Page:History of Greece Vol III.djvu/24

 8 HISTOKY OF GKEKUE of the people, and etill more on the part of the inferior chiefs, and with it ceased the heroic royalty. Something like a system or constitution came to be demanded. Of this discontinuance of kingship, so universal in the political march of Hellas, the prime cause is, doubtless, to be sought in the smallness and concentrated residence of each distinct Hellenic society. A single chief, perpetual and un responsible, was noway essential for the maintenance of union. In modern Europe, for the most part, the different political societies which grew up out of the extinction of the Roman empire embraced each a considerable population and a wide extent of territory and the monarchical form presented itself as the only known Means of union between the parts : the only visible and imposing iJymbol of a national identity. Both the military character of the Teutonic invaders, as well as the traditions of the Roman empire tvhich they dismembered, tended towards the establishment of a monarchical chief, the abolition of whose dignity would have ?>3en looked upon as equivalent, and would really have been equivalent, to the breaking up of the nation, since the maintenance of a collective union by means of general assemblies was so burdensome, that the kings themselves vainly tried to exact it by force, and representative government was then unknown. The history of the Middle Ages, though exhibiting constant resistance on the part of powerful subjects, frequent deposition of individual kings, and occasional changes of dynasty, contains few instances of any attempt to maintain a large political aggre- gate united without a king, either hereditary or elective. Even towards the close of the last century, at the period when the federal constitution of the United States of America was first formed, many reasoners regarded 1 as an impossibility the appli- cation of any other system than the monarchical to a territory of large size and pop ilation, so as to combine union of the whole 1 See this subject discussed in the admirable collection of letters, called the Federalist, written in 1787, during the time when the federal constitution of the United States of America was under discussion. Letters 9, 10, 14, by Mr. Madison. "II est de la nature d'une re'publique (says Montesquieu, Esprit dcs Loix, viii, 16) de n'avoir qu'un petit tcrritoire : sans cela, elle ne peut guere absistcr."