The rudest form of this government may be discovered among the Indians of America.As these people subsist, for the most part, by hunting or fishing, they have no means of obtaining so much wealth as will raise any one person greatly above his companions.They are divided into small independent villages, in each of which there is a chief, who is their principal leader in war.He bears the name of that particular tribe over which he presides; and in their public meetings he is known by no other.
His authority, though greater in some villages than in others, does not appear in any of them to be very considerable.If he is never disobeyed, it is because he knows how to set bounds to his commands.Every family has a right to name an assistant to the chief; and the several heads of families compose an assembly, or 'council of the elders', which is accustomed to deliberate upon all matters of public importance.(14*)Each individual is allowed, in ordinary cases, to 'take up the hatchet', as it is called, or make war upon those who have offended him.Enterprises of moment, however, are seldom undertaken without the concurrence of the assembly.Each family has a jurisdiction over its own members.But the members of different families are at liberty to settle their differences in what manner they please; and the chief, or council, interfere only as mediators, or as arbiters; unless upon the commission of those enormous and extraordinary crimes which excite the general indignation, and which, from a sudden impulse of resentment, are instantly punished with severity.(15*)From the accounts which have been given of the wandering tribes of shepherds in different parts of the world, it would seem that their government is of the same nature, though the power of their leader is further advanced, according to the degrees of wealth which they enjoy.In proportion to the extent of his herds and flocks, the chief is exalted above all the other members of the tribe, and has more influence in directing their military operations, in establishing their forms of judicial procedure, and in regulating the several branches of their public administration.Thus the captain or leader of a tribe among the Hottentots, who have made but small progress in the pastoral life, and among the wild Arabs, who have seldom acquired considerable property, appears to have little more authority than among the savages of America.(16*) The great riches, on the other hand, which are frequenCy acquired by those numerous bands of shepherds inhabiting the vast country of Tartary, have rendered the influence of the chief proportionably extensive, and have bestowed upon him an almost unlimited power, which commonly remains in the same family, and is transmitted from father to son like a private inheritance.
The ancient German nations, described by Caesar and Tacitus, may be ranked in a middle situation between these extremes;having probably had more wealth than the Hottentots, or most of the wild Arabs, and less than the greater part of the Tartars.
While they remained in their own country, they were not altogether strangers to the cultivation of the ground; but they all led a wandering life, and seem to have had no idea of property in land; a sufficient proof that they drew their subsistence chiefly from their cattle, and regarded agriculture as only a secondary employment.Their chiefs appear to have been either hereditary, or elected from those families who had been longest in the possession of opulent fortunes; but their military expeditions were frequently conducted by such inferior leaders, as happened to offer their service, and could persuade their companions to follow them.In time of peace, justice was administered by the respective chiefs, or leading men, of the different villages.(17*)But when those barbarians had sallied forth from their native forests, and invaded the provinces of the Roman empire, they were soon led to a great improvement in their circumstances.The countries which they conquered had been cultivated and civilized under the Roman dominion; and the inhabitants, though generally in a declining state, were still acquainted with husbandry and a variety of arts.It was to be expected, therefore, that, while the Gothic invaders, during a long course of bloody wars, defaced the monuments of ancient literature, and wherever they came planted their own barbarous customs, they should, on the other hand, suddenly catch a degree of knowledge from the conquered people; and make a quicker progress in agriculture, and some of the coarser handicrafts connected with it, than they could have done in the natural course of things, had they been left to their own experience and observation.By their repeated victories, different heads of families, or barons, were enabled to seize great landed estates.They also acquired many captives in war, whom they reduced into servitude, and by whom they were put into a condition for managing their extensive possessions.
After the settlement of those nations was completed, the members of every large family came to be composed of two sorts of people; the slaves, acquired for the most part by conquest; and the free men, descended from a common ancestor, and maintained out of his estate.The former were employed chiefly in cultivating their masters' grounds: the latter supported the interest and dignity of their leader, and in their turn were protected by him.
