654 REPORT—1896. 
6. The Tribal System from the Evidence of Early Records. 
The importance of studying the details of the tribal organisation in 
the early development of Aryan-speaking peoples has only been tardily 
recognised by historians. The material for it is not in fact to be found in 
the records, and it is only the recent comparative study of institutions 
which has revealed the tribal organisation as the basis of the early economic 
and social condition, and has enabled the student of records to understand 
passages that once passed for corrupted or obsolete texts not to be under- 
stood easily by modern commentators. From early records the tribe is 
seen very dimly ; from the comparative study of legal institutions it is 
seen more clearly in so far as its own construction and position are con- 
cerned, less clearly when attempted to be identified in any particular 
country of Europe whose history has flowed on into the existing civili- 
sation. Probably in Britain these two conditions are exemplified more 
sharply than elsewhere, the one in the Celtic divisions of the te 8 the 
other in the Teutonic. 
The Celtic tribe can be studied from the early MSS. of Scotland, Wales, 
and Ireland ; and the fascination of Celtic studies generally has caused 
a considerable amount of very valuable research. The Teutonic tribe is 
less observable from the laws, the poems, and the charters which have 
come down from early English times ; and research into this branch of our 
history has concerned itself more with the origins of existing institutions 
than with the relics of lost institutions. It is taken for granted that some 
sort of tribal system existed ; but what has become of it, and how it has 
stamped itself upon the history of the people, have never been shown. 
The records have been studied through a long line of eminent scholars, 
of which the names of Stubbs, Freeman, Kemble, Elton, Skene, Maine, 
and Seebohm, stand out conspicuously. Bishop Stubbs contents himself 
with a masterly sketch in brief of the arrival of the first tribes of English- 
men, stating it as the starting-point of his investigations that ‘ the invaders 
come in families and kindreds and in the full organisation of their tribes 
the tribe was as complete when it had removed to Kent as when 
it ‘stayed i in Jutland : the magistrate was the ruler of the tribe, not of the 
soil ; the divisions were those of the folk and the host, not of the land ; 
the laws were the usages of the nation, not of the territory. 71 Clearly as 
this is put, it does not entirely shake off the influence of Kemble and of 
Freeman, neither of whom quite got clear of the terminology of a territorial 
constitution. Mr. Elton breaks new ground and deals with some of the 
anthropological evidence which was ignored by his predecessors ; but the 
evidence of the tribe is lost in his accumulations of the fragments of 
primitive custom and belief. Mr, Skene deals rather with the tribes 
themselves than with the tribal organisation under which they lived. 
And thus it is only from Sir Henry Maine and Mr. Seebohm that the 
tribal life of the British peoples receives any light ; the former deals with 
it from the juridical side, and the latter from the economical. It is 
therefore obvious that the history of the tribal constitution is not exhausted 
by these authorities ; and Mr. Seebohm very grudgingly allows that folklore 
may be the means of restoring some of the lost evidence of the tribal 
system which is not supplied from the records.2 
1 Stubbs’s Constitutional History, i. 64. 
2 Seebohm, Zribal System of Wales, p. 86. 
