452 POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS. 



carry on militant activities. The growth of the family into 

 the gens, of the gens into the phratry, of the phratry into the 

 tribe, implies the multiplication of groups more and more 

 remotely akin, and less and less easily subordinated by the 

 head of some nominally-leading group ; and when local aggre 

 gation brings interfusion of tribes which, though of the same 

 stook, have lost their common genealogy, the rise of some 

 headship other than the headships of family-groups becomes 

 imminent. Though such political headship, passing through 

 the elective stage, often becomes itself inheritable after the 

 same manner as the original family-headships, yet it consti 

 tutes a new kind of headship. 



Of the local governing agencies to which family-headships 

 end political headships give origin, as groups become com 

 pounded and re-compounded, we will consider first the poli 

 tical, as being most directly related to the central governing 

 agencies hitherto dealt with. 9 



508. According to the relative powers of conqueror and 

 conquered, war establishes various degrees of subordination. 

 Here the payment of tribute and occasional expression of 

 homage, interfere but little with political independence ; and 

 there political independence is almost or quite lost. Generally, 

 however, at the outset the victor either finds it necessary to 

 respect the substantial autonomies of the vanquished societies, 

 or finds it his best policy to do this. Hence, before inte 

 gration has proceeded far, local governments are usually 

 nothing more than those governments of the parts which 

 existed before they were united into a whole. 



We find instances of undecided subordination everywhere. 

 In Tahiti &quot; the actual influence of the king over the haughty 

 and despotic district chieftains, was neither powerful nor 

 permanent.&quot; Of our own political organization in old English 

 times Kemble writes : &quot; the whole executive government 

 may be considered as a great aristocratic association, of which 

 the ealdormen were the constituent earls, and the king 



