464 POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS. 



munity could usually be brought home to it bodily, if not 

 to the sinning member; and as a whole it had to take 

 the consequences. But when the family- community, multi 

 plying, began to occupy a wide area, and also became inter 

 fused with other family-communities, the transgressor, while 

 often traceable to some one locality within the area, was 

 often not identifiable as of this or that kindred ; and the con 

 sequences of his act, when they could not be visited on his 

 family, which was not known, were apt to be visited on the 

 inhabitants of the locality, who were known. Hence the 

 genesis of a system of suretyship which is so ancient and 

 so widespread. Here are illustrations : 



&quot;This then is my will, that every man be in surety, both within the 

 towns and without the towns.&quot; Eadg. ii. Supp. 3. 



&quot; And we will that every freeman be brought into a hundred and into 

 a tithing, who desires to be entitled to lad or wer, in case any one should 

 slay him after he have reached the age of xii years : or let him not other 

 wise be entitled to any free rights, be he householder, be he follower.&quot; 

 Cnut, ii. xx. 



&quot;... in all the vills throughout the kingdom, all men are bound to be 

 in a guarantee by tens, so that if one of the ten men offend, the other 

 nine may hold him to right.&quot; Edw. Conf., xx. 



Speaking generally of this system of mutual guarantee, as 

 exhibited among the Russians, as well as among the Franks, 

 Koutorga says 



&quot; Tout membre de la societe devait entrer dans une decanie, laquelle 

 avait pour mission la defence et la garantie de tous en general et de 

 chacun en particulier ; c est-a-dire que la decanie devait venger le citoyen 

 qui lui appartenait et exiger le wehrgeld, s il avait ete tue ; mais en 

 meme temps elle se portait caution pour tous les seins.&quot; 



In brief, then, this form of local governing agency, 

 developing out of, and partially replacing, the primitive 

 family-form, was a natural concomitant of the multiplication 

 and mixture resulting from a settled lii e. 



513. There remains to be dealt with an allied kind of local 

 governing agency a kind which, appearing to have been 

 once identical with the last, eventually diverged from it. 



