430 POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS. 



that enlargement of the oligarchy which occurred under 

 Servius Tullius, had for its ostensible motive the imposing on 

 plebeians of obligations which up to that time had been 

 borne exclusively by patricians. But we shall best under 

 stand this primitive relation between duty and power, in 

 which the duty is original and the power derived, by going 

 back once more to the beginning. 



For when we remember that the primitive political assembly 

 is essentially a war-council, formed of leaders who debate in 

 presence of their followers ; and when we remember that in 

 early stages all free adult males, being warriors, are called on to 

 join in defensive or offensive actions ; we see that, originally, 

 the attendance of the armed freemen is in pursuance of the 

 military service to which they are bound, and that such power 

 as, when thus assembled, they exercise, is incidental. Later 

 stages yield clear proofs that this is the normal order ; for it 

 recurs where, after a political dissolution, political organiza 

 tion begins de novo. Instance the Italian cities, in which, as 

 we have seen, the original &quot; parliaments,&quot; summoned for 

 defence by the tocsin, included all the men capable of bearing 

 arms : the obligation to fight coming first, and the right to 

 vote coming second. And, naturally, this duty of attendance 

 survives when the primitive assemblage assumes other 

 functions than those of a militant kind ; as witness the before- 

 named fact that among the Scandinavians it was &quot; disrepu 

 table for freemen not to attend &quot; the annual assembly ; and 

 the further facts that in France the obligation to be present at 

 the hundred-court in the Merovingian period, rested upon all 

 full freemen ; that in the Carolingian period &quot;non-attendance 

 is punished by fines&quot; ; that in England the lower freemen, as 

 well as others, were &quot; bound to attend the shire-moot and 

 hundred-moot &quot; under penalty of &quot; large fines for neglect of 

 duty ;&quot; and that in the thirteenth century in Holland, when 

 the burghers were assembled for public purposes, &quot; anyone 

 ringing the town bell, except by general consent, and anyone 

 not appearing when it tolls, are liable to a fine.&quot; 



