REPRESENTATIVE BODIES. 581 



and blood. Wealth, which, through long ages, distinguishes the noble- 

 man exclusively, gives him both actual power and the power arising 

 from display. Fixed literally or practically, as the several grades of 

 his inferiors are during days when locomotion is difficult, he long 

 remains for them the solitary sample of a great man : others are known 

 only by hearsay ; he is known by experience. Inspection is easily 

 maintained by him over dependent and sub-dependent people ; and the 

 disrespectful or rebellious, if they can not be punished overtly, can 

 be deprived of occupation, or otherwise so hindered in their lives that 

 they must submit or migrate. Down to our own day, the behavior 

 of peasants and farmers to the squire is suggestive of the strong re- 

 straints which kept rural populations in semi-servile states after primi- 

 tive controlling influences had died away. 



Converse effects may be expected under converse conditions, name- 

 ly, where large numbers become closely aggregated. Even if such 

 large numbers are formed of groups severally subordinate to heads of 

 clans, or to feudal superiors, sundry influences combine to diminish 

 subordination. When there are present in the same place many supe- 

 riors to whom respectively their dependents owe obedience, these supe- 

 riors tend to dwarf one another. The power of no one is so imposing 

 if there are daily seen others who make like displays. Further, when 

 groups of dependents are mingled, supervision can not be so well main- 

 tained by their heads. And this, which hinders the exercise of con- 

 trol, facilitates combination among those to be controlled ; conspiracy 

 is made easier and detection of it more difficult. Again, jealous of one 

 another, as these heads of clustered groups are likely in such circum- 

 stances to be, they are prompted severally to strengthen themselves, 

 and to this end, competing for popularity, are tempted to relax the 

 restraints over their inferiors and to give protection to inferiors ill-used 

 by other heads. Still more are their powers undermined when the 

 assemblage comes to include many aliens. As before implied, this, 

 above all causes, favors the growth of popular power. In proportion 

 as immigrants, detached from the gentile or feudal divisions they sev- 

 erally belong to, become numerous, they weaken the structures of the 

 divisions among which they live. Such organization as these strangers 

 fall into is certain to be a looser one ; and their influence becomes a 

 dissolving agency to the surrounding organizations. 



And here we are brought back to the truth which can not be too 

 much insisted upon, that growth of popular power is in all ways asso- 

 ciated with trading activities. For only by trading activities can 

 many people be brought to live in close contact. Physical necessities 

 maintain the wide dispersion of a rural population ; while physical 

 necessities impel the gathering together of those who are commercially 

 occupied. Evidence from various countries and times shows that 

 periodic gatherings for religious rites, or other public purposes, fur- 

 nish opportunities for buying and selling, which are habitually utilized ; 



