Iroquois and Hurons.-"Witches, with whom the Hurons and Iroquois were grievously infested, were objects of utter abomination to both, and any one might kill them at any time." 1

I

Araucanians of South America.—“Justice is administered in a tumultuous and irregular manner, and without any of those preliminary formalities that are observed among civilized nations. The criminal who is convicted of a capital offence is immediately put to death." Such offences are "treachery, witchcraft, adultery, and the robbery of any valuable article." Other offences of less importance are punished by individual retaliation, which is much in use among them.2

Hill Tribes of India.-Bheels.-The Bheels "are loosely united among themselves and have a rude system of customary justice, which their chiefs rarely venture to break or change." For harms to an individual-such as "robbery, murder or theft"-reparation is demanded by "the chief, or family of the sufferer. If refused, immediate resort is had to acts of retaliation or reprisal, which provoke much further violence and loss of life on both sides. These proceedings are, however, only the effusions of sudden rage, and the elders of the tribes, when that is cooled, interfere, and in all quarrels and disputes, great or trifling, they have resort to Punjayets. These often consist of several hundred members, and proceed to settle the terms on which the murder, robbery or theft is to be compounded. Fines in cattle or money are high upon murders, but Bheel Punjayets never inflict death." Such judicial settlements of individual injuries of man to man, very closely resemble the procedure everywhere in use among the early Teutons and the Anglo-Saxons in England. So much for offences of tort-now for true crimes among the Bheels. "If the crime Thompson's Alcedo, i, 405.

'Parkman, p. lxiii.

2

60

Immediate Execution

committed be of so atrocious a nature as not to be compounded or forgiven, the culprit is pursued and destroyed by those whom this act has made his enemies; but he must be put to death in what they term an affray, that is, in warm blood; to take the life of each other coolly is revolting to their usages.""

Mishmis." Theft is punished by a fine inflicted by a meeting of all the gams (i. e., head men). If the fine is not paid, or the offender refuses to pay, he is slain in a general attack, being cut up by the company assembled." Murder is punished in the same way, but the fine is heavier."

AFRICA.-Hottentots.-Every Hottentot kraal "has a court for the administration of justice, composed of the captain and all the men of the kraal." It is held in an open field, the men squatting in a circle. Guilt or innocence is determined by a majority of voices. If the prisoner is convicted and adjudged worthy of death, sentence is immediately pronounced and immediately executed on the spot." The captain "as chief executioner, leaps with a kind of fury upon the criminal, striking him a terrific blow with his club. Then the rest of the assembly throw themselves also upon him, and although he is very soon dead, they do not cease to rain blows upon his head, stomach and side, until the head is all in pieces." 3

Malagasy."Until a very recent date, persons detected in the act of stealing in the public markets, by cutting off the corner of the lamba in which money is usually tied up, were mobbed by the populace and killed without a trial."

Savage tribes are of necessity organized primarily and principally for war; courage and success in battle form the cardinal virtue-the summum bonum.5 Originally these

1 Malcolm, i, 576.

Kolbe, i, 165–172.

Griffith's Journals, p. 35, et seq. • Sibree, p. 305.

The two ideas are generally merged into one in the savage mind. The suc cessful warrior is the courageous man, and vice versa.

tribes are intensely democratic, but long-continued warfareespecially when the group attains to any considerable size and becomes a conquering nation-usually raises to increasingly despotic dominance, a head chief or king. The feeling of kindred and of common descent aids in this, for the king is soon regarded as the "father of his people," and he is always a king of men, not territory; king of the English, not king of England. He is himself the great warrior and war leader, like Saul or David-the "koennig: the man who can "-and he gathers around himself as his advisers the elders wise in ancient custom, and the medicine men or priests. Soon he begins to unite all their functions in himself. He is not only leader in war, but also judge in peace, sworn to observe and to enforce the sacred, ancient customs of the race. He becomes priest and prophetfinally he is worshipped as a god-supported in all this by the people, as the manifestation of the social unity, the preserver of the social life and effectiveness. He is the keystone of the arch, thus producing compactness and strength of organization, first for war and then for other purposes as well. Offences against him personally become regarded as wrongs against the whole community, and are punished as crimes, thus enlarging the sphere of treason, and introducing entirely new criminal offences. Naturally this process multiplies criminals; and yet it is thoroughly astounding to see how abject and unquestioning oftentimes, is the obedience of a truly brave and warlike people to a thoroughly bad sovereign, who kills their nearest and dearest to gratify a whim, so long as he does not seek to change or deviate from their time-honored customs.'

Their reverence and love are so deeply seated that it seems almost impossible to shake them. "The king can do no wrong;" without him they feel they cannot live. In this

1 See The Dahomans and Ashantees, Dalzel, p. 69.

62

National Stability

lies the great danger that people once so warlike, so independent, finding government of any kind very irksome and very hard to bear, may become too tame, with the manly fibre killed in them-as it was among the ancient Peruvians and Mexicans-under the yoke of a deified emperor and a cruel and implacable religion. They are full of humility, obeying every one, writes Zurita of the Mexicans;' and they are thoroughly indolent, for they have become accustomed to act only from fear of punishment. This is not the stuff out of which the enduringly progressive civilizations of the world are made. The caste system hardens around them, making helpful as well as harmful variation alike practically impossible. Upward growth ceases, and we have an arrested civilization, or an utterly unprogressive savage tribe, according to the time of the hardening of the outer crust of custom. While the first successful and conquering groups were those that most easily tamed themselves, the final conquerors and leaders of the world's civilization were and are those who found this taming process so exceedingly difficult that for many centuries they lagged behind, and were despised as mere barbarians and savages, by the great nations of Egypt, Assyria, Babylonia and Persia. But the Greek, Roman and Teutonic peoples succeeded at last in securing national stability, while preserving and safe-guarding a strong tendency to variation—the spirit of individual liberty—which has always been so masterful in these races that it has compelled a place for itself, the safe-guarding of a fitting sphere for its development, as the price and condition of individual submission to the social needs.

Free discussion was the great means for the attainment of this good end. Among the Teutons, it was those that most surely preserved their old love of liberty, their democratic customs of self-government, and slowly developed a 1 Zurita, p. 186.

* Bagehot, pp. 158-162.

national polity of their own, that became the world's leaders and rulers. The tribes that wandered far from home and adopted to a large extent the laws and usages of the effete Roman civilization, came as conquerors and grew up into mighty kingdoms, that lasted for a day or for a hundred years-where are they now? While England, that struggled for a thousand years to unite its clashing races and little, liberty-loving kingdoms into a strong nation, a united people, before finally succeeding in the seventeenth century; America, which has at last merged local differences and jealousies, with greatest difficulty, under the Federal Government of the United States; and Germany, where the Teutonic peoples could not overcome their seemingly irresistible tendency to split up into little warring, independent states, until 1871-all three great peoples conquering themselves finally only under the pressure of a terrible war-these are the leaders of the world's civilization to-day; the conservatively progressive, world conquerors and educators and Christianizers, upon whom the hope of the future seems to

rest.'

The great barbarian monarchies, as we now call those peoples which once scorned our savage ancestors, established a stable, but unprogressive equilibrium. The Eastern Races did not, and they do not to-day, understand what we mean by progress; this constant desire for change and upward growth. Change is what they most fear and hate. But Greece, Rome, and the Teutonic civilizations are progressive equilibriums, where the rights of the social whole are being constantly balanced with the rights of each individual member. This makes strong, intelligent and moral

'Shall we include Italy also, at last united in 1871 into a great kingdom, and at the present time rapidly developing, in her northern states, manufactures, industry and commerce, and it is hoped preparing for a great new birth-intellectual, artistic and moral? Then there is Russia also--the great unknown.