4:96 POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS. 



where the primitive form continued, there was manifested an 

 incipient differentiation between the military assembly and 

 the judicial assembly. In the Carolingian period, judicial 

 assemblies began to be held under cover ; and freemen were 

 forbidden to bring their arms. As was pointed out in 491, 

 among the Scandinavians no one was allowed to come armed 

 when the meeting was for judicial purposes. And since we 

 also read that in Iceland it was disreputable (not punishable) 

 for a freeman to be absent from the annual gathering, the 

 implication is that the imperativeness of attendance dimi 

 nished with the growing predominance of civil functions. 



524. The judicial body being at first identical with the 

 politico-military body, has necessarily the same triune 

 structure ; and we have now to observe the different forms it 

 assumes according to the respective developments of its three 

 components. We may expect to find kinship between these 

 forms and the concomitant political forms. 



Where, with development of militant organization, the 

 power of the king has become greatly predominant over that 

 of the chiefs and over that of the people, his supremacy is 

 shown by his judicial absoluteness, as well as by his absolute 

 ness in political and military affairs. Such shares as the 

 elders and the multitude originally had in trying causes, 

 almost or quite disappear. But though in these cases the 

 authority of the king as judge, is unqualified by that of his 

 head men and his other subjects, there habitually survive 

 traces of the primitive arrangement. For habitually his 

 decisions are given in public and in the open air. Petitioners 

 for justice bring their cases before him when he makes his 

 appearance out of doors, surrounded by his attendants and 

 by a crowd of spectators ; as we have seen in 372 that they 

 do down to the present day in Kashmere. By the Hebrew 

 rulers, judicial sittings were held &quot;in the gates&quot; the 

 usual meeting-places of Eastern peoples. Among the early 

 Romans the king administered justice &quot;in the place of 



