POLITICAL HEADS CHIEFS, KINGS, ETC. 739 



can regulate trading transactions ; for those governed by him are but 

 few, and they lie within a narrow space. When he becomes the head 

 of many united tribes, both the increased amount of business and the 

 wider area covered by his subjects put difficulties in the way of ex- 

 clusively personal administration. It becomes necessary for him to 

 employ others for the purposes of gaining information, conveying com- 

 mands, and seeing them executed ; and, in course of time, the assistants 

 thus employed become established heads of departments with deputed 

 authorities. 



While this development of governmental structures in one way 

 increases the ruler's power, by enabling him to deal with more numer- 

 ous affairs, it in another way decreases his power, for his actions are 

 more and more modified by the instrumentalities through which they 

 are effected. Those who watch the working of administrations, no matter 

 of what kind, have forced upon them the truth that a head regulative 

 agency is at once helped and hampered by its subordinate agencies. 

 In a philanthropic association, a scientific society, or a club, those who 

 govern find that the organized officialism which they have created 

 often impedes, and not unfrequently defeats, their aims. Still more is 

 it so with the immensely larger administrations of the state. Through 

 deputies the ruler receives his information ; by them his orders are' 

 executed ; and, as fast as his connection with affairs becomes indirect, 

 his control over affairs diminishes ; until, in extreme cases, he either 

 lapses into a puppet in the hands of his chief deputy or has his place 

 usurped by him. 



Strange as it seems, the two causes which conspire to give perma- 

 nence to political headship, also, at a later stage, conspire to reduce the 

 political head to an automaton, executing the wills of the agents he 

 has created. In the first place, hereditary succession, when finally 

 settled in some line of descent rigorously prescribed, involves that the 

 possession of supreme power becomes independent of capacity for 

 exercising it. The heir to a vacant throne may be, and often is, too 

 young for discharging its duties ; or he may be, and often is, too 

 feeble in intellect, too deficient in energy, or too much occupied with 

 the pleasures which his position offers in unlimited amounts ; with the 

 result that in the one case the regent, and in the other the chief minis- 

 ter, becomes the actual ruler. In the second place, that sacred character 

 which he acquires from supposed divine ancestry makes him inacces- 

 sible to the ruled. All intercourse with him must be through the 

 agents with whom he surrounds himself. Hence it becomes difficult 

 or impossible for him to learn more than they choose him to know ; 

 and there follows inability to adapt his commands to the requirements, 

 and inability to discover whether his commands have been fulfilled. 

 His authority is consequently used to give effect to the purposes of his 

 agents. 



Even in so relatively simple a society as that of Tonga, we find an 



