63+ THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



of public feeling, present and past, seems at variance with the many 

 facts showing how great may be the power of a ruling man himself. 

 Saying nothing of a tyrant's ability to take lives for nominal reasons 

 or none at all, to make groundless confiscations, to transfer subjects 

 bodily from one place to another, to exact contributions of money 

 and labor Avithout stint, we are apparently shown by his ability to 

 begin and carry on wars which sacrifice his subjects wholesale, that 

 his single will may override the will of the nation. In what way, 

 then, must the original statement be qualified ? 



While holding that, in unorganized groujis of men, the feeling mani- 

 fested as public opinion controls political conduct, just as it controls 

 the conduct distinguished as ceremonial and religious ; and, while hold- 

 ing that governing agencies, during their early stages, are at once the 

 products of aggregate feeling, dei'ive their powers from it, and are 

 restrained by it, we must admit that these primitive relations become 

 complicated when, by war, small groups are compounded and recom- 

 pounded into great ones. AVhere the society is largely composed of 

 subjugated people held down by superior force, the normal relation 

 above described no longer exists. We must not expect to find, in a 

 rule coercively established by an invader, the same traits as in a rule 

 that has grown up from within. Societies formed by conquest may 

 be, and frequently are, composed of two societies, which are in large 

 measure, if not entirely, alien ; whence it results that there is no longer 

 anything like such united feeling as can embody itself in a political 

 force derived from the whole community. Under such conditions the 

 political head either derives his power exclusively from the feeling of 

 the dominant part of the community, or else, setting the diverse masses 

 of feeling originated in the upper and lower societies one against the 

 other, is enabled so to make his individual will the chief factor. 



After making which qualifications, however, it may still be con- 

 tended that, ordinarily, nearly all the force exercised by the governing 

 agency originates from the feelings, if not of the whole community, 

 yet of the part which is able to manifest its feelings. Though the 

 opinion of the subjugated and unarmed lower society becomes of little 

 account as a political factor, yet the opinion of the dominant and armed 

 part continues to be the main cause of political action. What we are 

 told of the Congo people, that " the king who reigns as a despot over 

 the people is often disturbed in the exercise of his power, by the 

 princes his vassals " what we are told of the despotically-governed 

 Dahomans, that " the ministers, war-captains, and f eticheers may be, 

 and often are, individually punished by the king : collectively they 

 are too strong for him, and without their cordial cooperation he would 

 soon cease to reign " is what we recognize as having been true, and 

 as being still true, in various better-known societies, where the power 

 of the supreme head is nominally absolute. From the time when the 

 Roman emperors were chosen by the soldiers and slain when they did 



