358 POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS. 



executed ; and as fast as his connexion with affairs becomes 

 indirect, his control over affairs diminishes ; until, in extreme 

 cases, he either dwindles into a puppet in the hands of his 

 chief deputy or has his place usurped by him. 



Strange as it seems, the two causes which conspire to give 

 permanence to political headship, also, at a later stage, con 

 spire to reduce the political head to an automaton, executing 

 the wills of the agents he has created. In the first place, 

 when hereditary succession is finally settled in some line of 

 descent rigorously prescribed, the possession of supreme 

 power becomes independent of capacity for exercising it. 

 The heir to a vacant throne may be, and often is, too young 

 for discharging its duties ; or he may be, and often is, too 

 feeble in intellect, too deficient in energy, or too much occu 

 pied with the pleasures which his position offers in unlimited 

 amounts. The result is that in the one case the regent, and 

 in the other the chief minister, becomes the actual ruler. In 

 the second place, that sacredness which supposed divine origin 

 gives, makes him inaccessible to the ruled. All intercourse 

 between him and them must be through the agents he 

 surrounds himself with. Hence it becomes difficult or im 

 possible for him to learn more than they choose him to know ; 

 and there follows inability to adapt his commands to the re 

 quirements, and inability to discover whether his commands 

 have been fulfilled. His authority is consequently used to 

 give effect to the purposes of his agents. 



Even in so relatively simple a society as that of Tonga, 

 we find an example. There is an hereditary sacred chief who 

 &quot; was originally the sole chief, possessing temporal as well as 

 spiritual power, and regarded as of divine origin,&quot; but who is 

 now politically powerless. Abyssinia shows us something 

 analogous. Holding no direct communication with his sub 

 jects, and having a sacredness such that even in council he 

 sits unseen, the monarch is a mere dummy. In Gondar, one 

 of the divisions of Abyssinia, the king must belong to the 

 royal house of Solomon, but any one of the turbulent chiefs 



