases was looked upon, by
themselves and their subjects, as being of the old patriarchal
character ; but by the king it was always carefully treated as
a delegation from himself, and, in fact, it was largely the
knowledge that the local potentate would be backed, if
need were, by the royal army, that made his administration
effective. As the patriarchal nobility died out, the royal
character of the local official became more and more obvious ;
until at last he came to be looked upon exclusively as a royal
nominee, unless, indeed, as not unfrequently happened, he
tried to set up on his own account, as a feudal magnate.
Not only, however, was the local authority responsible for
tribute and for soldiers ; he was also answerable for the peace
of his district. It is one of the most honourable traditions of
monarchy, that it has everywhere set its face against internal
disorder. In patriarchal times, as we have seen, a man was
guaranteed against violence by his tribe, later by his clan or
gild. But this protection virtually resolved itself into a
liability to exact revenge ; and the plan did not, therefore,
tend to complete tranquillity. The monarchy, in its earlier
92 A SHORT HISTORY OF POLITICS
days, preferred to entrust the maintenance of security to its
own agents, at any rate in the case of the lower ranks of
society. And so the local representative of the crown was
entrusted with what we should call very extensive police
poiverSf and, in return, his personal safety was protected by
exceptional penalties. In the earliest days of the monarchy,
the fact that a slain man was a " king's servant " rendered
his slayer liable to a three-fold murder fine. Somewhat later,
the same policy reappeared, in the same condemnation pro-
nounced upon any man who should dare to raise his hand
against his lord. For, with the duty of collecting tribute
from the people of his district, with the power of enrolling
them for military service, with the exercise over them of
disciplinary authority, the State's local representative had
indeed become the lord of his neighbours ; and so the words
of the Heimskringla are explained.
CHAPTER X
The State and Property
No political institution is of greater importance, none has
been the subject of greater controversy, than the institution
of property. There is none, therefore, more fit for the
application of the historical method^ which knows no pre-
judices and admits no passions, but simply relates facts.
We begin, of course, by asking the question — What is
property ? And, leaving aside technicalities, a good simple
answer to the question is, that it is the right vested in a human
being, or a limited number of hiimati beings^ to absorb for his or
their own benefit the various advantages which can be derived
from a physical subject matter.
A right. There are one or two points to be specially
noted in this definition. First, what do we mean by a right P
And, again putting aside technicalities, we may define a right
as being a poaver enforced by public sentiment. If I have
bought a book in an open and honest way, public sentiment
approves of my dealing with the book as I please. In early
times, public opinion is expressed only in the vague form of
custom ; in later days, it is definitely expressed in legislation,
and enforced by tribunals and officials. It sometimes happens,
that the exercise of a right is opposed to public sentiment,
either because there are special circumstances which render a
particular application of it unpopular, or because public senti-
ment has changed. Nevertheless, a right is really the creation
of public sentiment, />(3J-/ or present.
Vested in human beings. Again, we have said that
property is a right vested in a human being or human beings,
93
94 A SHORT HISTORY OF POLITICS
Many of the instincts and desires which have led to the
appearance of property among mankind are obviously present
in the brute creation. No one who has watched a dog bury
a bone, or has seen a monkey pilfer nuts, will for a moment
doubt this fact. But, nevertheless, we do not speak of animals
having property. Why ? Simply because public sentiment
does not support them in the exercise of their desires. We
recognize, perhaps, very faintly, the moral right of the
domesticated animal to a bare maintenance out of the pro-
duce of his labours — "Thou shalt not muzzle the ox that
treadeth out the corn." But we do not hesitate, if need be,
to withhold the corn, or to slaughter the ox.
In limited numbers. Again, property is a right vested
in a human being or a limited number of human beings. The
essence of it, as its name implies, is the appropriation^ the
making special to an individual or a small group of indi-
viduals, of a part of the common stock of things. Some-
times, it is true, we speak of public property ; but this is really
a contradiction in terms. We signify, in fact, that the thing
to which we allude is not any one's property at all, and,
therefore, that any one may use it. When we really mean
that the thing in question is claimed by a very large but
definite body, we do not use the word property, but some
word which conveys a different idea. Thus we say, that
England is the territory of the English people. If we called
it their property, we should at once have to admit that no
individual Englishmen could have any part of it as his
property ; which is notoriously untrue.
Exercised over subject matter. Once more, these
rights must be exercised over physical subject matter, for that
alone is really capable of appropriation. In a figurative way
we can, of course, speak o^ property in ideas ; but the extreme
difficulty which we find in protecting such property, shows
that it differs entirely from property in the correct sense of
the term. Ideas are spontaneous, the same ideas may spring
up independently in thousands of minds, they have no definite
beginning or ending, they are intangible. How can they be
THE STATE AND PROPERTY 95
protected by agencies similar to those which we employ for
the protection of physical subject matter ?
For general purposes. Finally, the right of property
is a right to absorb the various advantages (known and un-
known) which are derivable from a thing. Here is the real
difficulty of the subject, and the key to its history. As the
jurists say, property is a genera/ right. If I have borrowed
a horse simply to ride from London to Putney, I do not
speak of him as my property. Even if I have jobbed him
for a whole season, I do not speak of him as mine. It is
only when I am related to the horse in such a way that I
may, if I please, ride him or drive him, or put him to plough
or to work in a milk-cart, may kill him or sell him, give him
away or turn him out to grass, in fact do anything with him
I please which does not conflict with the public sentiment of
the community, that I am entitled to speak of him as my
property. With the abolition of slavery, there ceased to be
property in human beings. Yet we all know that one man
may have special rights over another, e. g. a master over his
servant, a husband over his wife, and so on. But these are
limited and definite rights.
A modem idea. Therefore, we make a great mistake
if we take our very modern idea of property, and, looking
back into the early history of mankind, expect to find it
realized by people in those days. We start with the wrong
question. We should not ask — In whom was property vested
in those days ? but. Was there any property at all ?
If this sounds to modern ears an absurd question, it may
become less absurd when we consider a modern illustration.
Broadly speaking, the high seas are not, at the present day,
the ^ro/>^r/y of any one. Why? For the simple reason that,
at present y the only advantage to be derived from them is the
convenience of traffic. And as there is room enough and to
spare for all the ships in the world to pass over them, the
question of property in them does not arise. But we can very
easily foresee that it might arise ; in fact, we can guess pretty
shrewdly the lines 011 which it will arise some day. If the
96 A SHORT HISTORY OF POLITICS
practice of laying ocean cables extends very much, or if
coastal waters no longer supply sufficient fish for the world's
consumption, we shall soon have the high seas eagerly claimed
as territory by different States. And, if this occurs, we shall
uhimately go a step furtlier, and see the territory of each State
divided up as property among its members, as the advantages
to be derived from it increase. We have reached the first
stage already, in what are called territorial waters ; where the
advantages to be derived from fishing, shipping, and gunning,
are sufficient to induce States to appropriate.
This then is the key to the history of property as an
institution — the groivth of kuo<wletlge. As men become more
and more awake to the advantages to be derived from the use
of physical things, the more anxiously and completely do
they appropriate them. And thus it was impossible for us
to study the history of proi)erty, until we realized how man's
knowledge of the resources of Nature had gradually grown.
Now we are in a position to summarize it clearly.
In the first, or hunting stage of society, the requirements
of men are limited to himting-grounds, camping-grounds, and
weapons. Men know that, the more the game is hunted in
a particular district, the less there will be to hunt. They
therefore manifest great jealousy of any interference with
their hunting-grounds. Similarly, their very existence may
depend on a camp with a proper supply of water. They
resent, therefore, any occupation of spots which they are
accustomed to use for camping. Unhajipily, the reports of
travellers upon savage society^ though dealing largely with the
physical character of primitive lucaponsy do not, apparently,
tell us much about the savage's ideas respecting their owner-
ship. But we shall probably not be far wrong in assuming,
that weapons were among the very earliest examples of
property ; the frequency with which they were used, die
extreme importance of their being kept in good order, the
ease with which they could be physically controlled, would
rapidly generate the idea of appropriation. The germ of
property, it nuist again be said, is user ; the captured booty
THE STATE AND PROPERTY 97
is readily shared, but the favourite and often-used weapon is
jealously guarded. There is some evidence also to show that
religious paraphernalia, such as sacred belts and feathers and
stones, are early appropriated to groups of men. But a
savage's weapon can only be used by one man at a time ; and
so it lends itself the more readily to appropriation.
The hunting country. If we want to realize the
savage's immature notions of the advantages to be derived
from land, we may take the modern example of a hunting
country. The Hunt and its Master do not object to people
walking over the land, to pasturing cattle and sheep upon it,
to growing corn upon it, or even to building houses and living
upon it. So long as people do not disturb the foxes or put
up barbed wire, they are regarded with toleration. The Hunt
regards the country as its own, and jealously resents any
trespass by a strange pack. But it does not claim the
country as its property.
Pastoral stage. When we travel a stage further, we
find changes which develop still further the rudimentary idea
of property. The continued association of the herdsman
with his cattle and sheep, his perception of the increased
advantages which can be derived from them — their hides,
wool, and milk — strengthens the relationship between him
and them. In this stage, movable chattels (^i. e. "cattle")
may fairly be said to have reached the stage of property, even
of individual property. But so also must wives, children, and
slaves. As we have seen, the perception of the value of
human labour leads to a desire to appropriate it. The
words which, in primitive law, signify the relation between
a patriarch and his cattle, signify also the relationship between
him and his wives, children, and slaves. It is only in later
times that the different classes become differentiated. At
first, it would seem that birth in the patriarch's household is
the normal title to property. A very interesting old Swedish
formula, in the primitive procedure for theft, makes the
claimant say, that the ox alleged to have been stolen was bred
and reared in his stall. But it is probable that, as the tribe
98 A SHORT HISTORY OF POLITICS
broke up into clans, and the clans into households, the old
idea, that booty was the general prize of the pack, died out ;
and the successful cattle-reiver appropriated the captive of
his own hands. Finally, as the notion of exchange developed,
a man claimed that which he had taken in exchange, or bought ;
but there is abundant evidence to show that, even in historical
times, purchase, especially of flocks and herds, was looked
upon with great suspicion, and that the man who was found
with a strange ox in his possession, ran a strong risk of being
branded as a thief. Only in markets and such like well-
known places, and before proper witnesses, could a sale be
safely conducted. And in English law at the present day,
the sale in open market has a very special force, which reminds
us of this ancient rule.
So far, then, we may tabulate our stages in the history of
property thus —
(i) User.
(2) Production.
(3) Seizure (perhaps).
(4) Exchange.
Agricultural stage. Now we have arrived at the
agricultural stage. And here, it is evident, we are on the
brink of a great development of the idea of property in land.
The pastoralist regards his " country " much as the hunter.
It is the feeding-ground for the herds of the tribe. Perhaps
the jealousy of strangers is a little keener, because tame cattle
are easier to steal than wild game. Probably also, the user
which the individual tribesman may make of the tribal land
is more strictly defined. But there is as yet no individual
right in land, for land is still regarded only as pasture and
hunting-ground ; and there is no need of partition for these
purposes. But the agriculturist soon forms news ideas. As
each new improvement in cultivation makes land more valu-
able, the clan, or the family, or the man who made the
improvement, becomes less willing to see it pass into the
hands of others, less willing to move on to other land on
which less labour has been expended. And so agricultural
THE STATE AND PROPERTY 99
land became (as we have seen) appropriated to the clan,
amongst whose members it was periodically interchanged ; and,
finally, even this redistribution ceased, and the family, ulti-
mately the individual, became permanently associated with a
specific piece of land.
StiH far from modern ideas. This is a long step ;
but it is still very far from bringing us to the modern notion
ofpriimte property in land. All that we have arrived at is,
that the same man may go on year after year ploughing the
same piece of land, and, it may be, his children after him.
That would not satisfy the landowner of the present day.
Limited user. Observe, in the first place, the man may
only use the land for agriculture. It is true, that one of the
first real social results of agriculture was to substitute the
wooden house for the herdsman*s tent ; and the farmer was
allowed to build himself a house in the village, and to inhabit
it permanently. Also, he was allowed to enclose a little ioft
or garden space, and a croft or meadow, both near his house,
for the supply of his family and domestic animals. But the
bulk of "his" land (if we may call it so) he had still not
only to plough and reap, but to plough and reap in the regular
way at fixed times. (See p. 52,) If he had not, his fellow-
villagers would have complained. If he had attempted, for
example, to keep cattle and sheep in his strips, he would have
ruined their crops ; and he would likewise have incurred the
jealousy of those members of the clan who still longed for
broad pastures, and who regarded the new practice of
agriculture with dislike. The world's history is full of this
quarrel, from the days when patricians and plebeians in
Rome fought over the State lands, to the days when the
squatters (sheep-farmers) of Australia were at loggerheads
with the selectors (agriculturists) over a precisely similar
question.
No alienation* Again, the farmer had his house and
land, but he might not sell them. The agricultural village of
primitive times was, as we have explained (p. 58), a very
'* close " thing. No strangers could get a footing in it, at least
100 A SHORT HISTORY OF POLITICS
without the unanimous consent of the village. And the
members of the clan would not want to buy lands, because they
could get them for nothing.
Action of the State. But the appearance of the State,
combined, no doubt, with economic influences, accomplished
the final stage in tlie evolution oi property. The results of its
policy may be said to have been two-fold. It created a land^
lord clasSy and it dissolved the village community.
I. Landlordism. As we have seen (p. 88), one of the
earliest measures of the State was, to plant its representatives
in the various localities of its territory, for the purposes of
exacting tribute, levying soldiers, and maintaining order. We
may be fairly sure that, when the State made their appoint-
ments, it had no clear intention of converting the districts
entrusted to its representatives into property. When the
Crown at the present day appoints a man Collector of Customs
at the port of Liverpool, or Lord Lieutenant of the county
of Surrey, it does not make him owner of the soil on which
Liverpool stands, or of the county of Surrey. In the language
of early times, it was lordship the State meant to confer, not
property.
Inlieritance. But this lordship tended to ripen into
property. In the first place, the State's representative, as
we have seen (p. 87), probably was either a tribal or a clan
chief, or stood in the place of one. But the position of a
tribal or clan chief was hereditary. It is not surprising, there-
fore, to find that lordship became hereditary also ; much in
the same way as the Crown itself had done (p. 83). This
was, of course, one of the most striking features of feudalism.
But an office which can be inherited soon begins to look very
like property.
Rent, In the second place, the Crown's representative
had to pay a certain sum of money as the equivalent of his
lordship. If he did not, his lordship was taken away, and
given to some one else. In well-governed countries, the
amount which had to be rendered was fixed and reasonable;
but this very fact quickly tended to obscure its origin. In
THE STATE AND PROPERTY loi
the course of a few generations, the representative would come
to look upon his district as his owriy subject to payment of a
fixed return, or rent.
Profit, For, in the third place, the State's representative
was from the first intended to make a profit out of his office.
The wholesome system of paying State officials by fixed
salaries, and rigidly demanding an account of all receipts, is
a very modern innovation ; and, even now, is very far from
complete, even in civilized countries. In the early days of
the State, the universal practice was to compound with the
official for a fixed sum, and to let him keep all the surplus
which he could collect. There was, therefore, a direct in-
ducement to the official to increase his demands upon the
people he was set to govern. And this, also, caused him to
look upon his district as his oivn.
Land. Finally, it must again be remembered that almost
everything in the way of taxes in early times came directly
from t\iQ projits of agriculture. In other words, it came direct
from the la?id. It was natural, therefore, that the Crown's
representative should look to the land of his subjects as the
real security for the tribute he intended to collect. And this
point of view had two important results, as population in-
creased and land became, accordingly, more valuable. It
made it very tempting for a lord to turn out one occupier who
did not pay his tribute. It also induced him to encourage
people to bring fresh land into cultivation, because such a
course meant more tribute. Such fresh settlements were made
at the lord's direction, and, of course, within the limits of his
district. By thus dealing with and disposing of the land of
his district, the lord became more and more to look upon
himself, and to be looked upon, as the owner of his district.
The " lord of land," as the old documents call him, became
the landlord of modern times.
It may be said, by hasty observers, that there is nothing
really of importance in this change, that it is really the old set
of things with a new set of names, that " lord," and " man,"
and "tribute," merely become '* landlord," and "tenant,"
102 A SHORT HISTORY OF POLITICS
and " rent.'* But a moment's thought will show this to be a
fallacy. It assumes that the value of land nvill always be the
same; whereas it is notorious that the value of land steadily
increases with the increase of population, /'. e, with the de-
mands made upon it. And the question is, tuho is to have the
increase in value, or, as it is often called, the unearned incre-
ment P Let jc represent the total annual value of an acre of
land in the thirteenth century. Let a represent the amount
which the State gets in tribute, ^ the amount received by
the " lord " (over and above that which he pays to the
State), y the amount pocketed by the occupier ; and suppose
a, Pi and y together just equal x. Now step forward six
centuries. The value of the annual produce of that same acre
may possibly be quite five times .v. Improved methods of
cultivation have rendered it much more productive, or coal
has been found under it, or it has been wanted for building,
or a valuable spring of water has been struck on it. Into
whose pockets does this increase go? And, broadly speaking,
all the world over, this increase has gone into the pockets of
the landlord class, who have succeeded in treating the land
as their property. As a general rule, they have succeeded
in preventing the State from increasing the sum payable to it
by themselves ; only in a comparatively small number of cases
have their " tenants " succeeded in preventing them exacting
increased tribute, in the form of rent. The consequence has
been, that, whilst the State above and the tenant below have
gained comparatively little from the increase in the value of
land, the intermediate, or landlord class, has became enor-
mously wealthy, especially in those countries in which progress
has been greatest. Landlordism has been the most splendidly
rewarded of all political services. The class which began
as revenue collectors, and local maintainers of order, has
become onvners of the soil, and arbiters of the comfort and
prosperity of millions of human beings. In the old centres
of industry, the position of the landlord is much less marked,
inasmuch as the old tribute pressed less heavily on the urban
classes, and they were less dependent on a particular piece of
THE STATE AND PROPERTY 103
soil for their existence. Nevertheless, the existence of valu-
able market rights, tolls, and other town privileges in the
hands of great proprietors, reveals the fact that the tendencies
in the town were the same as in the country, though the
opportunities were less. And, where towns have grown up
since the development of the institution oi property in land, the
profits reaped by the fortunate landlords who have owned
property in their sites have, of course, been colossal.
2. Dissolution of tlie village community. It
would, however, be quite wrong to suppose that the develop-
ment of lordship into landlordship is solely accountable for the
institution of property in land. It accounts chiefly for great
landowners ; but there are small landowners as well as great.
In a sense, as we have seen, the ordinary villager of the
early agricultural epoch was in one sense a landonvner. That
is to say, he probably could not, in most cases, be turned out
of his land so long as he conformed to the village customs, so
long as he paid, in the form of labour or money, his share ot
the village liabilities, and so long as he conformed to the
customs of the village. But he had not the two important
rights which every owner of property now looks upon as part
of his ordinary powers, viz. the right to dispose of his interest
by sale or gift, and the right to use his land as he thinks fit.
Under these two heads we may consider the dissolution of the
village community.
(a) Disposal of interest. From the beginning of its
history, we find the State manifesting a dislike to the village com-
munity. The military character of the State inclines it to deal
with individuals rather than with communities. It prefers to deal
with the village through the individual lord ; where it recog-
nizes the existence of the village group, it deals with it through
its representatives (as we shall hereafter see). In the minds
of the early kings there was, manifestly, a feeling that the
existence of the village brotherhood was, in a way, a danger
to its own authority. There are abundant traces in the Bar-
barian Laws of a determination on the part of the kings that
the village shall not take upon itself to punish its own members.
104 A SHORT HISTORY OF POLITICS
Another claim the kings obstinately insist upon, viz. that a
stranger, furnished by them with " letters of settlement," shall
be allowed to take up land in the village. In early times
there was no physical difficulty in such a course ; land was
plentiful, on the borders of every village there was waste land.
But it was hateful to the villagers, just as hateful as it would
be to a modern household to have a " paying guest " forcibly
thrust upon it. The newcomer might be a spy in disguise ;
to a certain extent the village would be responsible for his
misdeeds; he would probably have new-fangled notions of
farming. But the kings got their way.
Sales, A still further step was taken when the State
began to recognize sales of village land, at any rate sales to
outsiders. There is some reason to believe that, inside the
village group, a process had long been going on by which
several holdings had accumulated in a single hand. In this
way we may account for the appearance of the prosperous
yeoman class, which is such a striking feature of the later
Middle Ages in Europe. But to sell to a stranger was long
forbidden, and only after a severe struggle was the right
established. There can be little doubt that the most power-
ful ally of the State in this matter was the Church, which,
though provided for to a certain extent within the village
system, by the custom of paying ttthesy succeeded in acquiring,
by private gift, immense quantities of land. In particular, the
Church was clearly responsible, if not for the invention, at
least for the rapid development of the practice of leaving lands
by luilly a practice which probably did more than anything
else to break up the old kinship principles on which the village
system was largely based. Finally, the State put the finishing
touch on the legal dissolution of the village, by sanctioning the
taking of a debtor's land in satisfaction of his debts. This was
not, perhaps, such a violent disregard of patriarchal principles
as might at first sight appear. By these principles, as we have
seen (p. 40), a man's kindred were responsible for his mis-
deeds, and, in the times of which we are now speaking, debts
were usually the result of failure to pay the blood-Jine, But
THE STATE AND PROPERTY 105
the old rule was, that the debtor paid with his body ; his land
never left the clan. In reversing this order of ideas, in giving
the creditor a remedy against the debtor's land, the State
was dealing a final blow at the communal character of the
village.
{b) Enclosure, The physical side of the dissolution took
the form of the enclosure of the openjields. So long as the
lands of the villagers lay in scattered strips in the openjields
(p. 50), so long was there, at least in appearance, and, to
some extent, in practical working, a community. Re-distribu-
tion of the lands might have long ceased, but independent
farming was still impossible. A man whose land consisted of
fifty or sixty little strips lying mixed among his neighbour's
strips, "hide-meal and acre-meal," could not try experiments,
could not use his own discretion. He had to follow the
course of husbandry sanctioned by the milage custom. But,
towards the end of the Middle Ages, there arose all over
Europe a controversy, sometimes picturesquely carried on in
verse, between what was called in England " champaign " and
"several " farming. The former was the old-fashioned method
of working in great open fields (campi), the latter the modern
system of cultivating in small compact Belds enclosed by hedges.
Of course the advocates of the new plan had little difficulty
in proving its superior efficiency. It protected the diligent
farmer against the wastrel who let his patches grow thistles ; it
enabled the enterprising man to try experiments ; it especially
allowed him to keep sl}eep instead of growing corn ; it thereby
enabled him to economize in labour (which was then scarce),
for sheep-farming employs less hands than agriculture. 0(
course the reformers got their way, and, for a wonder, the
reform brought artistic value with it, for it gave us, in England
at least, the exquisite hedgerows which are the glory of the
countryside. Instead of a bundle of scattered strips, the
farmer received a more or less compact block of the same
extent, which he could deal with as he liked.^ But the
1 The difference between land held on the old " open-field " system,
and the same land after an "enclosure" will be graphically realized
io6 A SHORT HISTORY OF POLITICS
change was the end, or almost the end, of the village com-
munity ; and it gave us property in land of the most private
kind. For the scattered villagers, unless (as very rarely
happened) they succeeded in throwing off lordship as well as
village ties, found themselves, after the operation, isolated
tenants of a great landowner, with whom alone they had in
future to deal, instead of members of a village group, subject
indeed to the claims of lordships but strong in mutual pro-
tection. The wealthier of them signified their new attitude,
by moving away from the village proper, and building them-
selves new houses in the centres of their new farms. The
village became, more and more, merely the abode of the
cottagers ; the old yeoman houses fell into ruins, or were
divided up into tenements ; class separation became more
marked ; the labourers became more and more ivage-earnersy
and less and less villagers having an interest in the land.
Only the ivaste or common still survived, to mark the ancient
character of the village. In later times that has also in many
cases been broken up ; and the village has become the ideal of
the individualist, a place in which every man " does what he
wills with his own,"
This has been a long story, and a difficult story to tell ;
but no one who has endeavoured to study for himself the
history of the institution oi property will ever pretend that it
is an easy task to relate it. Two points have, however, it is
hoped, been made clear. One is, that the institution of
property, as we have it now, is no sudden invention, which
can be explained in an epigrammatic phrase by a platform
orator. It is, on the contrary, the outcome of a long chain
of historical causes, each contributing its quota to the complex
result. To the elements, previously enumerated (p. 98), of
user, production, seizure, exchange, we must now add the ele-
ments of lordship, revenue, and economic progress, all of which
by a comparison of Plates A and B appended to this book. It will
be noticed that in Plate A the process of enclosure has only begun ;
in Plate B it has been completed.
THE STATE AND PROPERTY
107
have some share in erecting the institution oi property. The
other point is, that while physical, or, as we may perhaps call
them, natural causes have contributed greatly to this result, the
most powerful factor has been the development of that particular
form of association which we term the State.
CHAPTER XI
The State and Justice
We are so accustomed to look upon the administration of
justice as an inevitable duty of the State, that it requires an
effort to realize that this state of things also, like the rest of
our modern social organization, is the result of historical
growth. Now-a-days, all justice is (broadly speaking)
administered in England in the name of the Queen, that is, of
the Head of the State. But it was not always so.
Old ideas of justice. As we have already seen (p.
40), the first notion of justice was that it consisted oi revenge
or retaliation. The blood-feud was the earliest type of judicial
machinery, at least so far as private offences were concerned.
For offences so gross that they outraged the moral sense of
the community, there remained the drastic remedy of expulsion
from the community, by the community itself.
We have also seen (p. 41) that the first step towards a
milder state of things was the substitution of the blood-fne or
money-payment for the exercise oi revenge. The earliest offences
were nearly all offences of violence ; therefore the remedy
of revenge was obvious and natural. When the develop-
ment of the notion o^ property made theft a prominent offence,
restitution was naturally suggested ; and this fact, together with
a perception of the evils of revenge, may have led to a general
acceptance of the money-payment system. As we have before
said, early codes of law are often mainly composed of
elaborate tables oi fines to be exacted for particular offences.
Absence of autlioritative tribunals. But it is to
be observed that, in patriarchal society, there never seems to
108
THE STATE AND JUSTICE 109
have been any authority capable oii enforcing the money-payment
system. It was a voluntary system. The elders of the tribe
or clan seem to have acted as a persuasive body, urging the
parties to receive and pay respectively the sum which they
(the elders) declared to be the proper fine for the offence.
But if their persuasions failed, the parties were entitled to
resort to the feud. Imagine a modern judge " persuading "
Mr. William Sikes to "make it up" with the relatives of his
victim, and, on his remaining obdurate, leaving the two families
to fight the matter out. Yet this course, quaint as it seems to
us, is quite in accord with the ideas of patriarchal justice.
Not applicable to public offences. And it is also
to be observed, that the system o^ fines did not touch pui/ic
offences. They were significantly described by the Teutonic
tribes as bootless ivrongs, i. e. wrongs for which no bot or
payment could atone. When they were perpetrated, the
tribe or clan arose in its wrath, raised the hue and cry, and
expelled the offender from its midst. This distinction is of
vital importance ; it was the germ of the modern distinction
between the crime which is prosecuted by the State, and the
civil ivrong which is left to be brought before the Courts by
the injured party.
Survivals of the notion of revenge. The funda-
I mental notion that a private wrong gave rise to a lawful
I exercise of revenge, unless the parties could be persuaded to
j " swear the peace," lingered to the very end of patriarchal
i times, and even passed over into politica' society. One of
[ its most curious manifestations was the right of reprisal
I practised. by merchants till quite the end of the Middle Ages.
If an Antwerp merchant, for example, did not pay a debt
\ which he owed to a Bristol merchant, the Bristol merchant's
gild seized the goods of any other Antwerp merchant who
• was unlucky enough to be in Bristol at the time. And in
feudal jurisdictions the trial by battle, which is, of course,
only a modified form of the blood-feud, lingered until feudal
jurisdictions were themselves swept away.
Action of the State. But in the matter of bootless
no A SHORT HISTORY OF POLITICS
crimesy the State very early began to make itself felt. It is
very probable that the old communal remedy was not rigorously
enforced. What is every one's business is no one's business ;
and so, no doubt, many a heinous offender escaped. But,
even if it was enforced, the result would not be satisfactory
to the State. The State did not want to lose its men, even
if they were criminals. They might have been very good
soldiers, for all that they were violent members of society.
And so we find the practice growing up of the State
*' redeeming the offender from the forest," as the Swedish
laws put it, i. e. of letting him return from banishment or
submitting to a penalty or punishment. The hue and cry was
raised at the instance of the State's official ; but the offender,
when caught, was punished and allowed to return. This
practice developed ultimately into the process known as out"
lanvry in the Middle Ages, and became exceedingly popular
with the State ; because, by a train of reasoning which it is
easy to follow, the outlaw's goods v/tve forfeited to the king.
The King^s peace. But the royal justice received a
great impetus from the development of another idea, the idea
of the King's peace. It was quite natural that a military
ruler should sternly resent anything like disorder or violence.
Hence the State soon lays down the doctrine, that all offences
of violence are offences against the State — " against the peace
of our Sovereign Lady the Queen," as a modern indictment
puts it. And a man who offends against the State must
expect punishment. In connection with this idea comes in
the institution of sanctuary, so important a modifier of violence
in primitive society. A man has, perhaps accidentally,
caused the death of another. Fearing the vengeance of the
dead man's kindred, he flies to the nearest place of refuge,
and claims the protection of its master. The process is
exactly described in the Mosaic books of the Old Testament,^
and is immensely important in introducing the distinction
between intentional and accidental violence. In the case of
the Jews, the sanctuary was placed in charge of the Church
1 Numbers xxxv. 6-33 ; Deut. xix. ; Joshua xx
THE STATE AND JUSTICE iii
(the Levites) ; and in medieval history the Church's peace
also played a great part in the suppression of the blood-feud.
But, in the end, the King's peace became the most important,
because it was the most powerful. An amusing modern form
of the idea has manifested itself in Persia, where the intro-
duction of the telegraph has enabled a suppliant to appeal to
the Shah for sanctuary from a great distance. Every one has
a right to approach the Shah by telegram, if he prepays a
reply. The man who apprehends violence goes to the tele-
graph office, dispatches his appeal, and sits down to await the
answer. As things in Persia move with deliberation, this is
probably several days in arriving. But as the telegraph office
is the Shah's property, it is sanctuary ; and the suppliant, so
long as he remains there, is safe. It is no uncommon thing,
therefore, to see a little group of suppliants, fortified with
food and drink by their relatives, crouching in the telegraph
office, while a corresponding group of avengers of blood waits
eagerly outside.
Extension of the King's peace. But it is quite
easy, by a little clever elaboration of the idea of the King's
peace, to make it cover a whole multitude of offences which
are not really crimes of violence at all. Take, for instance,
the offence of theft, which is not usually accompanied by
violence, and was originally, and in its nature, a private
off'ence against individuals. But the State says that a theft,
successful or unsuccessful, is apt to lead to reprisals, and
reprisals mean violence, and therefore theft is an offence against
the King's peace. After the king has been satisfied, the
injured party or his relatives may claim compensation ; but it
is generally found that, after the king has been satisfied, there
is not much left for any one else. And so theft and such
like offences become purely matters of criminal, or public law.
Treason. Thirdly, the State, as a military institution,
is peculiarly concerned with the allegiance of its subjects.
Anything that can be considered as a betrayal or defiance of
allegiance, is a direct attack upon its security, and is directly
visited by it with punishment. Thus arises the law of treason.
112 A SHORT HISTORY OF POLITICS
And if we put together offences of peculiar enormity, offences
against the peace, and treason, we get the bulk of criminal
laiv, at least in early times. That is to say, we get the bulk
of that law which the State itself enforces, as opposed to that
law which is enforced by private individuals.
The State and private offences. The appearance
of the State in private laiusuits is much later, and we find an
important intermediate stage between the moot of the elders,
with its merely persuasive power, and the tribunal of the State
itself. This was the court of th^ feudal lord. Partly, no doubt,
this result was due to the action of the State in entrusting the
maintenance of order in the local districts to its representatives ;
still more, perhaps, it was due to the State's representative step-
ping into the shoes of the old tribal or clan chief, who, of
course, presided over the moot of the elders. The result of
the combination was a very tenacious and powerful jurisdic-
tion, which ultimately became a serious rival to the State.
On the one hand, it was military in character; for its president
was really the State's representative, and was endowed with
a certain amount of military force. Hence it was compara-
tively easy for him to stamp out the blood-feudy and to compel
the parties to it to bring their quarrels before him. Then,
"after due inquiry, and if compromise was impossible, it could
be settled by a final and conclusive combat or battle^ fought
under strict conditions. On the other hand, it -wzs patriarchal
also ; for it followed the lines of the old patriarchal settle-
ments, and it comprised (at least in cases where freemen were
interested) the homage of the Jief, whom we may strongly
suspect to have been largely identical with the elders of the
clan. A curious popular mistake has arisen on this point, in
connection with the expression, "trial by one's peers." This
is usually taken to mean *' trial by jury." As a matter of
fact, it was a phrase used to express abhorrence of trial by
jury, which, at the time when it became prominent, was a
very unpopular innovation, introduced by the royal officials.
"Trial by peers" really means "trial by the men of one's
fief" ; and it was a cry of feudalism against the new royal
THE STATE AND JUSTICE 113
justice. Feudal jurisdiction in private lawsuits for a while
reigned, in fact, supreme ; and, even in criminal matters, it
succeeded in acquiring some part of the royal jurisdiction.
But the kings held on very tight to criminal justice, and
preferred to do their local work in such matters by means of
subordinate agents, such as the sheriffs^ who also gradually
took away from the feudal lords much of their jurisdiction in
military and revenue matters. Ultimately they also became
too powerful, and were superseded by the itinerant judges (for
judicial matters), by Exchequer officials (for revenue), and
by royal lieutenants or governors (for military affairs). At
least this was so, where the State succeeded in stamping out
feudalism.
Struggle between the State and feudalism. For
it is one of the ironies of history that the State has, in almost
all progressive countries, been obliged to enter into a death
struggle with a system which it has itself been the main
instrument in creating. In some cases it has been successful,
in other cases it has succumbed in the task ; but in all cases
the struggle has been severe. There were two main objections
to feudalism from a political aspect.
The first of these was its disintegrating character. Left to
itself, feudalism would have split the State in pieces. In
fact, it did so in some cases, notably in the case of the
medieval German Empire, where the great fiefs ultimately
became independent States. The reason is not very far to
seek. The inhabitants of a feudal district became so accus-
tomed to look upon their lord as their earthly providence, that
they lost sight of the power above him. They assembled
under his banner, paid their taxes to him, and were judged in
his Courts ; they hardly recognized the existence of the State
at all. Consequently, if a quarrel arose between their lord
and the king, they were quite as likely to support the former as
the latter. It was one of the great secrets of the stability of
the English throne in the Middle Ages, that the kings very
early and very skilfully, the circumstances favouring them,
put an end to this kind of thing. They insisted that all
114 A SHORT HISTORY OF POLITICS
military service should be rendered to themselves, and them-
selves only. They established a new system of taxation
which, while it relieved the feudal lords of a great deal of
financial responsibility, deprived them of their former position
of tax-gatherers. And, finally (and this is the line we have
now to follow), they took away from them the administration
of justice.
In this they were greatly helped by the second objection
to feudalism, viz. its hereditary character. The right to hold
a feudal court came to be looked upon as a piece of property y
valuable because it yielded a substantial income. When we
notice the eagerness of the State to get hold of the adminis-
tration of justice, we must not suppose that it was entirely, or
even principally, because of the desire to supply pure justice
to the people. It was mainly due to a desire to secure the
profits of jurisdiction. In early times, presidents, judges, and
officials, as well as advocates and pleaders, were paid hy fees ^
often, it is to be feared, by bribes. The more business, the
more fees. Hence the desire to enlarge jurisdiction. Possibly
this competition for the supply of justice would be a good
thing, if all litigants honestly desired the best tribunals.
Unfortunately there are always dishonest litigants, who are
only too glad to resort to corrupt, ignorant, and dilatory
tribunals. Still, as a matter of fact, we are bound to admit
that the State Justice has, in the end, succeeded in supersed-
ing Clan Justice, Feudal Justice, Merchant's Justice, and even
Ecclesiastical Justice, because on the whole it has proved itself
better than any other. Its superiority has consisted chiefly
in three qualities.
I . Strength. We have seen that the oldest type of law-
court, the moot of the elders, was a voluntary tribunal. If
the accused party did not choose to attend the summons of
his opponent, or to obey the doom of the court, the court could
not compel him. It had no executive machinery. Now a
voluntary tribunal may be all very well when both parties to
a quarrel are perfectly bond fide, and honestly wish to obtain
a fair decision. But, in nine cases out of ten, one party is
THE STATE AND JUSTICE 115
not bondjide. He wants to gain time by delay, or fraud, or
obstinacy. A voluntary tribunal can do nothing with him.
But the royal officials would not stand any nonsense. If a
litigant would not obey their summons, his goods, and even
his land were seized, and, in the last resort, he was put in
prison against the day of trial. So likewise with the judg-
ment. If the litigant refused to obey, the judgment was
enforced against his property and his person. Of course the
feudal tribunals had also, to a limited extent, this coercive
power ; but it was the absence of it which really proved the
undoing of the tribunals of the clan, the gild, and the Church.
2. Skill, Again the royal officials, chosen from a wider
field, and selected exclusively for ability, naturally attained a
much higher level of judicial skill than the elders of the
moot, chosen mainly for their age, the feudal noble who had
inherited his position, or the ecclesiastic chosen for his piety.
No doubt the feudal baron and the ecclesiastic had also their
officials ; they did not always decide cases in person. But it is
very unlikely that these were as skilful as the king's officials.
Roughly speaking, the biggest employer gets the best servants ;
and the king was by far the biggest employer of labour in
judicial matters. There were many feudal barons and many
bishops and archdeacons ; but there was only one king. One
very striking evidence of the superiority of the royal over the
feudal and popular courts in the matter of official skill, is the
fact that, until comparatively late in history, the royal courts
I alone kept records of their proceedings in writing.
I 3. Simplicity. One of the most erroneous notions about
j primitive judicial procedure is, that it is simple and stratght-
j fornvard. When it is actually examined, it is found to be
\ full of traps and pitfalls. The parties must use exactly the
1 prescribed /ormj of nvords ; a slip or stammer will prove fatal.
\ This is extremely natural, when we remember that the oldest
j form of judicial procedure is a substitute for 2ifght^ and that,
j in a fight, the object of each man is to catch his opponent
i tripping. Moreover, the parties must only proceed upon the
correct days, or the whole proceedings will be worthless.
ii6 A SHORT HISTORY OF POLITICS
The story of the Roman augurs, who succeeded in keeping
secret the whole of the legal forms and the lists of correct
Court days, so that no one dare go to law without consulting
them, is thoroughly characteristic of primitive procedure. It
is, as the Germans say, emphatically m'lt Gefahr ("with
risk"). But the royal officials., though they were not free
from official pedantry, swept away much of the ancient
Abracadabra of legal procedure. They announced openly
the days on which they would hold courts, and, upon
reasonable payment, issued correct forms.
Still more did they improve and simphfy the actual method
of triaL Broadly speaking, after the blood-feud had died
out, or had subsided into the trial by combat, the ancient
tribunals knew only two other methods of trial. If the
accused was respectable, he was allowed to clear himself by
his own oathy and that of a prescribed number of his relatives,
who now swore for him instead of fighting with him. If he
was a serf, or a man who bore a bad reputation, he was com-
pelled to submit to the ordeal, e. g. to plunge his arm into
boiling water, to walk blindfolded over red-hot ploughshares,
or to lift a mass of red-hot iron. If he was injured in the
process, he was held guilty ; if he escaped, he aa^s pronounced
innocent. As has been well remarked, it is difficult to see
how a man could have been convicted by the oath (unless his
kinsmen made a slip in the form), or have been acquitted by
the ordeal (unless the officials were bribed). In any case,
the whole trial was, as we should think, a mere farce.
The royal officials introduced greatly improved methods.
Without entirely discarding the trial by combat, they offered
attractive alternatives. For example, they allowed proof of
the complainant's accusation or the defendant's denial by
record, i. e. by appeal to the written files of the Court itself,
or to solemn documents. By this means they indirectly did
much to encourage the use of writing in daily transactions.
Again, they insisted that certain transactions should be con-
ducted before tvitnesses ; and then the witnesses could, of
course, be produced in Court to settle disputes. But their
THE STATE AND JUSTICE 117
most famous innovation was the trial by jury y or trial concluded
by the answer given by a small body of neighbours, to a
question put to them by a royal official. This famous
institution, about which much nonsense has been talked, seems
to have been originally a royal privilege^ inherited by the
Emperor Charles the Great from the decaying Roman
Empire, and spread by his officials throughout Western
Europe. If the Emperor suspected that any of the Imperial
rights in any district had been misappropriated, his officials
could compel the neighbours to attend and answer on oath any
questions put to them concerning it. Needless to say, it was
at first an intensely unpopular institution, both with the men
who, as we should say, " sat on the jury," and the people
whose misdoings were thus revealed. But it suited admirably
the purpose of the State, and was taken up by king after
king in Western Europe. In return for a substantial pay-
ment, the kings sold to private litigants the privilege of
using it ; but, of course, it could only be used under the
presidency of a royal official, for the jury would not obey the
summons of any one else. After it had been in use some
years for royal business, e.g. revenue matters and criminal
prosecutions, honest litigants began to see the advantage of
it, and to employ it extensively. But its originally limited
character is shown by the fact that, in criminal cases, it was
long before the prisoner could be compelled to submit to a trial
by jury ; and the earliest criminal jury was one of accusation
cmly [grand jury), not of trial. Gradually, however, as
people began to see that trial by jury was a preferable alterna-
tive to being smuggled out of the way by the royal officials,
or being left to languish in prison, or taking their chance
amid the pitfalls of feudal procedure or in the judicial combat,
trial by jury became "popular" in the modern sense, and
was regarded as a bulwark of liberty. Unfortunately, in many
countries it died out altogether, just because at the critical
moment the State (/. e. the King) was too weak to urge its
adoption. So it has come to be regarded as a peculiarly
English institution. But it was not so originally.
ii8 A SHORT HISTORY OF POLITICS
By these means the State succeeded, in most progressive
countries, in getting into its own hands the business of
administering justice. We may date this achievement, roughly
speaking, by the Reformation^ when the struggle with the
Church got rid, even in Catholic countries, of the last formid-
able rival to the State jurisdiction. In some cases, the State
abolished the local courts altogether, and set up new ones of
its own. This was what happened in France, and it led
to consequences which were disastrous, but which are too
technical to explain here. In other cases, notably in England,
the State pursued the much easier plan of converting the local
tribunals into tribunals of its own, thus, to a great extent,
preserving that continuity which is so important a factor in
political progress.
We have now to answer the important question, What was
the laiv administered by these various tribunals ? But this
question must be reserved for a separate chapter. It involves
a treatment of the important subject oi political representation.
CHAPTER XII
The State and Legislation
As we have before stated (p. 39), the notion that law
could be made was unknown to primitive society. The
rudimentary idea of law, as it presented itself to people in the
patriarchal stage, was that of a custom or observance, sanctioned
by the approval and practice of ancestors. At first this idea,
like everything else in patriarchal society, was purely personal ;
a man's custom or la<w was the custom of his tribe or clan.
Comparatively late in European history, the rule was gravely
admitted, that each man was entitled to be judged by the law
of his race or folk, no matter where he might be. There is
even a faint survival of the notion in civilized countries at the
present day. That most persistent of all patriarchal societies,
the Jewish, retains to a certain extent its tribal laiv in the
Gentile cities of the West.
But, for the most part, the development of agriculture,
aided by the later development oi feudalism, made law a local
rather than a personal thing. Instead of the custom of the clan,
people began to speak and think of the custom of the village,
the custom of the fef, and the custom of the toivn. The
personal idea still lingered ; there was a strong feeling that no
one could claim the custom of the village but a villager, of
the fief but a vassal, of the town but a burgher. But this
element gradually dwindled, as residence took the place of
blood in the organization of society.
It is necessary, however, most carefully to remember that,
when we speak of law being local, we do not mean that the
same law applied to large areas ^ If, for example, we were
119
120 A SHORT HISTORY OF POLITICS
to speak of the Laiv of France^ or the Law of Germany, in
connection with the tenth century, we should betray great
historical ignorance. In the tenth century, every Httle
district, almost every village and town, in France, Germany,
Spain, and even in England, had its own special law. In
England, for reasons which we are about to point out, this
state of things was modified very early ; yet, even in modern
England, at this very day, as all lawyers know, there are
hundreds of different viUage laivs, or rather manorial laws,
which, under the name of copyhold customs, regulate important
questions of property. And in France, Germany, Spain, and
other countries, there was no national law till the end of the
last century.
Three great agencies gradually swept away this (as we
should think) intolerable state of affairs, and created the
modern system of law and of legislation.
I. R_ecords. From the early Middle Ages, and from all
parts of Europe, there survive to us a deeply interesting body
or collection of codes, folk-laws as they are called, or Leges
Barharorum, We have them for the Teutonic kingdoms of
Italy and Spain, for Bavaria, Saxony, Burgundy, Frankland,
Swabia, Frisia, England, Wales, Ireland, even (to a slight ex-
tent) for Scotland, Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, and many
other districts. Though their actual dates differ very widely,
they nearly all come from the same relative period in the
history of each country, viz. the period at which the tribal
settlement is first becoming a fixed kingdom, under a conquer-
ing king. That is to say, they come from the very earliest
days of the State. They are due, almost universally, to one
and the same cause, viz. the desire of the conqueror to know
the customs of his conquered subjects. In many cases, he has
formally promised to respect these customs ; in no case does
he propose to sweep them away. But he must know what
they are ; he cannot respect what he does not know.
And so we see that the so-called Barbarian Codes are not
legislation, in the sense of law-making ; but statements or
declarations of custom. In nearly all cases, they are drawn up
THE STATE AND LEGISLATION 121
as the result of a formal and careful inquiry amongst those
chiefs and elders who are supposed specially to know the
customs of their people.
Importance of the Step, Nevertheless, the drawing
up of these customs was a momentous event in the history of
Laiv. As we have seen (p. 40), unwritten custom does
alter ; but it alters itself automatically and imperceptibly. No
one is sacrilegious enough to propose deliberately to alter it.
But ^written custom cannot be altered imperceptibly ; it is
always possible to point to the exact text, and show what it
says. Nevertheless customs must alter in a progressive
society ; and so it was necessary to have successive editions of
the written Codes, as in fact happened. Thus people came
gradually to accept the idea that custom could be altered ;
and occasionally they even allowed the king, by way of
bargain or agreement, to introduce certain deliberate alterations.
No doubt a good many more alterations were secretly slipped
in, by the royal scribes who drew up the Codes. We must
remember the enormous respect paid in primitive times to the
newly discovered art of writing ; a written document was
looked upon as a sort of charm or magic power. To say of
a rule — '* it is written,^' was to claim for it almost a sacred
character. We have all heard of the Hindu who carried a
doctor's prescription about on his person, instead of taking it
to the apothecary to be made up. That is characteristic of
the veneration with which primitive people regard written
documents. And so we may very well suppose that, if a
passage was found in a written code, no inquiry would be
permitted as to how it got there.
2. Law Courts. We have seen, in the preceding chapter,
how the State gradually acquired the business of administering
justice. And, in the main, the royal officials, in performing
this business, bonestly tried to decide cases according to the
custom of the place in which they happened to be. But they
naturally became confused and impatient with the innumerable
petty differences of local custom, and leaned, perhaps uncon-
sciously, in favour of uniformity. Especially was this the
122 A SHORT HISTORY OF POLITICS
case with the itinerant or circuit judges, to whom allusion has
been made (p. 113). Being attached to no particular locality,
they were free from local prejudice ; and, as they gathered
round the royal chair at the end of their journeys, they
probably discussed with one another the difficulties of their
task, and came to some agreement on general principles.
What they probably did was to take some general ruky which
represented the average practice of the local communities, and
agree to ignore local differences as much as possible. In this
way, at any rate, the English common laiv seems to have been
modelled ; it was the law which was common to all the districts
of the kingdom. Where a local custom was very tenacious,
it was allowed to prevail in its particular district. And it is
very significant that copyhold customs (p. 120) were not
harmonized, because the royal judges did not decide copyhold cases
till quite late in history. And the reason why, on the
Continent, there was no common laiv for centuries later than
in England, was just because, on the Continent, the State did
not get hold of the administration of justice till centuries after
it had done so in England. But, to show that the process
was not peculiar to England, we may point out that the same
result had occurred at a similar stage of Roman history ;
where the customs selected and harmonized by the prators
had become the common laiv of the mighty Roman Empire.
It may be remarked, as a matter of detail, that one of the
shrewdest moves by which the English judges pushed their
plan of making a common laiv was, by limiting the verdict of
the jury in every case to questions of fact. At first the jury
used to give answers both on laiv and fact ; and, being a
purely local body, they used, of course, to follow local custom.
For example, they would be asked : " Who is the heir of
A ? " ; and if they came from a district in which the youngest
son succeeded to his father, they would say, " X '^ (A's
youngest son). But later, the judges used to ask them,
" Who is A's eldest son ? " ; which is purely a question of
fact. And then the judges used to declare that the eldest son
was the heir. Thus, incidentally, we get the famous division
THE STATE AND LEGISLATION 123
between the province of the judge and the province of the
jury.
3. Fictions, But these two methods, valuable as they
were in gradually preparing the public mind for the business of
law-making, were slow and imperfect processes. So also was
another very useful makeshift, viz. the use oijictions. If, for
example, a rule of custom said that land could not be sold,
and A wished to sell his land to B, B used to bring a lawsuit
against A, pretending that the land was really his (B's), and
that A was keeping him out of it. Acting in collusion, A
would make no defence ; and the Court would therefore
adjudge that the land belonged to B. The fiction there was,
that there had been no sale, but a correction of a former
mistake. Of course, that is a glaring fiction ; and it could
never succeed but for the willingness of the Courts to connive
at a change. But it is a well-known fact, that people will
accept a change under cover of a Jiction, which they would
spend the last drop of their blood in resisting as an avowed
alteration. Turkey will not give up her sovereignty over
Crete ; but, if the Turkish flag may fly in Crete as a symbol
of Turkish sovereignty, Turkey will withdraw all real control.
4. Legisiation. But, where progress and development are
rapid, new custom is, in fact, being rapidly made every day,
and all these makeshifts are inadequate to the task of declaring
it. Some more direct and speedy method must be adopted.
The answer to the difficulty is found in political representation.
To modern politicians, ^o//V/V«/ representation is a form of
agency, a means by which people express their wishes, and
elect people to carry them out. About the precise character
of the process there are, no doubt, great differences of opinion.
One school of politics holds, for example, that the represent-
atives are mere delegates of the electors, morally, if not legally
bound to obey their mandate. Another school takes the view
that the elector, in choosing his representative, puts himself
entirely in the latter's hands, and leaves him to act as he thinks
best. Both agree, however, in regarding an election as an oppor-
tunity for the elector to express his choice of a representative.
124 A SHORT HISTORY OF POLITICS
But any one who is at all familiar with primitive society is
aware, that the idea of agency was quite unknown to that stage
of history. In primitive society, every transaction was apt to
end in a fight ; and it was important, therefore, we might even
say necessary, that it should be conducted by the parties
actually concerned. We must look elsewhere for the
beginning of political representation.
Let us take a totally different line. Primitive society
knew nothing of agency -, but it knew a great deal of joint
liability. A murdered B ; not only A, but A's relatives were
liable to the relatives of B. A (a mason) built B's house so
badly that it fell down ; not only A, but A's gild was liable
to B. A (a merchant) incurred a debt to B. Not only A,
but (as we have seen) A's town, was liable to B.
The State uses the idea. When the State was
established, it made abundant use of this idea. A man was
found dead on the king's highway ; the three neighbouring
villages had to produce the murderer, or pay the murder-fine.
There had been a cattle raid ; and the tracks of the stolen
beasts led to a certain village. That village must have pro-
duced the thief or paid the fine. There had been a row in a
market-place, and the king's flag had been torn down, or his
bailiff insulted. The town had to make amends. Or the
king had levied a tax ; and the hundred or the town had been
assessed at so much. It had to pay.
Enforcement of joint liability. But what if it could
not or would not pay ? According to our modern ideas, the
liability ought to have been divided proportionately or equally
amongst the individual members of the village, or town, or
hundred ; and each man ought to have been compelled to pay
his own share. But this course would have involved endless
trouble ; and the king had other things to do. He knew a
simpler and more effectual way. He sent his officer, who
seized a couple of the wealthiest and most respected inhabit-
ants of the village, or hundred, or town, and clapped them in
gaol till the money was paid. The village, no doubt, pro-
tested. Very well, let it find the money, and the men would
THE STATE AND LEGISLATION 125
be restored. Brutal, perhaps, but effective. It is done every-
day in Oriental countries. The result is, that the captives
are ransomed by their relations and friends, who, by some
means or another, have managed to scrape together the money.
Incidentally, we may notice that this matter of raising the
money does a great deal towards building up what we may
call local self -government^ in the district affected. But, here,
our chief object is to notice its importance as a step in the
growth oi political representation.
Development of the idea. For we may be very
sure that a practice so convenient to the State grew and
spread. The State was always wanting money from its
subjects on some pretext or another. And so we are not at
all surprised to find that, quite early in the Middle Ages,
and all over Europe, the village headmen and elders got into
the habit of assembling at the hundred-moot and the county-
moot at fixed times in the year, to meet the royal officers, the
sheriff or his " junior," and to answer the royal demands.
Later on, as towns appeared, we find their headmen and
elders doing the like. No doubt on these occasions a good
deal of purely local business was discussed ; but we may be
very sure that the real thing which kept the practice alive
was the presence of the royal officers. Over and over again
we find the royal command issued : "Let the shire-moot and
the hundred-moot be held as it was aforetime, and let the
reeve and four men come," and so on.
Appearance of Parliament. Then, somewhere about
the end of the twelfth century, a great idea was born in
western Europe. Commerce was progressing rapidly; the
value of money was falling. In every country, the State was
wanting more money. Why not have a great national moot,
as well as many little hundred-moots and shire-moots ? And
so, all over Europe, in Spain, Sicily, France, Germany,
Scandinavia, England, Scotland, even Ireland, Parliaments
sprang up. But they were not entirely representative, still less
were they homogeneous.
The Nobles. For, it we turn our thoughts back to the
126 A SHORT HISTORY OF POLITICS
earliest days of the State {Chapter IX), we shall remember,
that its first organization contained a councilor king's followers,
originally the comrades who had followed him in his con-
quest of the kingdom. This council had never died out, but
had, on the contrary, been enlarged by the gradual creation
of nobles, and by the admission of the great ecclesiastics, the
bishops and abbots. In fact, so large had it become, that,
for ordinary purposes, it was too bulky, and the daily work
of the State was done by a smaller body of officials, generally
known as the Curia or Court, which was always about the
person of the king. But, on solemn occasions, the Great
Council of nobles was always summoned, though probably the
humbler members did not often attend. So when the kings
determined to hold national moots, they naturally summoned
the members of their Great Councils.
The Clergy. In the meantime, a new and very im-
portant class of persons had grown up, viz. the cathedral
and parochial clergy. They had amassed great wealth by the
gifts of the pious ; it was calculated that something like one-
fifth of the land of Christendom was in the hands of the
Church. Just at the time of which we are speaking (twelfth
and thirteenth centuries) the Church had developed a policy
of isolation. Under the guidance of a succession of able
Popes, her clergy were withdrawing themselves from secular
affairs, and becoming a caste apart. They cut themselves off
from domestic life by adopting the rule of celibacy; they
refused to plead in the secular courts ; above all, they de-
clined to pay taxes to the State, on the ground that they
paid them to the Pope. Now, as the main object of the
kings in holding these national moots was to get money, it is
quite obvious that they could not afford to let the Church
escape. So they insisted on the representatives of the clergy —
the deans, archdeacons, and proctors, coming to Parliament.
The clergy did not like it ; but in most cases they had to
come.
The smaller landowners. Then the smaller land-
owners were represented. In England, this was done fairly
THE STATE AND LEGISLATION 127
enough in one way, but not in another. The sheriff was told
to send two people from the county court ; but, instead of
sending villagers, he was told to send knights, i. e. land-
lords. No doubt the villagers were pleased at the time ;
but it was a bad thing for them in the long run. In other
countries, the villagers were often represented by men of their
own class.
The townsmen. Finally, the sheriff was told to send
people from the towns, burgesses or burghers as they were
called in England; and thus the medieval Parliament was
complete. It represented the estates of the realm, viz. nobles,
clergy, yeomen or peasants, and craftsmen.
But two things about it are well worth noticing.
[a) It was not, in any ordinary sense of the term, a
popular institution. On the other hand, for many years after
its appearance, it was intensely unpopular, both with " con-
stituencies " and representatives. The counties hated it,
because they had to pay the wages of their members. The
clergy hated it, because they did not want to acknowledge
the secular authority. The boroughs hated it, because (in
England at least) the parliamentary boroughs paid a higher
scale of taxation than their humbler sisters. And all hated
it, because a Parliament invariably meant taxation. The
members themselves disliked the odium of consenting to taxes,
which their constituents would have to pay. Only by the
most stringent pressure of the Crown were Parliaments main-
tained during the first century of their existence; and the
best proof of this assertion lies in the fact, that, in those
countries in which the Crown was weak. Parliament ulti-
mately ceased to assemble. T he no tion that Parliaments
were the result of a spontaneous deniocratic movement, can
:)e held by no one who has studied, ever so slightly, the facts
)f history.
[b) Parliament, at any rate the representative part of it,
vas, in its origin, concerned solely with the granting of money.
The nobles were, it is true, hereditary councillors of the Crown;
)ut the clerical proctors, and the members for the counties and
128 A SHORT HISTORY OF POLITICS
boroughs, could claim no such position. There was no pre-
tence of such a thing in the early days of Parliament. It was
liability, and not privilegCy which was the basis of Parliamentary
representation ; it was the old idea of the seizure of the
village elders, carried out on a magnificent scale.
New character of Parliament. But it not unfre-
quently happens, that an institution created for one purpose is
found to serve quite another. If the representatives of shires
and boroughs might not advise, at any rate they might peti-
tion. And petitions come with a strong force from people
who are~being asked to grant sums of money. As a matter
1 of fact, the members, especially the members for the shires
and boroughs, petitioned loudly and frequently; and sessions
of Parliament very soon began to assume the character of
bargainings, in which the king undertook to grant petitions in
return for gifts of money.
But what has all this to do, it may be asked, with legislation ?
Just everything, as we shall now see.
Character of petitions. For if any group of petitions
presented by a Parliament be examined (in most cases they
have been carefully recorded) we shall find, that they fall
readily into two divisions. One division consists of mere
private requests, e.g. that a particular man may have a pension,
that a particular oppression by a royal official may be abolished,
and so on. These, if granted, only involve an executive or
administrative act on the part of the Crown. But the other
division consists of complaints of the breach oi good and ancient
customs, and a request for their confirmation. These, if
granted, result in declarations, or, we may say if we like,
makings, of latu, i. e. in legislation. It was already admitted
that the Crown had ordaining power. The king, as military
commander, could issue any orders which could fairly be
deemed necessary for the performance of his universally
recognized duties — viz. the defence of the country against
foreign attack, and the maintenance of order within. He
could order the ports to be closed, forbid the export of
precious metals, direct the town watches to be kept and the
THE STATE AND LEGISLATION 129
militia to be maintained, and so on. He could, moreover,
make all regulations for the control of his own officials, and
for the conduct of proceedings in his own tribunals. All
this was inherent in his prerogative ; and, in a sense, it may be
deemed legislation. But not until the royal enactment was
combined with the popular petition was there real effective
legislation, law-declaring which affected every hole and corner
of a man's life, which turned the vague and badly-enforced
custom into definite and strictly enforced latu. And this,
even at the present day, will be found to be the character of
almost all successful legislation. It is custom adopted and en-
forced by the State. A wise legislator never attempts to devise
legislation out of his own head. Having made up his mind
that a grievance requires remedying, he makes inquiries, and
finds what the better and more enlightened people are spon-
taneously doing to remedy it. Then he endeavours to pass a
statute compelling all people to act up to the standard of the
more enlightened class. He does not take the exalted type
as his model, knowing that it is useless to legislate " over the
heads of the people." But he does take the "rather superior
citizen," and he insists that the inferior people shall toe the
line marked by him. At once the proposal receives support
from the people who have already spontaneously adopted it.
To the inevitable objection, that "it cannot be done," the
answer is obvious, — "but it is already done." And thus the
measure escapes the most damaging of all criticisms to a
statesman, that it is " unpractical." There is a well-known
academic moot which inquires — " what are the proper limits
of legislative interference ? " Somewhere in the direction
indicated will be found the practical answer to the problem.
For a Government, still more for a private individual, to
propose " fancy " legislation, is to proceed upon the entirely
unwarranted assumption, that the Government's servants,
or the private individual, understand the business of the nation
better than the nation itself understands it.
Majorities. Reverting, in conclusion, to the subject of
political representation^ we may say something about a feature
I30 A SHORT HISTORY OF POLITICS
which has everywhere become identified with it, and without
which political representation, as understood at the present day,
could not be worked, viz. the doctrine of majorities. Strange
as it may sound to modern ears, it is yet unquestionably true,
that there once was a time (not so very long ago) when the
fact, that a proposal was supported by a majority^ was considered
no reason whatever for its acceptance.
This is the more curious, inasmuch as primitive society was
full of communities f i. e. groups of people having interests in
common, and conducting their business in common. Surely,
it will be said, these communities must have had some method
of settling differences of opinion by votes ? No. The answer
is, that if custom did not settle the matter, or compromise,
then the only remedy was a Jight, in which the strongest
party got its own way. Unanimity, or a fight, were the
alternatives of primitive times. This is one of the chief reasons
why primitive society was so almost stationary for centuries
together.
Originally no competition for post of represent-
ative. We cannot suppose that, in its origin as we have
seen \t, political representation found any urgent necessity for
contested elections. There would hardly be much competition
for the unpopular part of hostage, or even of member of an
early Parliament. Apparently, at first, the royal officials laid
hold of those whom they considered to be suitable persons,
and packed them off to Parliament. In the boroughs, there
are some traces of a rotation of service among the leading
burgesses. 1
But, as it began gradually to dawn upon people's minds that,
in some countries at least. Parliament was a very powerful
institution, and membership thereof a thing to be coveted,
contested elections began to make their appearance. In England,
by far the best example of early political representation, there
are traces that, at the commencement of the fifteenth century
(when Parliament was about two hundred years old), people
were beginning to covet the position of member of the
* This practice survived until quite late in the history of Spain.
THE STATE AND LEGISLATION 131
Commons House. The old idea of the unwilling hostage had
died out. The new idea of agency ^ introduced, perhaps, from
the Roman Law by means of the Church, was offering a
more satisfactory explanation of the position of the Parlia-
mentary representative. He was the agent of his constituency,
therefore his constituents had a right to choose him. But how
if they disagreed ? The question evidently caused great diffi-
culties ; and though, unhappily, as in so many really interest-
ing matters of history, precise evidence is wanting, we can
make a shrewd guess as to what happened.
Blection fights. Most people, probably, have noticed
that the language of elections is somewhat bloodthirsty. We
speak of the " party war-chest," the " election-campaign,"
the "enemy's stronghold," "laying siege to a constituency,"
" leading troops to victory," " carrying the war into an
opponent's territory," and so on. Much of this is, no doubt,
the decorative language of the New Journalism; but it is
interesting to find that, the further back we go in history, the
more nearly does it tally with the actual facts. It is one of
the numerous examples of the survival, in language, of practices
which have passed away in reality. Most things in the Middle
Ages ended in a fight. The contested election was no ex-
ception. The victorious party routed its opponents, drove
them from the hustings, and carried their man, i. e. to the sheriff,
who forthwith recorded his name, and sent it up to the Clerk
of the Crown.
Fictions, But fighting, though it has its charms, has
; also its drawbacks, especially when a royal official is standing
j Dy, who may inflict fines for breach of the peace. And so it
■ tvould appear that 3.Jiction was gradually adopted, by which it
ffz.^ assumed that there nad been a fight, and that one party
lad gained the victory.
But which party ? Well, other things being equal, in any
iight the more numerous party will win. And so, it seems
o have gradually become the custom, where party feeling
vas not very strong, to settle the matter by counting heads
' nstead of breaking them. Much of the machinery of voting
132 A SHORT HISTORY OF POLITICS
recalls its origin. The first test is a shout. If one party
greatly preponderates, its shout will drown the other's, and
there will be no need to go further. But the shout is the
old battk'cry. If there is still doubt, the next step is Divide,
i. e. draw up in battle array » We do not allow this in parlia-
mentary ^/<?<r/io«j-, because the temptation to resort to the ancient
method would be too great. But, in calmer assemblies, it is
the regular procedure.
Parties. Thus we see what a rough test the verdict of the
majority is. It is not based, historically, on any ethical consider-
ations. It makes no allowance for difference of merit in the
combatants, or for generalship, both of which tell in real war-
fare. But it is a very simple and enormously useful practical
way of settling disputes, and it has had a world-wide success.
Curiously enough, it has often been reckoned the child of its
own offspring. It is usually said, that it is the logical result
of the equality of Man. Historically speaking, the dogma of
the equality of Man is the result of the adoption of the purely
practical machinery of the majority. But the adoption of the
majority principle is also responsible for another famous insti-
tution of modern politics — the party system. The party system
is an elaborate piece of machinery, designed to secure that
whenever an opportunity for a vote occurs, there shall always
be two opposing forces, at least, in existence to contest it.
Its chief advantages are, that it makes representative institu-
tions something of a reality, by interesting a large number of
people in politics, that it provides an effective criticism of the
existing government, that it affords a scope for the energies,
and an outlet for the ambition, of a large number of wealthy
and educated men, and that it guarantees a certain consistency
in policy.
These three institutions — political representation, verdict of
the majority, and the party system — are the mainsprings of
modern political machinery. They can be and are equally
applied to central and to local government ; and, by their
adaptability to all kinds of purposes, they are rapidly becom-
ing looked upon as ends in themselves, rather than as machinery
THE STATE AND LEGISLATION
»33
for the achievement of ends. It is hardly necessary to point
out, that the best machine in the world will not produce good
results unless good material is put into it ; and this historical
account of the appearance of modern political institutions
may possibly be of service in placing them in their true
perspective.
CHAPTER XIII
The State and Administration
Difficulty of tlie subject. We come now to the last,
and by far the most difficult department of State activity.
For whilst, in other departments, such as the dispensing of
Justice, and the making and enforcing of Law, the victory
of the State has been complete, and, with rare exceptions, has
become popular, this is by no means the case with regard to
that wide department which we call administration. Very
few persons now seriously argue, that private law courts or
private legislative bodies would be advantageous. But very
many people do most strenuously argue, that State interference
with the management of domestic, religious, and industrial
affairs, is thoroughly mischievous, and ought to be reduced
to a minimum. In order, therefore, to avoid all appearance
of dogmatism, this chapter will be confined, almost entirely,
to a very brief sketch of the process by which the State has
actually acquired its present administrative position.
Original character of the State. Once more we
must call to mind the initial fact, that the State was, in its
origin, a military organization. For many years after its
establishment, it consisted of a comparatively small body of
warriors and officials, under the headship of a king, control-
ling by force a much larger mass of people who inhabited a
definite territory. It was only by slow degrees, and as the
result of various agencies, that the State incorporated into
itself, mainly, as we have seen, by the process of political
representation, the people whom at one time it merely
governed. For no one can be properly said to be a member
134
THE STATE AND ADMINISTRATION 135
of the State, unless he has some voice in the direction of its
policy.
Also, as we have seen, the State started upon its career,
with the primary function of maintaining external peace and
internal order. Quite naturally, its first efforts in the direc-
tion of administration were intimately connected with this
function. It had no decent pretence for interfering in the
lives of its subjects, except with the object of performing it.
Means of communication. To this fact we may
undoubtedly attribute the early activity of the State in de-
veloping the means of communication. The " king's highway "
is now regarded mainly as a convenience for public traffic ;
but, historically, it was laid down and maintained for the con-
venience of the royal armies. In the days in which commercial
intercourse between one part of the kingdom and another was
almost non-existent, the costly convenience of great trunk
roads would certainly never have been undertaken as a com-
mercial speculation. But roads were simply invaluable to a
king who wished to move his army about; and they were
always carefully maintained and protected by well-governed
States. A similar care was bestowed upon the great bridges,
which are, of course, merely highways across rivers. It is
one of the strongest proofs of the reality of local government
in England, that the care of the main roads and bridges is
entrusted to local authorities. In almost all other countries,
the State jealously maintains its immediate control.
Posts, The same ideas have been at work, though with
a modified force, in the later developments of communica-
tion. The earliest ^d?j-/j- were royal messengers; and although
in England railivays'^ are not administered by the State, they
frequently are so administered on the Continent ; and there
can be little doubt that motives of military ejjficiency largely
influence their administration. Finally it may be observed,
that land and ocean telegraphic connection is, in the majority
of cases, intimately connected with State control.
1 Is not this largely because England is a naval rather than a
military power?
136 A SHORT HISTORY OF POLITICS
Police, On its internal side, the State's original function
of maintaining order, very early gave rise to a great develop-
ment of what is generally known as police administration.
Looked at from one point of view, this may be considered as
a branch of the dispensation of Justice, which, as we have
seen, ultimately became the exclusive function of the State.
But on its preventive side, police jurisdiction has a special
character of its own, which distinguishes it from ordinary
judicial work. In the curfew'^ of William the Conqueror, in
the enforcement of the ivatch, and the maintenance of the
tlthtngs or peace-associations, the State, in England at least,
showed very early that it realized the importance of prevent-
ing, as well as punishing disorder. The State regulation of
markets SLud fairs, the many galling restrictions on the harbour-
ing of strangers, and the stringent regulations on the subject
of inns, were amongst the earliest developments of State
police administration. On the Continent, as is well known,
this preventive policy expanded to an enormous extent, and
was made the excuse for all kinds of wanton State inter-
ference. In England, it was wisely left, to a great extent,
to local authorities ; the work of the central government being
mainly of a controlling or supervising character.
Revenue, Next to the maintenance "of safety and order,
the State in early days was, as we have seen, mainly con-
cerned with questions of revenue. To its desire to foster and
develop this important interest, we must undoubtedly attribute
many activities of the early State which, superficially examined,
look like vague attempts at philanthropy, or *' State-sociahsm"
in the modern sense. To this desire, for example, we may
attribute many early ordinances on the subject of luelghts and
measures, prices, qualities, and especially coinage. When the
income of the State was paid in kind, it was extremely im-
portant that a standard of measure and value should be gener-
ally accepted. The royal officials found themselves hampered
1 The pious theory of our school histories, that King William
laid down his curfew rule to prevent his subjects incurring the risk
of fires, must be taken with a genial cynicism.
THE STATE AND ADMINISTRATION 137
at every turn by the numberless petty local and customary
differences on these subjects. And so, to render its accounts
easier, the State insisted upon certain standards being adopted,
and punished any attempt to revert to the old customary
methods. When the revenue of the State came to be paid
in coiriy the necessity for uniformity was still more obvious.
And so the State, not without some severe struggles, managed
to acquire a monopoly of coinage. The great convenience to
the/wMVofthe State's action in these matters is now uni-
versally recognized ; but it was not the original motive of the
State's policy.
Jealousy, A third, and very powerful motive for the
active interference of the State in administrative matters was,
undoubtedly, that jealousy of rivals which affects institutions
no less than individuals. The State is, no doubt, an institution,
bnt it is an institution composed of, or, at least, worked by,
human beings. There is, therefore, nothing absurd in attri-
buting to it human passions. We have already seen, in dealing
with the development oi property (Chapter X),how the action
of the State led to the dissolution of the village community, on
its proprietary side. On its personal side, as a group of de-
pendents upon a lord, the State was powerfully helped by a
great catastrophe which fell upon Europe in the fourteenth
century. This was the Plague, or Black Death, as it is often
called, which is calculated, in England alone, to have swept
away from one-half to one-third of the population. The
blow fell heaviest upon the labouring classes, and was followed
immediately by a great scarcity of labour. This scarcity made
itself felt principally in the agricultural districts, because the
surviving agricultural labourers rushed to fill the places of the
dead craftsmen in the towns. So great was the despair of
the landowners, that they appealed to the State for aid ; and
the State, not unwilling to intervene, issued stringent regula-
tions, compelling all people of the labouring classes to work
on the old terms. From that time, the State has always been
obliged to regard the regulation of labour as part of its func-
tions. The immediate effect of the step was, virtually, to
138 A SHORT HISTORY OF POLITICS
dissolve the old labour bond of serfdom, and substitute for
it the regulation of labour by the State's officials. It is true
that these latter were, in many cases, the old feudal lords in
a new guise ; and so serfdom was, in fact, a long time in
dying out. And, of course, the interference of the State
could not really affect the economic position of the labourer ;
that was, and is, always fixed by economic causes. But it
altered his legal position.
The gild. Precisely the same policy was adopted, some-
what later, with regard to urban labour. No doubt, the gilds
also suffered severely by the Black Death, But they had
more vitality than the villages, and it seems to have been the
great geographical discoveries of the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries which dealt them their death-blow. In the wake
of the great discoveries, came great commercial ventures, quite
beyond the power of the old gilds to manage. There sprang
up a new class of merchants, who despised the petty rv stric-
tions and ambitions of the gild-system, so far as they hampered
their own plans, though they were quite willing to accept
similar privileges themselves for the new trading companies
which they formed. Then, too, the old gilds were, as we
have seen, a good deal mixed up with Roman Catholicism ;
and this fact, in Protestant countries, went greatly against
them. Ultimately, the old gilds were dissolved by the State,
which then found itself compelled to lay down certain rules
for the control of artisan labour, and to enforce them by its
own officials. In both cases we see the invariable policy of
the State — to break down all intermediate authorities, and to
deal directly with the individual. One of the most striking
examples of this policy has been, of course, the dissolution of
the East India Company, which, so long as its trade monopoly
lasted, was simply a gigantic mercantile gild. The same policy
was manifest in the determined hostility displayed by the
State towards the modern labour associations, known as Trade
Unions, which date from about the end of the last century.
And, had it not been for the strong reaction against State
interference, brought about, not only in England, but on the
THE STATE AND ADMINISTRATION 139
Continent, mainly by Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, it is
not unlikely that the policy would have been once more
carried out. As it is, the State is now very much inclined
to wash its hands of a difficult problem, by proclaiming its
neutrality in industrial matters. But, unfortunately for itself,
it has raised a spectre by its destruction of the old labour
organizations ; and it must face the consequences of its policy.
The Poor Law. Incidentally, also, its action sowed
the seed of the great problem oi pauperism, or State relief
of the indigent. The State, of course, did not create
poverty ; but, by its destruction of the chief agencies, the
village system, the monasteries, and the gilds, which dealt
with it, the State practically assumed responsibility for its
treatment. It is a responsibility which, by reason of its far-
reaching consequences, the State has always been reluctant to
undertake. In nearly all cases, the actual administration of
the Poor Law, where it exists at all, is placed by it in the
hands of local authorities ; the action of the central govern-
ment being confined to supervision and criticism. This is,
unquestionably, the wisest policy on many grounds ; for Poor
Relief is just one of those matters in which, if corruption and
hypocrisy are not to be allowed to prevail, minute local
knowledge is absolutely essential. The dangers which are
attendant even on a local system of Poor Relief were, however,
well illustrated by the appalling condition of affairs which
prevailed in England during the half century which ended
with the appearance of the Reformed Parliament of 1832.
The great Poor Law Report of 1834 showed that, under
cover of the Poor Law system, a scheme of communism, of
the most degraded and vicious type, had practically estab-
lished itself in the rural districts of England. It is very
significant, that, in newly-developed countries, such as the
colonies of the British Empire, the State has, almost without
exception, declined to undertake responsibility for the relief
of poverty. And this is the more striking, when we consider
the political influence of the poorer classes in those countries,
and their leanings towards " State-socialism."
HO A SHORT HISTORY OF POLITICS
Sudden calamity. Once more, it may be pointed out,
that the occurrence of any sudden and overwhelming calamity
has always, at any rate since the great power of the State has
been generally recognized, been followed by a great increase
of administrative activity. It is, of course, perfectly natural
that, at such a crisis, men's minds should turn instinctively
for help to the most powerful agency with which they are
familiar, regardless of ultimate consequences. And the more
able and efficient the government of the State is, the more
readily will its assistance be invoked. The story is the same,
from the days of the Plague of the fourteenth century, to
those of the cholera in the nineteenth. A pestilence, a
famine, a great fire, a murrain of beasts, a flood, a tempest ;
paralysis of private effort ; application of State aid, followed
by permanent organization of State machinery to deal with
similar matters in the future. One of the best examples is,
of course, the vast and complicated machinery of the Public
Health department in England, which has rapidly grown up
as the result of the cholera visitations in the middle of the
present century.
New aspect of State administration. It should,
however, be pointed out, that the question of State adminis-
tration has received an altogether new character from the
great modern development of political representation. When
the State consisted entirely of a handful of officials and
privileged landowners, who had sprung from official ranks, an
increase of its administrative activity really meant the exten-
sion of interference by this limited class, with the daily lives
of the vast masses of men whom it governed. Moreover, it
was an interference which, however good its motives, almost
inevitably suffered from want of detailed knowledge of the
circumstances of those whom it was supposed to benefit.
Now that the State includes within its ranks a very large
proportion of the inhabitants of its territory, now that the
average man can make his voice effectively heard by means
of elections and netvspapers, the danger of arbitrary and
ignorant interference by the State is very greatly reduced.
THE STATE AND ADMINISTRATION 141
It is, no doubt, a reflection of this kind, which has rendered
the increase of State activity so popular, in communities in
which the average man can make his power felt. In such
communities it is, in fact, often said, that the State is merely
the nation organized for governmental purposes, and, there-
fore, that its action is harmless. Although this view is, no
doubt, founded on an important truth, it contains by implica-
tion certain fallacies, which, as a final word, it may be well
to point out. It would be the worst kind of pedantry to
attempt to lay down any hard and fast lines for the limits
of State administration. But an honest recognition of the
dangers attending it will serve as a useful guide to the citizen,
in making up his mind on any particular proposal.
Fallacies in the argument. In the first place, even
in modern conditions, the State and the nation never are
identical. Even where the so-called "universal suffrage"
prevails, the parliamentary franchise is not (with rare excep-
tions) exercised by women; and where, as in New Zealand,
some women have the franchise, there are yet many inhabit-
ants of the country who take no direct part in the business of
government. It may be said, of course, that in such countries
all persons have the franchise who are fit to use it ; but that
is to beg a very large question. The fact remains, that, even
in the countries of so-called *' universal suffrage,'* an exten-
sion of State administration means an increased interference
by some persons with other persons' freedom of action. In
countries, such as England and Italy, in which the parlia-
mentary franchise is on a more restricted basis, the same
truth applies with still greater force.
Again, even if we are to admit that State and nation are
identical, we should still be very far from admitting that
State interference, especially in administrative matters, is
necessarily a good thing. Legislation^ indeed, especially if it
follows the policy of adopting and enforcing the practice of
the most enlightened members of the community, stands on a
somewhat different footing. For in ordinary legislation the
citizen is merely given general directions, and left to follow
142 A SHORT HISTORY OF POLITICS
them out at his own risk ; whilst administrative activity not
only gives him directions, but stands over him to see that he
obeys them. In other words, legislation treats him as a man,
administration, as a child. Yet, even in legislative matters,
it might be well to allow the process of improvement to work
by example, rather than by precept.
And, in admiiilstration, there can be little doubt, that the
constant supervision and guidance of the individual by the
State tends to produce a somewhat feeble type of citizenship,
which is constantly looking for directions, instead of casting
about to help itself. This fact is very observable in the
much-governed countries of continental Europe; but it is
also noteworthy in some countries which should have inherited
a healthier tradition of independence, such as the Australian
colonies.
Finally, the modern indiscriminate advocacy of State
administration conceals the fallacy, that State officials must
necessarily prove more effective in their action than private
enterprise. In some respects, no doubt, there is ground for
this view. The private individual naturally shrinks from
rebuking practices which he knows to be harmful to the
community, even when they are contrary to express law. In
well-governed communities, the public official has, of course,
no such scruples. Moreover, in its higher ranks, the body
of State servants usually contains a majority of men of genuine
public spirit, of great ability, and of special training. The
dignity of their position is sufficient to compensate them for
the loss of that stimulus which, to human nature as we know
it, is usually best supplied by the hope of perbonal profit, to
be derived from hard work and ability. But, in the lower
ranks of the State service, the force of these considerations
diminishes rapidly, especially if the area of the State's opera-
tions be very large. The State has to compete with private
employers of labour, who can, perhaps, afford to oifer more
tempting rewards. The State has not the same apparent
interest in detecting laziness and inefficiency as the private
employer; nor has it, as a rule, the same facilities. It is
THE STATE AND ADMINISTRATION 143
bound to move according to established routine ; it is often
tempted to stifle inquiries for the sake of avoiding scandals ;
it is peculiarly subject to pressure by outside influences. The
head of an administrative department is often obliged to allow,
among his subordinates, conduct which he would not for one
moment tolerate in the management of his own estate or his
own business. Add to this the unpleasant fact, that the
State, for various reasons, cannot, in many cases, even promise
security of tenure to its minor officials ; and it becomes
obvious that the attractions of the State service to a really
desirable class of men are very small. The result is, that
minor State officials are, in too many cases (though there are
numerous honourable exceptions), lazy, stupid, or corrupt,
and, therefore, inefficient. In other words, plans for the un-
limited extension of State administration stand between the
horns of an awkward dilemma. It will not be safe to carry
them out, until the progress of education and morality has
produced an unlimited supply of men and women, who are
capable of discharging important official duties with great
efficiency and absolute honesty, for comparatively small
reward. And, when such a supply has been created, the
[| extension of State interference will no longer be needed.
I Once more it must be admitted, that to dogmatize upon
\\ the proper limits of State interference would be pedantry of
I the worst type. But it will probably also be admitted by
! careful observers, that no proposal for its extension should be
I entertained, except in cases of urgent necessity, in which the
J object to be attained is of more importance than the method
pf its attainment, in which uniformity is of greater value than
(.1 originality, and in which it is morally certain that the action
j { Df the State will be more effectual than private enterprise.
1 J
(
J!
CHAPTER XIV
Varieties of Political Society
Ancient Classification of States, Until a fewv
years ago, it was considered almost essential to begin every
discussion on Politics with a mention of the celebrated theme
of Aristotle, which classified States into Monarchies, Aris-
tocracies, and Democracies or Polities. One of the surest
signs that our knowledge of the History of Politics has greatly
advanced within the last few years, is the fact, that this once
famous classification has sunk into oblivion. It is neither
exhaustive, nor, whatever it may have been in Aristotle's day,
is it very important. Still more silent has fallen the once
noisy controversy, as to the respective merits of these three
forms of government. Slowly, but surely, people are coming
to the wise conclusion, that riJ form of government can be
said to be absolutely the lesi ; and that, in each case, that
is the best which is most suited to the circumstances of the
case.
Similarity of principle in all States. As a matter
of fact, all communities in the purely political stage will be
found to be varieties of a single type, the type namely which
is distinguished by the possession of sovereignty. Somewhere
or another, in all communities of this type, there resides an
authority which, in the last resort, controls absolutely and
beyond appeal the actions of every individual member of the
community. No doubt, as has been well pointed out, this
sovereign power recognizes certain moral limitations of its
action ; it proceeds, in fact, at the risk of revolution. But,
so far as iaiv is concerned, it acknowledges no superior and no
144
VARIETIES OF POLITICAL SOCIETY 145
limit. This condition of affairs has, no doubt, its drawbacks;
it has also immense advantages. Its great practical
convenience may be judged from the fact, that it is the type
of government in all the Great Powers of the modern world,
with the possible exception of the United States of America.
Varieties of organization. But, within these limits,
sovereignly may be organized in different ways. It may be
vested (in theory at least) in the hands of a single individual,
as, for example, in Russia. Or it may be vested, and this is
by far the commoner case, in a number of individuals or
bodies, as in the Crown, Lords, and Commons, in the British
Empire. As this latter arrangement always gives rise to a
good many elaborate rules concerning the relationship between
the different individuals or bodies composing the sovereign
power, it has received the name of constitutional government f
while the sovereignty vested in a single individual receives
the name of autocratic government. But we must be careful
to remember that, owing to political passions, these names
have received moral as well as scientific meanings. By
autocratic rule, many people mean arbitrary or capricious rule ;
by constitutional government, they mean mild or good govern-
ment. Of course the government of a numerous body may be,
and often is, just as arbitrary and capricious as the rule of a
single individual ; and vice versa. Needless to say, the pro-
portions in which sovereign power is divided among the
different members of a sovereign body varies almost infinitely
with each case. And so also do the methods by which the
kit various members are selected. Sometimes the executive and
ilj legislative powers are quite distinct, as in the German
tRj! empire, and, virtually, in Austria ; sometimes they are com-
"j bined, as in England. Sometimes the law courts are beyond
the control of the legislature, as in the United States of
I America ; sometimes they are, legally at least, subject to its
control, as, again, in the British Empire. Again, the head
of the State may be hereditary or elective, and this independ-
ently of the extent of his powers. The German Emperor,
with very great power, is hereditary ; the President of the
146 A SHORT HISTORY OF POLITICS
United States, also with great power, is elective. The King
of the Netherlands, who has very little power, is hereditary ;
the President of the French Republic, also with small power,
is elective.
Another, and almost equally important variation of
sovereignties is, that some are what we may call ordinary^
others extraordinary. That is to say, in some States the
sovereign authority is in constant action, or at least always
ready to act ; in others, it requires an elaborate machinery to
set it in motion. The British Empire is the best modern
example of the former class ; there, the powers of the
ordinary legislature are unlimited. Such was also the position
of most of the European governments at the close of the
last century. But this kind of sovereignty has grown much
out of favour in the last hundred years ; and the majority of
the ordinary legislatures of Europe do not now wield
sovere'ign powers. Thus, for example, the ordinary legisla-
tures of Spain, Belgium, Holland, and many of the German
States, cannot go beyond the terms of written documents
which place limits to their powers, and which are known as
their constitutions. If any further powers are required, they
must be sought from some extraordinary authority, such as a
vote of the whole electors or inhabitants. This fact, which
is extremely important, gives rise to the distinction between
fundamental and ordinary laws ; the former being those
which cannot be passed or altered by the ordinary legislature,
the latter, those which can. This distinction has been aptly
expressed by Mr. James Bryce, as the distinction between
rigid and Jlcxihle constitutions. It is closely, though not
inevitably, connected with the division of constitutions into
nvritten and unwritten. The ivritten constitution is nearly
always rigid ; because its framers do not really believe that it
ever will require alteration. The unwritten constitution,
which has grown rather than been made, is nearly always
flexible^ i. e. it can be altered by the ordinary legislature.*
1 Italy seems to be the most important exception. The constitu-
tion {Statuto) is written, but can be altered by the ordinary
VARIETIES OF POLITICAL SOCIETY 147
This is just one of those cases in which the doctrine, that the
circumstances of the case must determine the form of govern-
ment, is most appUcable. It would be an absurd piece of
academic folly for a country like England, which has
flourished for centuries with an unwritten constitution, to
attempt to reduce her constitution to writing. But the
circumstances under which most of the existing constitutions
of Europe came into existence, rendered written documents
essential. Oddly enough, however, England did set the
fashion of written constitutions, during the Civil War. After
the Restoration, England abandoned them ; but they were
taken up by the United States of America, when the latter
achieved their independence ; from America they passed to
France, and from France, after the French Revolution,
to the rest of Europe, and, ultimately, to the European
colonies.
Value of Local Government, The last dis-
tinction in point of form which we need point out, is
the important distinction between cenlralized and localised
States. This is a distinction which is nearly always to
be accounted for by the circumstances of history ; but its
practical importance is none the less on that account. Begin-
ning with the highly centralized States, we may notice that
they correspond closely with those States which have been
formed by the gradual conquest by one ruler over a group of
surrounding rulers, whose independence he has desired to
\ crush. Thus, modern France was formed by the victory of
the kings at Paris in a struggle, long and profound, with the
rulers of the neighbouring fiefs — Burgundy, Champagne,
Blois, Acquitaine, Gascony, Toulouse, Brittany, etc. ; and
France is the best example of a highly centralized country.
That is to say, the central government at Paris really controls
even petty local affairs throughout France, leaving practically
no independence to the so-called local authorities. Very
1
jgHtlegisIature. Austria and France seem to be on the border line ; but
148 A SHORT HISTORY OF POLITICS
much the same is the case in Italy, where the State was
formed by the gradual victory of the House of Sardinia over
the neighbouring principalities, although, as the struggle was
very much less severe in that case, the centralization of Italy
is, perhaps, largely to be accounted for by the influence of
French models. On the other hand, a State which was
formed suddenly by the conquest of a foreign ruler, or in
which a long-established government has produced a real
fusion of the population, there is generally a considerable
allowance of genuine local Independence. That is to say, the
local authorities are genuinely chosen by the people whom
they have to govern ; they are not bound at every step to seek
instructions from the central government; and, so long as they
act within their legal powers, they cannot be interfered with
by the central authorities. The best kind of all local
government is that which is based upon ancient popular
divisions, such as England, where the local units, to a greater
or less extent, represent natural lines of race and settlement.
It is hardly necessary to enlarge on the merits of local
government. It stimulates and keeps alive political life in a
way that central government alone can never do ; it trains
independent poHticians for the service of the State ; it pre-
vents the establishment of that dead level of administrative
uniformity which is the ideal of a central bureaucracy ; and it
relieves the central government of an immense amount of routine
duty,which the latter could not perform satisfactorily. Its weak
points are equally apparent. It is apt to be narrow-minded,
ignorant, and selfish ; the smallness of its interests may fail to
attract men of the best type, and so it may become very
inefficient. But these dangers may be guarded against by the
criticism of the central government, a task which the latter is
admirably qualified to perform, by reason of its wider outlook
and greater experience.
Composite States, Of late years, the distinction
between centrahzed and localized States has taken a still more
important shape, about which something must also be said.
The really striking feature of the last century of politics has
V VARIETIES OF POLITICAL SOCIETY 149
been the establishment of federal States. The way had
been prepared by Switzerland, which has the distinguished
honour of being the first country to introduce the new type of
government to the modern world. Switzerland was followed
by the United States of America in 1777, by the series of
experiments which culminated in the Empire of Germany in
1870, and by the Dominion of Canada in 1867 ; while, at
the present day, we are deeply interested in watching the
success of another federal experiment in Australia.
Introduces a New Principle, To the historian of
Politics, the vital interest of the new tendency lies in the fact
that it is the introduction of a new principle into the organiza-
Ition of society, the principle of agreement or contract. No
doubt there has been other hifliiences at work in the formation
of federations. The military preponderance of Prussia, for
example, brought the German Empire into existence ; and
the Imperial authority of Great Britain urged the Canadian
provinces to unite. And so the German Empire and the
Federal Dominion are hardly ideal specimens of federation.
But the foundation of Switzerland, and the United States of
America, were, and (if it takes place) the union of the
Australian colonies will ht, purely voluntary. Lawyers know
that the contract is a somewhat late development in legal
systems. Primitive societies do not recognize it, or recognize
it but feebly. Perhaps the institution oi contract is going to
I play as great a part in politics as it has played in laiv.
Nature of Federation. Meantime, we may notice
• that a. federation takes place when a number of States, hitherto
independent of each other (though perhaps dependent on a
higher power ) desire union^ but not unity. They are willing
to join together for a greater or less number of purposes ; but
each of them desires to preserve its individual existence, so
far as his is consistent with common action. The terms of
federal unions are in no two cases alike ; but, putting aside
; the cases of so-called personal unions,^ where two States
\ become, as it were, accidentally connected by dynastic ties, we
* Such, for example, as England and Hanover from 171410 1827.
15© A SHORT HISTORY OF POLITICS
may usefully classify them under the following heads, begin-
ning with the lowest and proceeding to the highest degree of
union.
1. Real Unions. These occur where two States agree
to accept permanently the same ruler, whilst retaining almost
intact their independent existence. The most conspicuous
example in modern politics is the case of Sweden and
Norway ; where the King of Sweden is, ipsojure, also King of
Norway, but where Norway retains her independent Parlia-
ment and local institutions, and even (it would now seem) her
independent foreign relations. The Act of Union of 1 707
converted the existing personal or dynastic union of England
and Scotland into a real union ; of a somewhat closer type
than Sweden-Norway, for the Parliaments of the two
countries were united, as well as their thrones.
2. Confederations. This, at one time a rather favourite
type of union, is now virtually discarded by civilized countries,
with, perhaps, one striking exception. It occurs when two
or more States join together, and delegate, either permanently
or for a limited time, a limited number of their inherent
powers to a central authority, but without in any way merging
their identity. The powers delegated are usually only of a
legislative and military character ; the execution and
administration of the laws of the central authority are left to
the officials of the different States in their own territories.
Sometimes, the powers of the central authority are so small,
that the union is hardly entitled to rank as a real example of
confederation ; as, for example, when a number of States
combine to form a Zollvereln, or Customs Union. But
usually the Confederate Government is empowered to main-
tain an army, a fact which almost necessarily implies control
of the foreign policy of the different States, and to legislate on
matters of common interest, such as posts and telegraphs,
coinage, criminal offences, and so on. Of this type was the
North German Confederation of 1866-70; and such it
seems, though the circumstances are peculiar, is the position of
the present German Empire, which, though it has vast
VARIETIES OF POLITICAL SOCIETY 151
legislative and military authority, has very little executive,
administrative, or judicial power. ^ In this last feature lies the
real weakness of the confederation as a type of union. The
central body, having no officials to enforce its statutes, is
obliged to resort to the clumsy expedient of so- called y>^<fr^/
execution, in case of disobedience to its laws by one of its
members. This expedient involves invasion of the offend-
ing State by the confederate army, and, of course, usually
results in a break-up of the confederation. In Germany,
this unfortunate tradition was inherited from that political
monstrosity, the Holy Roman Empire.
Right of Secession. A very important question was
raised by the Southern States of the American Union, in the
unhappy civil war of the sixties, which has, in all probability,
done much to discredit this type of government. They
maintained, as will be remembered, that the Union was a
Confederation, and that, therefore, any of its members who
chose might luithdraiv. The event of the war was against
this contention, which was, indeed, untenable in the face of the
executive, administrative, and judicial organization of the
Union. Occasionally, however, the right of secession is
expressly reserved by the pact of union.^
3. Federations. Far more important is the tme federal
type of State, in which the central authority is invested, not
merely with legislative and military, but with executive and
judicial authority. Some of the most important modern
examples of State-making fall under this head. It is the type
of the United States of America, of the Dominion of Canada,
and, probably in the near future, of the Commonwealth of
Australia. Indeed it seems to be the true type also of the
anomalous government of the British Empire, which, with a
1 Switzerland seems to stand on the border line. The confeder-
ate government has little direct administrative or judicial authority;
but it has a good deal of supervising and critical authority.
2 This is the case with the so-called "Federal Council of
Australasia," adopted as a temporary expedient in 1885. It had
very little success.
152 A SHORT HISTORY OF POLITICS
few important but feasible alterations, would approximate
closely to a federal constitution. The essential features of a
federal constitution have been admirably sketched by Professor
Dicey, in his Introduction to the Study of the Constitution, and
may be summarized briefly thus : —
[a) A written supreme constitution, in order to prevent
disputes between the jurisdictions of the Federal
and the States' authorities ;
(^) A distribution of powers, between the central or
federal government and the governments of the
several States which comprise the union ; and prob-
ably also among the various parts of the federal
government ;
[c) A Supreme Court, charged with the duty of inter-
preting the constitution, and enforcing obedience to
it by the organs both of the Federal and States*
governments, and absolutely free from the influence
of both.
It cannot be denied, that the federal type of government, in all
its forms, has its weak points. Based obviously on compromise,
it is less likely than national or centralized government to awaken
profound enthusiasm, or to gather around it that halo of
patriotic sentiment, which is one of the greatest safeguards
of a State. Complicated as its machinery must inevitably be,
and slow in its working, it is apt to get out of order, and diffi-
cult to stir to prompt action. It was the first weakness which
caused the heroic founders of modern Italy to reject the
federal principle, when its adoption would, apparently, have
solved many of their greatest difficulties. The second weak-
ness has been unmistakably manifest in the history of the
United States of America ; and the third is daily obvious in
the procedure of Swiss politics. But, in spite of these draw-
backs, federalism has shown a marvellous capacity for adapting
itself to different circumstances and different peoples ; and it
is probably destined to play a large part in future political
history.
Common Law and prerogative States, The last
VARIETIES OF POLITICAL SOCIETY 153
classification of political societies which we shall notice is one
of extreme importance, but which has only of recent years
deserved the attention which it merits. It divides them on
the one hand into common la-xu^ and, on the other, into preroga-
tive States. In the former class, all persons, officials no less
than private individuals, are equal before the law, are judged
by the same tribunals, and are subject to the same rules. In
the latter, not only are there many privileged individuals, but
the whole great class of Government officials is exempt
(wholly or partially) from the jurisdiction of the ordinary
Courts of Justice. To the first class belong, substantially
speaking, only the English-speaking communities ; ^ to the
second all the other States of the civilized world. It is,
therefore, especially important that English readers should
quite understand what the distinction means.
Common Law States. It does not mean, of course,
that in English-speaking communities, a Government official
may not do what in a private person would be unlawful.
Every day we see Government officials imprisoning criminals,
seizing goods for debt, searching suspected houses, and doing
many other things which no private person may do. But it
does mean —
(i) That no Government official may do these things
without legal authority ;
(ii) That, if his authority is questioned, it must be proved
by him in precisely the same way, and before precisely the
same tribunals, as in the case of a private person accused of a
similar act.^ If the act would have been criminal in a private
1 The principle has been tried and abandoned in modern Italy ;
there is some trace of its existence in Switzerland and Scandinavia.
2 It must be admitted that, even in " common law " countries,
there are some exceptions to this rule. For example, in England,
the King or Queen is personally exempt from suit, though his or her
subordinates cannot plead orders as an excuse for illegal conduct.
Peers are privileged in the matter of tribunal (not of law). Members
of Parliament are temporarily privileged in respect of minor offences.
But these exceptions are infinitesimal compared with the list in
Continental countries.
154 A SHORT HISTORY OF POLITICS
person, the official may be prosecuted in a criminal court ; if it
would have been only a civil wrong in a private person, the
official can be sued for it in an ordinary civil court. And
neither of these tribunals will accept any plea of " act of
State," or "superior orders," as an answer to such a com-
plaint, at any rate when the complaint is made by a citizen.
The net result is, that the Government officials in an EngHsh-
speaking country are subject to the ordinary or common latv.
Prerogative States. In other countries, just the oppo-
sive rules prevail. On the one hand. Government officials,
from the highest to the lowest, act in what they believe to be
the interest of the State, whether or no they have legal
authority for their actions. On the other, their acts cannot
be questioned by the ordinary tribunals, at any rate without
the consent of their official superiors. The net result is what
the French call droit administratif^ a phrase for which there is
really no English equivalent, but which means law upon which
only a Government official is entitled to act, and which is, in
effect, what the Government chooses to make it. Under cover
of this so-called " law," the ordinary citizen is subjected, in
foreign countries, to an amount of supervision and arbitrary
interference which would produce a revolution in England in
a twelvemonth. And this, in spite of the most solemn
guarantees of individual freedom in constitutional documents.
How the difference arose, A thoughtful American
writer, Mr. Lawrence Lowell, has indicated, no doubt with
accuracy, the cause for the existence of the distinction. It
is just one of those cases in which history furnishes the only
clue to the solution of a modern difficulty. In England, the
judicial side of State activity developed with great complete-
ness, long before the administrative side. Consequently, when
administrative activity began to increase, it found itself con-
fronted with a powerful and highly organized system of
judicial tribunals, which jealously kept it in check. There
was a severe struggle, which covered the whole of the seven-
teenth century in England, and lasted well on into the
eighteenth. But, in the long run, the laiv courts triumphed ;
VARIETIES OF POLITICAL SOCIETY 155
and Englishmen reaped the benefit, not only in their old
country, but in those new countries to which they carried the
birthright of English common law. On the Continent, on the
other hand, the administrative authority of the State developed
long before the judicial ; and men learned to look upon the
administrative officials of the State as earthly providences,
while the State's law courts were weak, and commanded no
particular respect. Quite naturally, when the State's law
courts were at length organized upon systematic lines, the
administrative officials declined to submit their conduct to the
scrutiny of the new tribunals. In fact, they utterly refused to
believe in the possibility of stable government on such terms.
In the view of every Continental Minister, Government
officials mustf if they wish to maintain order, frequently violate
the ordinary law. And to have their authority questioned by
ordinary tribunals would, he argues, be entirely subversive of
discipline. If it is pointed out to such a man that Anglo-
Saxon Governments, all the world over, enjoy a stability
which is certainly not less than that of their Continental
contemporaries, he shrugs his shoulders, and enters the fact as
one more of the peculiarities of the peculiar Anglo-Saxon.
One humorous feature of the situation should not, however,
be overlooked. When Montesquieu and other French writers
of the eighteenth century dilated to their countrymen upon the
virtues of the British constitution, one of the chief excellences
which they praised was the so-called ** separation of powers."
Now the real " separation of powers " which the British con-
stitution of the eighteenth century actually enjoyed, was the
freedom of the law courts from the control of the Ministers.
But the French, and, after them, the other politicians of the
Continent, took it to mean the freedom of the Ministers
from the control of the law courts. And, when the govern-
ments of the continent were reconstructed after the French
Revolution, this was the form in which the British principle
appeared. Truly, logic is sometimes a dangerous instrument.
Here must end our imperfect attempt to evolve order out
156 A SHORT HISTORY OF POLITICS
of the chaos of History. Those readers to whom the political
arrangements of the world represent merely the outcome of a
series of local accidents, will have little sympathy with an
effort based on a totally different belief. But to those who,
with the writer, regard History as the outward manifestation of
great universal laws, capable of infinite variety in the circum-
stances of their application, but tending with irresistible impetus
to similar ends, this attempt may seem to have been made not
altogether in vain. Regarded from one standpoint, the Art
of Politics may appear to be nothing but the " scuffling of
kites and crows." Regarded from another, it is an effort,
miserable and imperfect perhaps, but still an effort, to realize
that deep-seated instinct of humanity, which bids Man turn
for help and guidance to his fellow Man. It is an affirmation,
on unmistakable lines, of that social side of our nature, which
may fairly be regarded as one of the fundamental facts of the
universe. As such, it is surely worth earnest and impartial
study ; and all the dreary and repellent accessories which
attend its practice cannot disguise its essential importance.
The day may be far distant, when the actual political arrange-
ments of the world will realize the highest ideal of which our
social instincts are capable. But every life honestly spent in
the faithful service of the common weal, every hour devoted
to the earnest study of the public good, brings that day more
surely within our reach.
BRIEF BIBLIOGRAPHY »S7
A SHORT LIST OF
USEFUL AUTHORITIES
Type I. — Savage Society.
Spencer, W. B. and Gillen, F. J. 17je Native Tribes of
Central jlustralia. London, 1899.
FisoN, L. and Howitt, A. W. Kamilaroi and Kurnai.
Melbourne, 1880.
Morgan, L. H. Ancient Society. London, 1877.
Type II. — Patriarchal Society.
Seebohm, F. The Tribal System in Wales. London, 1895.
Do. The English Village Community. London, 1 883.
Roe, Sir C. A. Tribal Law in the Panjab. Lahore, n. d.
Skene, W. F. Celtic Scotland. (Vol. III.) Edinburgh,
1880.
Galton, Sir F. Narrative of an Explorer. London, 1853.
CouLANGES, F. de. La Cite Antique. Paris, 1864.
There have been English translations or adaptations of this
work, e.g. —
Small, W, The Ancient City. Boston, 1874.
Barker, T. C. Aryan Civilization. Chipping Norton,
1871.
Powell, B. H. Baden. The Indian Village Community.
London, 1896.
Larger works on the same subject by the same author are — ■
The Land Systems of British India. Oxford, 1892.
Short Account of the Land Revenue Systems of British
India. Oxford, 1894.
Brentano, L. English Gilds. London, 1870.
158 BRIEF BIBLIOGRAPHY
Type III. — Modern (Political) Society.
Dicey, A. V. The Laiv of the Constitution. London, 1885.
Lowell, A. L. Government and Parties in Continental
Europe* London, 1896.
Local Government and Taxation, London, 1875.
(A volume of Cobden Club Essays by various writers.)
Fyffe, C. a. a History of Modern Europe. London, 1 89 1.
Br YCE, James. The United States of j^merica. London, 189 1.
Bluntschli. The Theory of the State. Oxford, 1885.
Trans.
INDEX
AUMiNISTRATlON, 1 34, 140, 154
aspects of, 140
and justice, 154
of justice, io8
Adoption, 15, 66, 68
Agency, 123, 124, 130
Agnatic succession, 36
Agriculture, 43, 44, 98
and the clan, 43, sqq.
early methods of, 45
organization of, 49
Alienation of land, 99
Allegiance, 2, 75
military, 75
Ancestor worship, 37, 38,66, 76
Animals, domestication of, 19, 22
Apprenticeship, 66
Australian aborigines, 6, 7, 43, 62
system of relationship, 11
Aristotle's Classification of States
144
Barter and sale, 63
Birth, as title to property, 97
Black Death, the, 137
Blood feud, the, 13, 40, 108, 109
III, 112
Blood fines, 40, 104
Capital, conception of, 29
Caste, Indian system of, 66
Cattle tending, 33, 78
Champion, the, 35
Chief, the, 34, 54
of the clan, 70
of the tribe, 70
Chiefship, disappearance of, 82
Christianity, effect of, 76
Church and State, 76, 84
Church, effect of the, on land, 104
Clan, the, 17, 69, etc.
Clergy, the, 126
Crime, 109
Criminal law in early times, 112
Codification, 120
Coined money, 63
Colleges, religious, 39
Commendation, 79
Commerce, 62
Common Law States, 153
Communication, means of, 135
Competition, 20
Composite States, 148
Confederations, 150
Conquest, 74
Constable, 53
Constitutional Government, 85
Constitutions, rigid or flexible, 146
Contract, principle of, in politics,
149
Convertible husbandry, 49
Council, the, 36, 84, 85-87, 126
Courts of law, 121
Crops, alternations of, 46
Cultivation, systems of, 46
Custom, 39, 52, 68, 76, 86, 121
enforced by State becomes
legislation, 129
Curfew, the, 136
Curia, the, 126
Debts, 104
i6o
INDEX
de Coulanges, Fustel, 37, 54
Domestication of animals, 19,22
Dooms, 1 14
Droit Adm'nustratify 154
Ealdorman, the, 67
Elective Monarchy, 83
Enclosure movement, 50, 105, 106
Estates, representation of, 125-127
Exchange, 62, 96
Exclusiveness of patriarchal socie-
ties, 67
•^ of early States, 20
Fealty, 78
Federal Constitutions, 152
States, 149, etc.
Feudalism, 78, 113, 1 14
English form of, 113, 114
hereditary character of, 114
the State and, 113
Fictions, 123, 131
Field-grass system, 46
Fines, 41, 108
Forest clearings, 45
Forfeiture, no
Fosterage, 15, 58
Gild, the, 60, 65, 66, 69, 79, 138
character of the, 66
dissolution of the, 138
Government, i, 87
activity of, 87
constitutional, 85
constitutional and autocratic
145
Headman, the, 52
Heir-apparent, the, 35
Hereditary kingship, 83
Holdings of land, 50-52
Household, the, 18, 69
Hue and cry, no
Hundred-moot, the, 125
Industry, 60, 62, 64
specialization of, 62
Inheritance, 100
Institutions, 4, 81
Iron, use of, 60
Itinerant judges, 113, 122
Joint liability, 124
Judges, 114
itinerant, 113, 122
Jurisdiction of the Church, 118
Jury, origin of, 117
foundation of, 122
Justice, 108, sqq.
Justice and administration, con-
flict of, 154
King and council, 85
King's highway, 135
• peace, 91, no, in
representatives, 87
Kingship, 81-85
becomes elective, 83
becomes hereditary, 83
religious, 84
Kinship, 2, n, 37, 55, 57
male, 15, 24
Labour, 26, 51, 79, 97, 105, 137
State regulation of, 51, 137
Land, 55, 56, 96, 98, 99, 101-104
alienation of, 104
ownership of, 102, 103
private property in, 96-99
Landlordism, 100
Landlords and the State, 102
Landowners, representation of, 1 26 1
Law, 119, sqq.
Law courts, 121
savage, 12
tribal, 39, 41
uniformity of, 121
Laws, fundamental and ordinary,
146
Legal days, 115
INDEX
i6i
Legal fictions, 123
forms, 1 15
J.egcs Barbarorum^ i 20
Legislation, 119, 123, 128
Lex talionis^ 40
Local govcniincnt, 125, 147
Lord and landlord, 101
Lordships, 91, 100, 106
Majorities, doctrine of, 130-132
Market, 63-65
Marriage, 9, 15, 26, 28
by capture, 26
by purchase, 28
rules of, 28
Meadow land, 51
Metals, precious, 63
work in, 60, 73
Migration, 74
Militarism, 76
Military allegiance, 75
service, 2, 79, 90
societies, type ol, 2
Modern political machinery, 132
religion, 38
societies, 67, 71
Money, 63
Moots, 125
Nation, not identical with State,
141
Nobility, degrees of, 34
new, 76, 77
Nobles, the, 126
Nomadism, 56
Oath of kindred, the. 33, 116
Offences, private, 112
public, 109
of violence, 108
Offices, ICO, etc.
hereditary, 100
Officials, 70
Government, riglits and lia-
bilities of, 153
of village, 52
Open fields, 50, 105
Ordaining power of Crown, 128
Ordeal, the, 116
Organization, varieties of, 145
Outlawry, no
Pack, the, 8, 18
Parliament, the, 125-128
original duties of, 127
Pastoral pursuits, 24, 25, 29
Paternal authority, 16
Fatria potestas, 1 6
Patriarchal household, 3
societies, 2, 3, 15, 17, 67, 69
and modern societies, 67
Patricians, 3
Peers, trial by, 1 12
Personal union, 19
Petitions, 128
Pets, keeping of, 23
Plague, the, 137
Plebeians, 3
I'olice, 136
Politics, I, 2
Political rei)resentation, 123, 140
society, varieties of, 71, 144
Polygamy, 16
Poor laws, 139
Posts, 135
Prerogative, 129
States, 153
Private offences, 112
property, 106
Production, 62
Profit, conception of, 29
of officials, loi
Property, 25, 28, 93-100, 106, 107
individual, 97
origin of, 25
private, in land, 99
stages in history of, 96, 98,
106
State and, 100, 107
Proselytism, 38
Public health, 140
property, 94
M
l6l2
INDEX
Punishment, no
Purchase as giving title, 98
Ranks, 33, 34
Record, proof by, 116
Records, 120
Relationship, systems of, 11
Religion, 36, 38, 75, 84
modern, 38
tribal, 36
Religious colleges, 39
secrecy j 38
Rent, 51, 54, 58, 100
money, 51
Representation of estates, 125-12
political, 123, 140
Representatives, election of, 130
of King, 87
Revenue, 106, 136
Right, a, 93
Sacrifice, 13, 37
Sale, savage forms of, 65
of village land, 104
Sanctuary, no
Savage law, 8, 12
Scatt, 89
Scottish laws, 57
Sea, the, no property in, 96
Secession, 150
Separation of powers, 155
Sept, the, 17
Serfdom, dissolution of, 138
Serfs, 32, 51
Sheriffs, 113
Shire, the, 88
Shire-moot, 125
Slavery, 26, 27
Society, i
modern, political
State and administration, 134, etc
„ feudalism, 113
• J, landlords, 102
,, legislation, 119
,, property, 93, 100, 107
becomes individual, 78
character of, 75, 134
• Church and, 76, 84
interference, 141-143
justice of, 1 10, 114, 115
origin of modern, in warfare'
7i> 73
socialism, 136
the territorial, 75
7I States, classification of, 144, sqq.
common law ajid preroga
tive, 153
composite, 148
federal, 149
organization of, 81
Statute of Winchester, 53
Succession, agnatic, 36
Taxation, 127
Taxes, 101
Territorial States,
75
71, etc.;
[44
Sovereignty, 144, 146
Specialisation, 62, 73
Standards of measure and vahu
136
State administration, 140-143
union, 19
waters, 96
Theft, 108
Theology, 38
Three-field system, 47
Tithings, 136
Tokens, 63
Totem, the, 12
group, the, 9
Totemistic societies, 3, 9-12
Townsmen, representation oi, 1
Trade Unions, 138
Traditions, 86
Treason, 111
Trial by battle, 109, 116
by jury, 117
Tribal chief, the, 70
land, 36
law, 39, 41
organization, 31, etc., 54
^.
INDEX
163
Tribal religion, 36
Tribe, the, 8, 17, 31, 69
Tribes, consolidation of, 74
differentiation of, 29
membership of, 32
officials of, 34
pastoral, 27
Tribunals, 118
Tribute, forms of, 90
Two-field system, 46
Unearned increment, 102
Union and unity, 149
Unions, classification of, 150, etc,
real, 150
User of land, limited, 99
the germ of property, 96
Value, standards of, 63, 136
Vassals, 78
Village, the, 49, etc.
agricultural, the, 99, etc.
communities, 49, etc.
dissolution of, 103
Village craftsmen, 64
custom, 105
lordship, 58
officials, 52
organization, 55
origin of, 53, 54
Villagers, the, become tenants, 106
Violence, no
War, 71, 77, 89
bands, German, 73
Waste, 50, 51
Wealth, 72
of nations, 139
Weapons, 72, 96
Welsh chief, the, 34
laws, 56
societies, 16
Witnesses, 116
Worship, 37, 38, 66, 76
Wrongs, bootless, 109
ZoUverein, 150
GLOSSARY
kglia, 51, 54
Icheringa, the,
Alltud, 32, 57
Balks, 50
Ballys, 56
Birraark, the, 11
Boaire, the, 29, 33, 55
Bothach, 33
Brehons, 36
Taetli, 33
Jantred, 57
j -eile, 55, 59
Ciniud, 55
Corroboree, 10
Cro, 41
Cyning, 34
Davoch, 57
Dialwr, 35
Etch grain, 49
Engrossing, 69
Eric, 41
Feastings, 54, 58
Fer Midba, 33
i64
GLOSSARY
Fine, 55
Flaith, the, 55
Forestalling, 69
Frith-gild, 66
Fuidhir, 32, 55
Galanas, 41
Gesith, 73
Gwely, 57
Heretoch, 35, 73
Henadwr, 36
Husbandland, 57
Jirgah, 36
Khan, 34
Khiraj, 58
Mab, the, 16
Maiden fee, 58
Moot, 53
Mormaer, 34
Nardoo, 43
Neme, 29
Panchayat, 36
Parker, 53
Pen, 34
Pound, 53
Princeps, 73
Rachimburg, 36
Reeve, 52, 53
Ri, 34
Seisrigh, 56
Sencleithe, the, 33
Steelbow lands, 57
Synnachies, 36
Taboo, 12
Txog, 33
Tanist, 35
Teisbanteuleu, 35
Tenandrie, 57
Thane, 73
Thaneston, 57
Tilth grain, 49
Tir Gwelyawg, 57
Toisech, 35
Tricha Ceds, 56
Tumandar, 34
Uchelwr, 57
Veliki Kniaz, 35
Vesh, 52
Wer, 41
Yardling, 51, 55
Zamindar, 51
Richard Clay Csf Sons, Limited, London Gf Bungay.
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