POLITICAL ORGANIZATION IN GENEliAL. 249 



savages around them in being dissociated. Among the 

 Bedouin tribes, the Sherarat are unlike the rest in being divided 

 and sub-divided into countless bands which have no common 

 chief; and they are described as being the most miserable of 

 the Bedouins. More decided still is the contrast noted by 

 Baker between certain adjacent African peoples. Passing 

 suddenly, he says, from the unclothed, ungoverned tribes 

 from the &quot; wildest savagedom to semi-civilisation &quot; we come, 

 in Unyoro, to a country ruled by &quot; an unflinching despot,&quot; 

 inflicting &quot; death or torture &quot; for &quot; the most trivial offences ;&quot; 

 but where they have developed administration, sub-governors, 

 taxes, good clothing, arts, agriculture, architecture. So, too, 

 concerning New Zealand when first discovered, Cook re 

 marked that there seemed to be greater prosperity and popu- 

 lousness in the regions subject to a king. 



These last cases introduce us to a further truth. Not only 

 does that first step in political organization which places 

 individuals under the control of a tribal chief, bring the ad 

 vantages gained by better cooperation ; but such advantages 

 are increased when minor political heads become subject to 

 a major political head. As typifying the evils which are 

 thereby avoided, I may name the fact that among the Beloo- 

 chees, whose tribes, unsubordinated to a general ruler, are 

 constantly at war with one another, it is the habit to erect a 

 small mud tower in each field, where the possessor and his 

 retainers guard his produce : a state of things allied to, but 

 worse than, that of the Highland clans, with their strongholds 

 for sheltering women and cattle from the inroads of their 

 neighbours, in days when they were not under the control of 

 a central power. The benefits derived from such wider con 

 trol, whether of a simple head or of a compound head, were 

 felt by the early Greeks when an Amphictyonic council es 

 tablished the laws that &quot; no Hellenic tribe is to lay the habi 

 tations of another level with the ground; and from no 

 Hellenic city is the water to be cut off during a siege.&quot; How 

 that advance of political structure which unites smaller com- 



