POLITICAL ORGANIZATION IN GENERAL. 149 



be greater prosperity and populousness in the regions subject to a 

 king. 



These last cases introduce us to a further truth. Not only does 

 that first step in political organization which places individuals under 

 the control of a tribal chief bring the advantages gained by better 

 cooperation, but such advantages are increased when minor political 

 heads become subject to a major political head. As typifying the 

 evils which are thereby avoided, I may name the fact that among the 

 Belooches, whose tribes, unsubordinated to a general ruler, are con- 

 stantly at war with one another, it is the habit to erect a small mud- 

 tower in each field, where the possessor and his retainers guard his 

 produce a state of things allied to, but worse than, that of the High- 

 land clans, with their strongholds for sheltering women and cattle 

 from the inroads of their neighbors, in days when they were not under 

 the control of a central power. The benefits derived from such wider 

 control, whether of a simple head or of a compound head, were felt by 

 the early Greeks when the Amphictyonic Council established the laws 

 that " no Hellenic tribe is to lay the habitations of another level with 

 the ground ; and from no Hellenic city is the water to be cut off during 

 a siege." The good which results from that advance of political struc- 

 ture which unites smaller communities into larger ones was shown in 

 our own country when, by the Roman conquest, the incessant fights 

 between tribes were stopped ; and again, in later days, when feudal 

 nobles, becoming subject to a monarch, were debarred from private 

 wars. Under its converse aspect, we see the same truth when, amid 

 the anarchy which followed the collapse of the Carlovingian empire, 

 princes and barons, resuming their independence, became active ene- 

 mies to one another : their state being such that " when they were 

 not at war they lived by open plunder." And the history of Europe 

 has repeatedly, in many places and times, furnished kindred illus- 

 trations. 



While political organization, as it extends itself throughout masses 

 of increasing size, directly furthers welfare by removing that impedi- 

 ment to cooperation which the antagonism of individuals and of tribes 

 causes, it indirectly furthers it in another way. Nothing beyond a ru- 

 dimentary division of labor can arise in a small social group. Before 

 commodities can be multiplied in their kinds, there must be multiplier! 

 kinds of producers ; and, before each commodity can be produced in 

 the most economical way, the different stages in the production of it 

 must be apportioned out among special hands. Nor is this all. Nei- 

 ther the required complex combinations of individuals, nor the elabo- 

 rate mechanical appliances which facilitate manufacture, can arise in 

 the absence of a large community, generating a great demand. 



But though the advantages gained by cooperation presuppose politi- 

 cal organization, this political organization necessitates disadvantages ; 



