Titles of Works Referred to.

What the social man, even of advanced race, is capable of, has been again shown while these lines are standing in type To justify the destruction of two African towns in Batanga, we are told that their king, wishing to have a trading factory established, and disappointed with the promise of a sub-factory, boarded an English schooner, carried off Mr. Govier, the mate, and refusing to release him when asked, “threatened to cut the man’s head off” : a strange mode, if true, of getting a trading factory established. Mr. Govier afterwards escaped; not having been ill-treated during his detention. Anchoring the Boadicea and two gunboats off Kribby’s Town ( “King Jack’s” residence), Commodore Richards demanded of the king that he should come on board and explain: promising him safety, and threatening serious consequences in case of refusal. Not trusting the promise, the king failed to come. Without ascertaining from the natives whether they had any reason for laying hands on Mr. Govier, save this most improbable one alleged by our people, Commodore Richards proceeded, after some hours’ notice, to clear the beach with shells, to burn the town of 300 houses, to cut down the natives’ crops, and to destroy their canoes; and then, not satisfied with burning “King Jack’s” town, went further south and burnt “King Long - Long’s” town. These facts are published in the Times of September 10, 1880. In an article on them, this organ of English respectability regrets that “the punishment must seem, to the childish mind of the savage, wholly disproportionate to the offence:” implying that to the adult mind of the civilized it will not seem disproportionate. Further, this leading journal of ruling classes who hold that, in the absence of established theological dogn as, there would be no distinction between right and wrong, remarks that “if it were not for the dark shadow cast over it by this loss of life” [of two of our men], “the whole episode would be somewhat humorous.” Doubtless, after the “childish mind of the savage” has accepted the “glad tidings” brought by missionaries of “the religion of love,” there is humour, somewhat of the grimmest, perhaps, in showing him the practice of this religion by burning his house. Comments on Christian virtues, uttered by exploding shells, may fitly be accompanied by a Mephistophelian smile. Possibly the king, in declining to trust himself on board an English ship, was swayed by the common Negro belief that the devil is white.

The behaviour of Arab boatmen on the Nile displays, in a striking way, this inability to act together. When jointly hauling at a rope, and beginning to chant, the inference one draws is that they pull in time with their words. On observing, however, it turns out that their efforts are not combined at given intervals, but are put forth without any unity of rhythm. Similarly when using their poles to push the dahabeiah off a sand-bank, the succession of grunts they severally make, is so rapid that it is manifestly impossible for them to give those effectual united pushes which imply appreciable intervals of preparation. Still more striking is the want of concert shown by the hundred or more Nubians and Arabs employed to drag the vessel up the rapids. There are shoutings, gesticulations, divided actions, utter confusion; so that only by accident does it at length happen that a sufficient number of efforts are put forth at the same moment. As was said to me, with some exaggeration, by our Arab dragoman, a travelled man—“Ten Englishmen or Frenchmen would do the thing at once.”

While writing I find, in the recently-issued “Transactions of the Anthropological Institute,” proof that even now in England, the professional classes are both taller and heavier than the artizan classes.

While I am writing, the just-issued third volume of Mr. Skene’s Celtic Scotland, supplies me with an illustration of the process above indicated. It appears that the original Celtic tribes which formed the earldoms of Moray, Buchan, Athol, Angus, Mentoith, became broken up into clans; and how influential was the physical character of the country in producing this result, we are shown by the fact that this change took place in the parts of them which fell within the highland country. Describing the smaller groups which resulted, Mr. Skene says:—“While the clan, viewed as a single community, thus consisted of the chief, with his kinsmen to a certain limited degree of relationship; the commonalty who were of the same blood, who all bore the same name, and his dependents, consisting of subordinate septs of native men, who did not claim to be of the blood of the chief, but were either probably descended from the more ancient occupiers of the soil, or were broken men from other clans, who had taken protection with him.… Those kinsmen of the chief who acquired the property of their land founded families.… The most influential of these was that of the oldest cadet in the family which had been longest separated from the main stem, and usually presented the appearance of a rival house little less powerful than that of the chief.”

As bearing on historical interpretations at large, and especially on interpretations to be made in this work, let me point out further reasons than those given by Grote and others for rejecting the tradition that the Spartan constitution was the work of Lykurgus. The universal tendency to ascribe an effect to the most conspicuous proximate cause, is especially strong where the effect is one of which the causation is involved. Our own time has furnished an illustration in the ascription of Corn-law Repeal to Sir Robert Peel, and after him to Messrs. Cobden and Bright: leaving Colonel Thompson un-named. In the next generation the man who for a time carried on the fight single-handed, and forged sundry of the weapons used by the victors, will be unheard of in connexion with it. It is not enough, however, to suspect that Lykurgus was simply the finisher of other men’s work. We may reasonably suspect that the work was that of no man, but simply that of the needs and the conditions. This may be seen in the institution of the public mess. If we ask what will happen with a small people who, for generations spreading as conquerors, have a contempt for all industry, and who, when not at war, pass their time in exercises fitting them for war, it becomes manifest that at first the daily assembling to carry on these exercises will entail the daily bringing of provisions by each. As happens in those pic-nics in which all who join contribute to the common repast, a certain obligation respecting quantities and qualities will naturally arise—an obligation which, repeated daily, will pass from custom into law: ending in a specification of the kinds and amounts of food. Further, it is to be expected that as the law thus arises in an age when food is coarse and unvaried, the simplicity of the diet, originally unavoidable, will eventually be considered as intended—as an ascetic regimen deliberately devised. [When writing this I was not aware that, as pointed out by Prof. Paley in Fraser’s Magazine, for February, 1881, among the Greeks of later times, it was common to have dinners to which each guest brought his share of provisions, and that those who contributed little and consumed much were objects of satire. This fact increases the probability that the Spaitan mess originated as suggested.]

I should have thought it needless to insist on so obvious a truth had it not been that even still there continues this identification of things so utterly different. Within these few years has been published a magazine-article by a distinguished historian, describing the corruptions of the Roman Republic during its latter days, with the appended moral that such were, and are, likely to be the results of democratic government!

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 payment first and protection afterwards. For the passage continues:—“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.’”

A friend who has read this chapter in proof, points out to me passages in which Brentano draws from these parallelisms a like inference. Referring to the traits of certain fully-developed gilds, he says:— “If we connect them with what historians relate about the family in those days, we may still recognize in them the germ from which, in later times, at a certain stage of civilization, the Gild had necessarily to develop itself…the family appears as the pattern and original type, after which all the later Gilds were formed.”

In our own case the definite ending of these tenures took place in 1660; when, for feudal obligations (a burden on landowners) was substituted a beer-excise (a burden on the community).

This chapter was originally published in the Contemporary Review for Sept., 1881. Since that date a further movement of German society in the same general direction has been shown by the pronounced absolutism of the imperial rescript of Jan., 1882, endorsing Prince Bismarck’s scheme of State-socialism.