Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/98

 86 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

archies. The growth of the aggregate causes a differentiation between sacred and secular functionaries, between military and civil heads, and between judicial, legislative, and executive offices. The heavier burden of business compels the ruler to surround himself with helpers, who in turn require other helpers, until government structure becomes complex. Power is deputed and re-deputed. Control comes into the hands of the leisured or the trained. The exclusion of the poorer classes from the govern- ment of the Roman republic in its later period was due to its expansion. " Now that Rome had ceased to be a purely Italian state, and had adopted Hellenic culture, it was no longer possible to take a small farmer from the plow and set him at the head of the community." Eventually, owing to the overflow of popula- tion into the great burgess-colonies, and the diffusion of the Romans throughout the peninsula, the absolute centralization in the one focus of Rome was given up, and a municipal system was instituted for Italy which permitted the formation of smaller civic communities within the Roman community. "Under Chlodovech and his immediate successors," we read, " the People, asembled in arms, had a real participation in the resolutions of the king. But with the increasing size of the kingdom, the meet- ing of the entire people became impossible." In New England, after the local community reaches a certain size, the annual town- meeting is replaced by the government by mayor and council.

There is, furthermore, reason to believe that the formation of large, dense, complex bodies of population is favorable to the growth of a belief in the rights of man as man and to the spread of ideas of human equality, i. e., of the habits of thought that underlie individualism and democracy.

So far, the growth of population has been assumed to proceed at an equal rate throughout society. If, now, it be assumed that the rate of increase is sensibly unequal, a new set of consequences appears. The resulting inequality of pressure providing the distribution of life-opportunities remains the same will cause people to pass from class to class and from place to place. City dwellers never keep abreast of country dwellers in reproduction, and hence the city has constantly to be fed with the overflow from