The Sovereignty of Arthur

In the yere of Christ, 517, king Arthur in the second yeere of his reigne, having subdued all parts of Ireland, sailed with his fleet into Island, and brought it and the people thereof under his subjection. The rumour afterwards being spread thorowout all the other Islands, that no countrey was able to withstand him, Doldavius the king of Gotland, and Gunfacius the king of Orkney, came voluntarily unto him, and yeelded him their obedience, promising to pay him tribute. The Winter being spent, he returned into Britaine, and establishing his kingdome in perfect peace, he continued there for the space of twelve yeres.

GALFRIDUS MONUMETENSIS, Historie of the Kings of Britaine,
Hakluyt's Voyages, Edition of 1903, Vol. I. 3-4.

The Rise of Class Sovereignty

The ancient city, like all human society, had ranks, distinctions, and inequalities. We know the distinction originally made at Athens between the Eupatrids and the Thetes; at Sparta we find the class of Equals and that of the Inferiors; and in Euboea, that of the Knights and that of the People. The history of Rome abounds in struggles between the Patricians and Plebeians, as does that of all the Sabine, Latin, and Etruscan cities. It can even be said that the farther back we go in the history of Greece and Italy, the more profound and the more strongly marked the distinction appears a positive proof that the inequality did not grow up with time, but that it existed from the beginning, and that it was contemporary with the birth of cities.

It is worth while to inquire upon what principles this division of classes rested. We can thus the more easily see by virtue of what ideas or what needs the struggles commenced, what the inferior classes demanded, and on what principles the superior classes defended their empire.

We have seen that the city grew out of the confederation of families and of tribes. Before the day on which

the city was founded, the family already contained within. itself this distinction of classes. Practically, the family was never dismembered; it was indivisible, like the primitive religion of the hearth. The oldest son alone, succeeding the father, took possession of the priesthood, the property, and the authority, and his brothers were to him what they had been to their father. From generation to generation, from first-born to first-born, there was never but one family chief. He presided at the sacrifice, repeated the prayer, pronounced judgment, and governed. To him alone originally belonged the title of pater; for this word, which signified power, and not paternity, could be applied only to the chief of the family. His sons, his brothers, his servants, all called him by this title.

Here, then, in the constitution of the family itself is the first principle of inequality. The oldest is the privileged one for the worship, for the succession, and for the command. After several centuries, there were naturally formed, in each of these great families, younger branches, that were, according to religion and by custom, inferior to the older branch, and who, living under its protection, submitted to its authority.

This family, then, had servants, who did not leave it, who were hereditarily attached to it, and over whom the pater, or patron, exercised the triple authority of master, magistrate, and priest. They were called by names that varied with the locality: the more common names were Clients and Thetes.

We must now point out another element of the population, which was below the clients themselves, and which, originally low, insensibly acquired strength enough to break the ancient social organization. This class, which became more numerous at Rome than in any other city, was there called the plebs. We must know the origin and character of this class to understand the part it played in the history of the city, and of the family, among the ancients. The plebeians were not the clients; the historians of antiquity do not confound these two classes.

What constituted the peculiar character of the plebs was, that they were foreign to the religious organization of the city, and even to that of the family. By this we recognize the plebeian, and distinguish him from the client. The client shared at least in the worship of his patron, and made a part of the family and of the gens. The plebeian, at first, had no worship, and knew nothing of the sacred family.

FUSTEL DE COULANGES, La Cité Antique, 289-291, 295, 296.

Mass Sovereignty in China

I will conclude with a case which came under my own personal observation, and which first set me definitely on the track of democratic government in China.

In 1882 I was vice-consul at Pagoda Anchorage, a port near the famous Foochow Arsenal, which was bombarded by Admiral Courbet in 1884. My house and garden were on an eminence overlooking the arsenal, which was about half a mile distant. One morning, after breakfast, the head official servant came to tell me there was trouble at the arsenal. A military mandarin, employed there as superintendent of some department, had that morning early kicked his cook, a boy of seventeen, in the stomach, and the boy, a weakly lad, had died within an hour. The boy's widowed mother was sitting by the body in the mandarin's house, and a large crowd of workmen had formed a complete ring outside, quietly awaiting the arrival and decision of the authorities.

By five o'clock in the afternoon, a deputy had arrived from the magistracy at Foochow, twelves miles distant, empowered to hold the usual inquest on behalf of the magistrate. The inquest was duly held, and the verdict was "accidental homicide."

In shorter time than it takes me to tell the story, the deputy's sedan-chair and paraphernalia of office were smashed to atoms. He himself was seized, his official hat and robe were torn to shreds, and he was bundled unceremoniously, not altogether unbruised, through the back door and through the ring of onlookers, into the paddyfields beyond. Then the ring closed up again, and a low,

threatening murmur broke out which I could plainly hear from my garden. There was no violence, no attempt to lynch the man; the crowd merely waited for justice. That crowd remained there all night, encircling the murderer, the victim, and the mother. Bulletins were brought to me every hour, and no one went to bed.

Meanwhile the news had reached the viceroy, and by half-past nine next morning the smoke of a steam launch was seen away up the bends of the river. This time it bore the district magistrate himself, with instructions from the viceroy to hold a new inquest.

At about ten o'clock he landed, and was received with respectful silence. By eleven o'clock the murderer's head was off and the crowd had dispersed.

H. A. GILES, China and the Chinese, 104-106.

Causes and Conditions Determining the Prevailing Mode of Sovereignty. The foregoing analysis of sovereignty has revealed the essentially psychological nature of the phenomenon. A mode of sovereignty is a mode of the social mind, and as such is determined by the general mental development of the population.

More specifically, the mode of sovereignty found in a given community at any given time is determined by the type of mind and the mode of like-mindedness then and there prevailing.

The submission of one will to another will, and consequently the obedience yielded by the mentally inferior to the mentally superior, is on the whole an instinctive act. Reason plays little part in it. It is found throughout the animal kingdom, as among men. It occurs almost unconsciously, as does instinctive action of every kind. The individual who participates in it does not know why he surrenders his own mind to another more powerful. He does it as a dog crouches and fawns. In brief, the power to command obedience is a

characteristic product of ideo-motor mentality. And personal sovereignty is found in an ideo-motor population.

Class sovereignty, or the power to exact obedience, is correlated with a slightly higher grade of mentality, namely, the ideo-emotional. It is a product of sympathetic likemindedness. The superior class, making its appeal to reverence, to sentiment, or to the love of splendour, addresses the feelings rather than the underlying instincts or the overlying intelligence.

Mass sovereignty depends not only upon emotion, but also upon dogma. It is an expression of dogmatic likemindedness. To create it, emotion must be raised to a high pitch, and focussed by dogmas made efficient through symbols, partisan cries, and fetichistic emblems. A people dogmatically like-minded for a longer or a shorter time becomes more or less fanatical, and its fanaticism, fixed upon definite objects, is a chief bond, holding great numbers of individuals in a state that may approach a frenzied intolerance of disobedience.

Finally, that most complex phenomenon, a general sovereignty, can appear only in a community of the generally intelligent, who discuss all public questions in a rational way, and bring about a concert of wills through an exploitation of ideas, rather than through an explosion of feeling or an uncontrolled activity of a merely instinctive sort. General sovereignty is a product of deliberation, that is to say, of rational like-mindedness.

Government. The supreme will of a state, in whatever mode of sovereignty manifested, expresses itself and achieves its ends in various ways, but chiefly through Government, which may be defined as the requisition, direction, and organization of obedience.