BEPRESENTATIVE BODIES. 433 



to join in legislation. This connexion is A agilely typified in 

 early stages of social evolution. Making gifts and getting 

 redress go together from the beginning. As was said of Gulab 

 Singh, when treating of presents &quot; even in a crowd one 

 could catch his eye by holding up a rupee and crying out, 

 * Maharajah, a petition/ He would pounce down like a hawk 

 on the money, and, having appropriated it, would patiently 

 hear out the petitioner.&quot;* I have in the same place given 

 further examples of this relation between yielding support to 

 the governing agency, and demanding protection from it ; and 

 the examples there given may be enforced by such others as 

 that, among ourselves in early days, &quot; the king s court itself, 

 though the supreme judicature of the kingdom, was open to 

 none that brought not presents to the king/ and that, 

 as shown by the exchequer rolls, every remedy for a grievance 

 or security against aggression had to be paid for by a bribe : 

 a state of things which, as Hume remarks, was paralleled on 

 the Continent. 



Such being the original connexion between support of the 

 political head and protection by the political head, the inter 

 pretation of the actions of parliamentary bodies, when they 

 arise, becomes clear. Just as in rude assemblies of king, 

 military chiefs, and armed freemen, preserving in large 

 measure the primitive form, as those in France during the 

 Merovingian period, the presentation of gifts went along with 

 the transaction of public business, judicial as well as military 

 just as in our own ancient shire-moot, local government, in 

 cluding the administration of justice, was accompanied by the 

 furnishing of ships and the payment of &quot; a composition for 

 the feorm-fultum, or sustentation of the king ;&quot; so when, after 

 successful resistance to excess of royal power, there came 



* Reference to the passage since made shows not only this initial relation, 

 but still more instructively shows that at the very beginning there arises the 

 question whether protection shall come first and payment afterwards, or pay 

 ment first and protection afterwards. For the passage continues : &quot;Once a 

 man after this fashion making a complaint, when the Maharajah was taking 

 the rupee, closed his hand on it, and said, No, first hear what I have to say. &quot; 



