506 POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS. 



Originally the ruler, with or without the assent of the 

 assembled people, not only decides: he executes his deci 

 sions, or sees them executed. For example, in Dahomey the 

 king stands by, and if the deputed officer does not please 

 him, takes the sword out of his hand and shows him 

 how to cut off a head. An account of death-punishment 

 among the Bedouins ends with the words &quot; the executioner 

 being the sheikh himself.&quot; Our own early history affords 

 traces of personal executive action by the king ; for there 

 came a time when he was interdicted from arresting any 

 one himself, and had thereafter to do it in all cases by 

 deputy. And this interprets for us the familiar truth that, 

 through his deputies the sheriffs, who are bound to act 

 personally if they cannot themselves find deputies, the 

 monarch continues to be theoretically the agent who carries 

 the law into execution : a truth further implied by the fact 

 that execution in criminal cases, nominally authorized by 

 him though actually by his minister, is arrested if his assent 

 is withheld by his minister. And these facts imply that a 

 final power of judgment remains with the monarch, not 

 withstanding delegation of his judicial functions. How this 

 happens we shall see on tracing the differentiation. 



Naturally, when a ruler employs assistants to hear com 

 plaints and redress grievances, he does not give them abso 

 lute authority ; but reserves the power of revising their 

 decisions. We see this even in such rude societies as that 

 of the Sandwich Islands, where one who is dissatisfied with 

 the decision of his chief may appeal to the governor, and 

 from the governor to the king; or as in ancient Mexico, 

 where &quot; none of the judges were allowed to condemn to death 

 without communicating with the king, who had to pass the 

 sentence.&quot; And the principle holds where the political head 

 ship is compound instead of simple. &quot; When the hegemony 

 of Athens became, in fact, more and more a dominion, the 

 civic body of Attica claimed supreme judicial authority over 

 nil the allies. The federal towns only retained their lower 



