CHAPTER IX. 



REPRESENTATIVE BODIES. 



496. Amid the varieties and complexities of political 

 organization, it has proved not impossible to discern the ways 

 in which simple political heads and compound political heads 

 are evolved; and how, under certain conditions, the two 

 become united as ruler and consultative body. But to see 

 how a representative body arises, proves to be more difficult ; 

 for both process and product are more variable. Less specific 

 results must content us. 



As hitherto, so again, we must go back to the beginning to 

 take up the clue. Out of that earliest stage of the savage 

 horde in which there is no supremacy beyond that of the 

 man whose strength, or courage, or cunning, gives him pre 

 dominance, the first step is to the practice of election 

 deliberate choice of a leader in war. About the conducting 

 of elections in rude tribes, travellers say little : probably the 

 methods used are various. But we have accounts of elections 

 as they were made by European peoples during early times. 

 In ancient Scandinavia, the chief of a province chosen by the 

 assembled people, was thereupon &quot; elevated amidst the clash 

 of arms and the shouts of the multitude ; &quot; and among the 

 ancient Germans he was raised on a shield, as also was the 

 popularly-approved Merovingian king. Recalling, as this 

 ceremony does, the chairing of a newly-elected member of 

 parliament up to recent times ; and reminding us that origi 

 nally an election was by show of hands ; we are taught that 

 the choice of a representative was once identical with the 



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