CONSULTATIVE BODIES. 343 



its deliberations have become more general in their scope, there sur- 

 vive traces of this origin. 



In Rome, where the king was above all things the general, and 

 where the senators, as the heads of clans, were, at the outset, war- 

 chiefs, the burgesses were habitually, when called together, addressed 

 as " spear-men " : there survived the title which was naturally given 

 to them when they were present as listeners at war-councils. So, dur- 

 ing later days in Italy, when the small republics grew up. Describing 

 the assembling of " citizens at the sound of a great bell, to concert 

 together the means of their common defense," Sismondi says, " This 

 meeting of all the men of the state capable of bearing arms was called 

 a Parliament." Concerning the gatherings of the Poles in early times 

 we read : " Such assemblies, before the establishment of a senate, and 

 while the kings w^ere limited in power, were of frequent occurrence, 

 and . . . were attended by all who bore arms " ; and at a later stage 

 " the comitia paludata, which assembled during an interregnum, con- 

 sisted of the whole body of nobles, who attended in the open plain, 

 armed and equipped as if for battle.'' In Hungary, too, up to the 

 beginning of the sixteenth century, " les seigneurs, a cheval et armes 

 de pied en cap comme pour aller en guerre, se reunissaient dans le 

 champ de courses de Rakos, pres de Pesth, et la discutaient en plain 

 air les affaires publiques." Again, " the supreme political council is 

 the nation in arms," says Stubbs of the primitive Germans ; and 

 though, during the Merovingian period, the popular power declined, 

 yet, " under Chlodovech and his immediate successors, the people as- 

 sembled in arms had a real participation in the resolutions of the 

 king." Even now the custom of going weapon in hand is maintained 

 where the jH'imitive political form remains. " To the present day," 

 writes M. Laveleye, " the inhabitants of the Outer Rhodes of Appen- 

 zell come to the general assembly, one year at Hundwyl and the other 

 at Trogen, each carrying in his hand an old sword or ancient rapier of 

 the middle as^es." Mr. Freeman, too, was witness to a like annual 

 gathering in Uri, where the inhabitants assemble in arms to elect their 

 chief magistrate and to deliberate. 



It may, indeed, be alleged that in early, unsettled times the carry- 

 ing of arms by each freeman was needful for personal safety, espe- 

 cially when a place of meeting very far from his home had to be 

 reached. But there is evidence that, though this continued to be a 

 cause for assembling in arms, it was not by itself a sufficient cause. 

 While we read of the ancient Scandinavians that " all freemen capa- 

 ble of bearing arms Avere admitted " to the national assembly, and 

 that, after his election from " among the descendants of the sacred 

 stock," " the new sovereign was elevated amid the clash of arms and 

 the shouts of the multitude," we also read that " nobody, not even 

 the king or his champions, were allowed to come armed to the 



assizes." 



