328 POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS. 



agency, and illustrates afresh the actions of its respective 

 parts. There is habitually the great body of the less distin 

 guished, forming the audience, whose share in the proceed 

 ings consists in expressing approval or disapproval, and say 

 ing aye or no to the resolutions proposed. There is the 

 smaller part, occupying the platform the men whose wealth, 

 rank, or capacity, give them influence the local chiefs, by 

 whom the discussions are carried on. And there is the chosen 

 head, commonly the man of greatest mark to be obtained, 

 who exercises a recognized power over speakers and audience 

 the temporary king. Even an informally-summoned 

 assemblage soon resolves itself into these divisions more or 

 less distinctly ; and when the assemblage becomes a perma 

 nent body, as of the men composing a commercial company, 

 or a philanthropic society, or a club, defmiteness is quickly 

 given to the three divisions president or chairman, board or 

 committee, proprietors or members. To which add that, 

 though at first, like the meeting of the primitive horde or the 

 modern public meeting, one of these permanent associations 

 voluntarily formed, exhibits a distribution of powers such 

 that the select few and their head are subordinate to the 

 mass ; yet, as circumstances determine, the proportions of the 

 respective powers usually change more or less decidedly. 

 Where the members of the mass besides being much interested 

 in the transactions, are so placed that they can easily co 

 operate, they hold in check the select few and their head ; 

 but where wide distribution, as of railway-shareholders, 

 hinders joint action, the select few become, in large measure, 

 an oligarchy, and out of the oligarchy there not unfrecjuently 

 grows an autocrat : the constitution becomes a despotism 

 tempered by revolution. 



In saying that from hour to hour proofs occur that the 

 force possessed by a political agency is derived from aggregate 

 feeling, partly embodied in the consolidated system which has 

 come down from the past, and partly excited by immediate 

 circumstances, I do not refer only to the proofs that among 



