404 POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS. 



palace as often as they were called upon.&quot; Turning to 



Europe, mention may first be made of ancient Poland. 

 Originally formed of independent tribes, &quot; each governed by 

 its own kniaz, or judge, whom age or reputed wisdom had 

 raised to that dignity,&quot; and each led in war by a temporary 

 voiwd or captain, these tribes had, in the course of that com 

 pounding and re-compounding which wars produced, differen 

 tiated into classes of nobles and serfs, over whom was an 

 elected king. Of the organization which existed before the 

 king lost his power, we are told that 



&quot; Though each of these palatines, bishops, and barons, could thus advise 

 his sovereign, the formation of a regular senate was slow, and com 

 pleted only when experience had proved its utility. At first, the only 

 subjects on which the monarch deliberated with his barons related to 

 war : what he originally granted through courtesy, or through diffidence 

 in himself, or with a view to lessen his responsibility in case of failure, 

 they eventually claimed as a right.&quot; 



So, too, during internal wars and wars against Rome, the 

 primitive Germanic tribes, once semi-nomadic and but slightly 

 organized, passing through the stage in which armed chiefs 

 and freemen periodically assembled for deliberations on war 

 and other matters, evolved a kindred structure. In Carolin- 

 gian days the great political gathering of the year was 

 simultaneous with the great military levy ; and the military 

 element entered into the foreground. Armed service being 

 the essential thing, and questions of peace and war being 

 habitually dominant, it resulted that all freemen, while under 

 obligation to attend, had also a right to be present at the 

 assembly and to listen to the deliberations. And then con 

 cerning a later period, as Hallam writes 



&quot; In all the German principalities a form of limited monarchy pre 

 vailed, reflecting, on a reduced scale, the general constitution of the 

 Empire. As the Emperors shared their legislative sovereignty with the 

 diet, so all the princes who belonged to that assembly had their own 

 provincial states, composed of their feudal vassals and of their mediate 

 towns within their territory.&quot; 



In France, too, provincial estates existed for local rule ; and 

 there were consultative assemblies of general scope. Thua 



