304 POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS. 



were three classes independent landowners ; freemen in 

 relations of dependence with other freemen, of whom there 

 were two kinds ; and freemen in special relations with the 

 king, of whom there were three kinds. 



And here, while observing in these various cases how 

 greater political differentiation is made possible by greater 

 political integration, we may also observe that in early stages, 

 while social cohesion is small, greater political integration is 

 made possible by greater political differentiation. For the 

 larger the mass to be held together, while incoherent, the more 

 numerous must be the agents standing in successive degrees 

 of subordination to hold it together. 



462. The political differentiations which militancy origi 

 nates, and which for a long time increase in deflniteness, so 

 that mixture of ranks by marriage is made a crime, are at 

 later stages, and under other conditions, interfered with, 

 traversed, and partially or wholly destroyed. 



Where, for ages and in varying degrees, war has been pro 

 ducing aggregations and dissolutions, the continual breaking 

 up and re-forming of social bonds, obscures the original 

 divisions established in the ways described : instance the 

 state of things in the Merovingian kingdoms just named. 

 And where, instead of conquests by kindred adjacent societies, 

 which in large measure leave standing the social positions 

 and properties of the subjugated, there are conquests by alien 

 races carried on more barbarously, the original grades may be 

 practically obliterated, and, in place of them, there may come 

 grades established entirely by appointment of the despotic 

 conqueror. In parts of the East, where such over-runnings 

 of race by race have been going on from the earliest recorded 

 times, we see this state of tilings substantially realized. 

 There is little or nothing of hereditary rank; and the only 

 rank recognized is that of official position. Besides the 

 different grades of appointed state-functionaries, there are 

 no class-distinctions having political meanings. 



