4-70 POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS. 



one, tempting masters to get more help than their own SODS 

 could furnish, this process would slowly bring about predomi 

 nance of the unrelated members, and an ultimate loss of the 

 family-character. After which it would naturally happen 

 that the growing up of new settlements and towns, bringing 

 together immigrants who followed the same calling but were 

 not of the same blood, would lead to the deliberate forma 

 tion of gilds after the pattern of those existing in older 

 places : an appearance of artificial origin being the result ; 

 just as now, in our colonies, there is an apparently artificial 

 origin of political institutions which yet, as being fashioned 

 like those of the mother-country, where they were slowly 

 evolved, are traceable to a natural origin. 



Any one who doubts the transformation indicated, may be 

 reminded of a much greater transformation of allied kind. 

 The gilds of London, goldsmiths , fishmongers , and the 

 rest, were originally composed of men carrying on the 

 trades implied by their names ; but in each of these com 

 panies the inclusion of persons of other trades, or of no trade, 

 has gone to the extent that few if any of the members carry 

 on the trades which their memberships imply. If, then, 

 the process of adoption in this later form, has so changed 

 the gild that, while retaining its identity, it has lost its 

 distinctive trade-character, we are warranted in concluding 

 that still more readily might the earlier process of adop 

 tion into the simple family or the compound family practis 

 ing any craft, eventually change the gild from a cluster 

 of kindred to a cluster formed chiefly of unrelated persons. 



514. Involved and obscure as the process has been, the 

 evolution of local governing agencies is thus fairly compre 

 hensible. We divide them into two kinds, which, starting 

 from a common root, have diverged as fast as small societies 

 have been integrated into large ones. 



Through successive stages of consolidation, the political 

 heads of the once-separate parts pass from independence to 



