POLITICAL ORGANIZATION IN GENERAL. 153 



furnished an illustration of this tendency. Down to the present time 

 we have before us the familiar instance of trade guilds in London, 

 which, having ceased to perform their original functions, nevertheless 

 jealously maintain themselves for no purpose but the gratification of 

 their members. And the accounts given in "The Black-book," of 

 the sinecures which survived up to recent times, yield multitudinous 

 illustrations. 



The extent to which an organization resists reorganization we shall 

 not fully appreciate until we observe that its resistance increases in a 

 compound progi'ession. For, while each new part is an additional 

 obstacle to change, the formation of it implies a deduction from the 

 forces causing change. If, other things remaining the same, the po- 

 litical structures of a society are further developed if the existing 

 institutions are extended or fresh ones set up if, for directing social 

 activities in greater detail, extra staffs of ofiicials are appointed, the 

 simultaneous results are an increase in the aggregate of those who 

 form the regulating part and a corresponding decrease in the aggre- 

 gate of those who form the part regulated. In various ways all who 

 compose the controlling and administrative organization become united 

 with one another and separated from the rest. Whatever be their 

 particular duties, they are similarly related to the minor and major 

 governing centers of their departments, and, through them, to the 

 supreme governing center ; and are habituated to like sentiments and 

 ideas respecting the set of institutions in which they are incorporated. 

 Receiving their subsistence through the national revenue, they tend 

 toward kindred views and feelings respecting the raising of such reve- 

 nue. Whatever jealousies there may be between their divisions, are 

 overridden by sympathy when any one division has its existence or 

 privileges endangered, since the interference with one division may 

 spread to others. Moreover, they all stand in like relations to the rest 

 of the community, whose actions are in one way or other superintended 

 by them ; and hence are led into kindred views respecting the need 

 for such superintendence and the propriety of submitting to it. No 

 matter what their previous political opinions may have been, they can 

 not become public agents of any kind without being biased toward 

 opinions congruous with their functions. So that, inevitably, each 

 further growth of the instrumentalities which control, or administer, or 

 inspect, or in any way direct social forces, increases the impediment 

 to future modifications, both positively, by strengthening that which 

 has to be modified, and negatively, by weakening the remainder ; until 

 at length the rigidity becomes so great that change is impossible and 

 the type becomes fixed. 



Nor does each further development of the regulative organization 

 increase the obstacles to change only by relatively increasing the 

 power of those who, as regulators, maintain the established order, and 

 decreasing the power of those who, as the regulated, have not the same 



