COMPOUND POLITICAL HEADS. 371 



equality, and often confounded with free institutions. Let us 

 recall the antecedents of those early European peoples who 

 developed governments of this form. 



During the wandering pastoral life, subordination to a 

 single head was made habitual. A recalcitrant member of 

 any group had either to submit to the authority under which 

 he had grown up, or, rebelling, had to leave the group and 

 face those risks which unprotected life in the wilderness 

 threatened. The establishment of this subordination was 

 furthered by the more frequent survival of groups in which 

 it was greatest ; since, in the conflicts between groups, those 

 of which the members were insubordinate, ordinarily being 

 both smaller and less able to cooperate effectually, were the 

 more likely to disappear. But now to the fact that in such 

 families and clans, obedience to the father and to the patriarch 

 was fostered by circumstances, has to be added the fact above 

 emphasized, that circumstances also fostered the sentiment of 

 liberty in the relations between clans. The exercise of power 

 by one of them over another, was made difficult by wide 

 scattering and by great mobility; and with successful oppo 

 sition to external coercion, or evasion of it, carried on through 

 numberless generations, the tendency to resent and resist all 

 strange authority was likely to become strong. 



Whether, when groups thus disciplined aggregate, they 

 assume this or that form of political organization, depends 

 partly, as already implied, on the conditions into which they 

 fall. Even could we omit those differences between Mongols, 

 Semites, and Aryans, established in prehistoric times by 

 causes unknown to us, or even had complete likeness of 

 nature been produced among them by long-continued pastoral 

 life ; yet large societies formed by combinations of their 

 small hordes, could be similar in type only under similar 

 circumstances. In unfavourableness of circumstances is to 

 be found the reason why Mongols and Semites, where they 

 have settled and multiplied, have failed to maintain the 

 autonomies of their hordes after combination of them, and to 



