Page:The Gaelic State in the Past & Future.djvu/31

 of the life of the stateship. He became, not only Hospitaller, but mayor of the central township; and therefore the first of his titles begins steadily to be displaced by the second.

Such men were strictly executive, and not legislative, officers, for the legislation and general conduct of the stateship lay with its two assemblies. The first was an assembly of its nobles, and the second the assembly of all the freemen. They met to decide all internal affairs, such as redistribution of land if a family died out, the admission to political rank of an unfree man, or a guild of craftsmen, and the outlawing of any man who defied the finding of the brehons. But they had other decisions in their hands which linked them in with the whole fabric of the National State. They decided who should be selected for hostings that were demanded of them; and when at a later date Hebridean mercenaries were scattered through the country as a kind of militia, and were quartered upon the stateships, the quarterings would naturally be decided in assembly. Yet the important decision that lay in their hands dealt with the matter of taxes, or tributes. As we have seen, such taxes were levied upon each stateship as a whole, not upon the individuals of the nation; and each stateship was thus left free to distribute such taxes upon its own individuals according to its local circumstances.

In addition, however, to its executive officers the stateship also provided for its professional men. It had its own poets, historians, musicians and lawyers,