COMPOUND POLITICAL HEADS. 207 



stitution was in essence an oligarchy of heads of clans, included in 

 an oligarchy of heads of houses a compound oligarchy which became 

 unqualified when kingship was suppressed. And here should be em- 

 phasized the truth, sufficiently obvious and yet continually ignored, 

 that the Roman Republic, which remained when the regal power ended, 

 was quite alien in nature to those popular governments with which it 

 has been commonly classed. The heads of clans, of which the nar- 

 rower governing body was formed, as well as the heads of families 

 which formed the wider governing body, were, indeed, jealous of one 

 another's powers ; and in so far simulated the citizens of a free state 

 who individually maintain their equal rights. But these heads sever- 

 ally exercised unlimited powers over the members of their households 

 and over their clusters of dependents. A community of which the com- 

 ponent groups severally retained their internal autonomies, with the 

 result that the rule within each remained absolute, was nothing but an 

 aggregate of small despotisms. Institutions under which the head of 

 each group, besides owning slaves, had such supremacy that his wife 

 and children, including even married sons, had no more legal rights 

 than cattle, and were at his mercy in life and limb, or could be sold 

 into slavery, can be called free institutions only by those who confound 

 similarity of external outline with similarity of internal structure.* 



The formation of compound political heads in later times repeats 

 this process in essentials, if not in details. In one way or other the 

 result arises when a common need for defense compels cooperation, 

 while there exists no means of securing cooperation save voluntary 

 agreement. 



Beginning with the example of Venice, we notice first that the 

 region occupied by the ancient Yeneti included the extensive marshy 

 tract formed of the deposits brought down by several rivers to the 

 Adriatic a tract which, in Strabo's day, was "intersected in every 

 quarter by rivers, streams, and morasses " ; so that " Aquileia and 

 Ravenna were then cities in the marshes." Having for their strong- 

 hold this region full of spots accessible only to inhabitants who knew 

 the intricate ways to them, the Yeneti maintained their indepen- 

 dence, spite of the efforts of the Romans to subdue them, until the 

 days of Caesar. In later days kindred results were more markedly dis- 

 played in that part of this region specially characterized by inaccessi- 

 bility. From the earliest times the islets, or rather mud-banks, on 

 which Yenice stands, were inhabited by a maritime people. Each 

 islet, secure in the midst of its tortuous lagunes, had a popular gov- 



* I should have thought it needless to insist on so obvious a truth, had it not been 

 that even still there continues this identification of things so utterly different, "Within 

 these few years has been published a magazine-article by an historian, describing the 

 corruptions of the Roman Republic during its latter days, with the appended moral that 

 such were, and are, likely to be the results of democratic government. 



