636 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



widest acceptation, the feeling of the community is the sole source of 

 political power ; in those communities, at least, which are not under 

 foreign domination. It was so at the outset of social life, and it still 

 continues substantially so. 



It has come to be a maxim of science that in the causes still at 

 work are to be identified the causes which, similarly at work during 

 past times, have produced the state of things now existing. Accept- 

 ance of this maxim and pursuit of the inquiries suggested by it lead 

 to verifications of the foregoing conclusions. 



For day after day, every public meeting illustrates afresh this 

 same differentiation characterizing the primitive political agency, and 

 illustrates afresh the actions of its respective parts. There is habit- 

 ually the great body of the less distinguished, forming the audience, 

 whose share in the proceedings consists in expressing approval or dis- 

 approval, and saying ay or no to the resolutions proposed. There is 

 the smaller part, occupying the platform the men whose wealth, posi- 

 tion, or capacity gives them influence the local chiefs by whom the 

 discussions are earned on. And there is the chosen head, commonly 

 the man of greatest mark to be obtained, who exercises a recognized 

 power over speakers and audience the temporary king. Even an in- 

 formally summoned assemblage soon resolves itself into these divisions 

 more or less distinctly ; and when the assemblage becomes a permanent 

 body, as of the men composing a commercial company, or a philanthrop- 

 ic society, or a club, definiteness is quickly given to the three divisions 

 president or chairman, board or committee, proprietors or members. 

 To which add that, though at first, like the meeting of the primitive 

 horde or the modern public meeting, one of these permanent associa- 

 tions, voluntai'ily formed, exhibits a distribution of powers such that 

 the select few and their head are subordinate to the mass ; yet, as cir- 

 cumstances determine, the proportions of the respective powers usually 

 change more or less decidedly. Where the members of the mass are 

 not only much interested in the transactions, but are so placed that 

 they can easily cooperate, they hold in check the select few and their 

 head ; but, where wide distribution, as of railway shareholders, hinders 

 joint action, the select few become, in large measure, an oligarchy, and 

 out of the oligarchy there not unfrequently grows an autocrat : the 

 constitution becomes a despotism tempered by revolution. 



In saying that from hour to hour proofs occur that the force pos- 

 sessed by a political agency is derived from aggregate feeling, partly 

 embodied in the consolidated system which has come down from the 

 past, and partly excited by immediate circumstances, I do not refer 

 only to the proofs that among ourselves governmental actions are 

 habitually thus determined, and that the actions of all minor bodies, 

 temporarily or permanently incorporated, are thus determined. I re- 

 fer, rather, to the illustrations of the irresistible control exercised by 



