Page:American Anthropologist NS vol. 1.djvu/563

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504 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST fN. s., i. 1899

In other departments of human activity the specialization is largely voluntary with the individual, and men become farmers, manufacturers, or tradesmen by their own will; but whether they become officers of the government or not, depends not upon their own will, but upon the will of others whom they are to represent. In a high stage of culture the right to choose rulers is held of paramount importance. This motive has led to the organization of representative government.

The impossibility of realizing primitive justice and primitive equality by primitive methods has been more and more clearly demonstrated with the ages of advancing civilization. The savage is willing to be controlled by the voice of the people of the tribe, with every one of whom he is acquainted, and with every one of whom he is related by bonds of consanguinity and affinity ; but under the new conditions of society, where the in- dividual man may not be acquainted with the man who produces his bread as a farmer, or produces his shoes as a manufacturer, but upon whom he depends for the supply of his wants, he finds it necessary to organize representative government. All men in the nation are neighbors of every man, and to maintain justice with these neighbors representative government is devised.

Here we are interested in the consideration of how govern- ments shall be made representative. This is accomplished by some method of constituting a part of the members of the body politic the agents of justice, and those who select their represen- tatives for this purpose are called their constituents. That department which I call constitutive government is the one that deals with the selection of the representatives of government in all departments.

Legislative Department . — This department of government is organized for the purpose of considering principles and determin- ing the methods by which society should be governed. It there- fore enacts statutes of law. The modern legislature or parliament is the differentiated organ for performing one of the functions

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