CONSULTATIVE BODIES. 413 



produces increasing differences of wealth as well as increas 

 ing differences of status; so that, along with the com 

 pounding and re- compounding of groups, brought about 

 by war, the military leaders come to be distinguished as 

 large land-owners and local rulers. Hence members of the 

 consultative body become contrasted with the freemen at 

 -large, not only as leading warriors are contrasted with their 

 followers, but still more as men of wealth and authority. 



This increasing contrast between the second and third 

 elements of the tri-une political structure, ends in separation 

 when, in course of time, war consolidates large territories. 

 Armed freemen scattered over a wide area are deterred from 

 attending the periodic assemblies by cost of travel, by cost of 

 time, by danger, and also by the experience that multitudes 

 of men unprepared and unorganized, are helpless in presence 

 of an organized few, better armed and mounted, and with 

 bands of retainers. So that passing through a time during 

 which only the armed freemen living near the place of meet 

 ing attend, there comes a time when even these, not being 

 summoned, are considered as having no right to attend ; and 

 thus the consultative body becomes completely differentiated. 



Changes in the relative powers of the ruler and the con 

 sultative body are determined by obvious causes. If the king 

 retains or acquires the repute of supernatural descent or 

 authority, and the law of hereditary succession is so settled 

 as to exclude election, those who might else have formed a 

 consultative body having co-ordinate power, become simply 

 appointed advisers. But if the king has not the prestujc of 

 supposed sacred origin or commission, the consultative body 

 retains power ; and if the king continues to be elective, it is 

 liable to become an oligarchy. 



Of course it is not alleged that all consultative bodies havo 

 been generated in the way described, or are constituted in 

 like manner. Societies broken up by wars or dissolved by 

 revolutions, may preserve so little of their primitive organiza 

 tions that there remain no classes of the kinds out of which 



