than with their own; and there are states which almost refuse to be classified with one form more than with another. Again, there are nations that have run through several forms in their political progress; and among them are several which are more important studies than almost any that have been tolerably stationary. The growth, again, or decay of such states is not due to the development of a polity alone; indeed, other causes which are not political may have acted on the mode and direction of this development.

Hence the utility of studying the progress of constitutions; and of looking at the characteristics of individual states, especially in the early stages of their political history.

Democracies will be divided into those of city-states and those which occupy a larger territory, the democracies which have grown up naturally and those which have been artificially formed on the rule of popular sovereignty and of strict equality verging towards a democratic tyranny.

The compound states will come last before our notice, in the order already mentioned. The forms to be examined will be those in which a number of states are brought together in some political union, whether as subordinate to a larger political power, on terms of subjection and dependence without close political union, or as constituting a confederation on terms of equality. The greatest space will be given to the consideration of confederate systems under their two forms of an aggregation of states created by a league, and of a state made out of a number of states. After this examination of forms of government, we shall proceed to the subject of the departments of government or administration.

Ancient city-kings.

CHAPTER III.

MONARCHIES.

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Among the forms of monarchy, we shall consider first that of city-states and of other small states in the early history of mankind. There is reason to believe that, wherever a pastoral life was not made permanent in a race by the nature of the country and the situation, compact settlements succeeded the scattered village communities of earlier times. These settlements, as we have seen, where several clans came together, were surrounded with walls for purposes of defending both the residents and the surrounding inhabitants, with their flocks, when they needed shelter. When these cities engaged in commerce, the walls were required against invaders from the sea. The political power with the administration of justice, the festivals and common religious rites found their centre in the generally walled city, which was for security's sake not on the seashore but in some situation provided with a hill or a citadel, and therefore often not in the middle of the territory (Comp. § 153).

1. The government of these city-states in the early times was placed in the hands of kings, or of single magistrates at least, to whom various names were given. In all of them there seems to have been a body of more privileged freemen, whom we may call nobles, and a class of common freemen, with slaves or serfs either derived from earlier conquest of the lands where the settlements were made, or brought for sale from abroad, or gained by war with a neighboring state. Thus through Greece and Italy, among the Phoenicians, Canaanites and Philistines on the Eastern coast of the Medi

terranean, there were city-states under the sway of one man. In Germany some tribes had a similar constitution, yet without a system of cities. In Gaul there were cities, but the political form was constructed upon the canton rather than on the cities, and the nobles had great masses of men under them in a relation of clientage or serfdom. The smallness of the territory belonging to these city-kingdoms has been already spoken of (153).

Wherever city-states prevailed, the idea of confederation would naturally spring up. Yet the earlier confederations were either for religious and festive purposes, or were temporary; so that consolidations on a great scale seldom took place. We meet in Greece, even in the historic times, with the formation of new cities by the union of a number of villages; and wherever the Greeks settled out of their country, cities were built almost as a matter of course.

2. The poems of Homer give us an idea of the kingly estate, as it was then found among the Greeks. By the side of the commander in chief at Troy, who was lord over a considerable part, but not of the whole, of Peloponnesus, stood many associated captains who were also kings, but over smaller territories, who have this title (Baoiλñes), in common, and for the most part the additional one of being sprung from Zeus and nourished by Zeus, and whom already to some extent the myths of the poets traced back to a divine parent on one or the other side. It is plain that their divine right, and the special protection of them by the gods, had now become parts of the religious faith; but the historical origin neither of kings nor of nobles can be ascertained; nor are there, as far as we are aware, any speculations about it in the earlier poets. The nobles called by Homer counsellors, perhaps, leaders and old men-which already could signify office and not age (as the Greek leaders at Troy are not in general conceived of as especially old) are the senate of Agamemnon, assembled by him for meals which began * Comp. Schöm, Gr., Alterth., i., 19 et seq. and Mr. Edw. A. Freeman in his Compar. Politics, lect. iv.

with religious offerings, and after finishing the meal, called to hear the chief and give him their advice. This, no doubt, was the practice in all the little kingdoms, during peace as well as in war; but the head of the state was not bound to follow their suggestions. His will gave the final decision, but he would of course be slow to oppose a strong opinion or to form a decision in which none supported him. The common freemen were called together to hear a resolution made by the king and the elders, rather than to give advice or express their wishes. When Telemachus (Odys., ii.) calls a gathering of the people for the first time since his father went to Troy, it was for the purpose of complaining and asking assistance, and not for any political reason.

The king does not appear as a judge in the Homeric poems, although doubtless he had that for one of his functions; but in the description of the shield of Hercules, old men—perhaps not nobles, but ancient men of the people-hear and decide in a case of manslaughter. In Hesiod's works and days, the upper class, there called "kings who take gifts," are the judges between the poet and his brother. (vs. 38,39).† Taking another view of the kings in Greece at a later period, we find them leaders in war, judges in disputes, and representing the community in the sacrifices of the public religion (Aristot. Pol., iii., 9, 7). In several parts they have enlarged their power, as in the Doric kingdom of Sparta. In Attica, where the traditions point to twelve kings at first, as among the Etrurians of Italy, and to a union of the districts under one king, with Athens for the centre, there had been an immigration of important families during the disturbances of early Greece; for this was the more quiet corner of the land. The descendants of some of these attain to

*Il. xvi., 542; Odys., xix., 111.

The etymology of Bardevs is obscure. See the opinion of G. Curtius, p. 364 of his Gr. Etym., ed. 4. "Avaέ also is of uncertain origin. Rex is from rego. King is generally derived from Kunni, Kyn, race. Grimm has another derivation (Rechtsalterth, B. i., chap. 1, beginning).

royal power, and others help to constitute a stronger nobility than had grown up on the soil. It marked an era in the constitution of Attica, when the name king (Baoiλeús), for some reason or other becoming distasteful, was abandoned for that of archon (ruler). It is a breaking with antiquity, and indicates a relative increase of the power of the nobility. The change, which is veiled under the legend that no one was thought worthy to succeed Codrus after his self-devotion, consisted perhaps in a greater responsibility and check on royal power exercised by the aristocracy or eupatrida, who were his assessors in judicial proceedings, and probably furnished the members for the criminal court of Areopagus. The archons, selected for life from the reigning family, lost their religious functions. They filled the chief place in the state for nearly three hundred years, when this elective monarchy ceased, and the archonship for ten years was established, although still remaining a prerogative of the old royal house. Then it was open by election to all the Eupatridæ, and in 685 B. C. an annual archonship, to which the nobles alone had access, completed the separation from the monarchical spirit and prepared the way for a democracy.

Athens had a slower and more peaceful development than most other city-states of Greece, yet everywhere the transi tion to more popular forms occurred. In all we see the effect of civil disorders and of a new stage of society in which the upper class are principal actors, and the mass of freedmen have become conscious of their strength. Dissensions in a well-born class and the increasing wealth of other proprietors of the soil seem to be the causes of the revolutions.

Rome.

3. The monarchy at Rome continued, according to the hisEarly kings of torical tradition, through seven reigns for two hundred and forty-four years, when the last king with his family was expelled, and a government under two annual magistrates, with almost kingly power, was established. Admitting that the history is uncertain, that the seven kings

*Comp. E. Curtius, Hist. of Greece, Amer. ed. 1, b. 2, ch. 2.