EVOLUTION OF CEREMONIAL GOVERNMENT. 33 



early times in France judges received " spices " as a mark of gratitude 

 from those who had won a cause. By 1369, if not before, these were 

 converted into money; and in 1402 they were recognized as a due. 

 The usage continued till the Revolution. In our own history the case 

 of Bacon exemplifies not a special and late practice, but the survival of 

 an old and usual one ; local records show the habitual making of gifts 

 to officers of justice and their attendants ; and the facts are summed up 

 in the statement that " no approach to a great man, a magistrate, or 

 courtier, was ever made without the Oriental accompaniment a gift." 

 That in past times the propitiatory presents made to state-functionaries 

 formed, in some cases, their entire revenues, is inferable from the fact 

 that in the twelfth century the great offices of the royal household were 

 sold ; the implication being that the value of the presents received was 

 great enough to make the places worth buying. Russia in early days 

 seems to have exemplified the state in which the dependents and depu- 

 ties of the ruler subsisted chiefly, if not wholly, on presents. Karam- 

 sin " repeats the observations of the travelers who visited Muscovy in 

 the sixteenth century. 'Is it surprising,' say these strangers, 'that the 

 grand-prince is rich ? He neither gives money to his troops nor his 

 embassadors ; he even takes from these last all the costly things they 

 bring back from foreign lands. . . . Nevertheless these men do not 

 complain.' " Whence we must infer that, lacking wages and salaries 

 from above, they lived on gifts from below. Moreover, we are at once 

 enlightened respecting the existing state of things in Russia; for it 

 becomes manifest that what we now call the bribes, which the miserably 

 salaried officials require before performing their duties, are the repre- 

 sentatives of the presents which formed their sole maintenance in times 

 when they had no salaries. And the like may be inferred respecting 

 Spain, of which Rose says: "From judge down to constable, bribery 

 and corruption prevail. . . . There is this excuse, however, for the poor 

 Spanish official. His government gives him no remuneration, and ex- 

 pects everything of him." 



So natural has habit now made to us the payment of fixed sums for 

 specified services, that, as usual, we assume this relation to have existed 

 from the beginning. But when we read how, in little organized soci- 

 eties, such as that of the Bechuanas, the chiefs allow their attendants 

 " a scanty portion of food or milk, and leave them to make up the de- 

 ficiency by hunting or by digging up wild roots ; " and how, in societies 

 considerably more advanced, as Dahomey, "no officer under government 

 is paid " we are shown that originally the subordinates of the chief 

 man, not officially supported, have to support themselves. And since 

 their positions give them powers of injuring and benefiting subject per- 

 sons since, indeed, it is often only by their aid that the chief man can 

 be invoked there arises the same motive to propitiate them by pres- 

 ents that there does to propitiate by presents the chief man himself ; 

 whence the parallel growth of an income. The inference that the sus- 



VOL. XIII. 3 



