508 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST [n. s., i, 1899
A remark is here necessary. It is needful to discriminate be- tween what I have here called the departments of government and the departments as they are known as offices of administra- tion in the national union, as when we speak of the Treasury de- partment, the War department, the Navy department, the Interior department, and the Department of Agriculture- These departments do not correspond to the departments of government as herein considered.
Regimentation
Governments are organized into a hierarchy of bodies. These bodies are units of different orders. The people of the United States, with trivial exceptions which need not here be considered, are naturally constituted of families in which are involved duties and rights one to another. The families of a township or precinct or ward are organized into another body politic. Here we must note that town, precinct, or ward are names of units of the same order, although the different terms are used in different sections of the country and under different conditions. The families which constitute the townships are also organized into counties. Some- times a city embraces more than one county, but usually the people of the city and the people of the county are identical. The families of townships and of counties are organized into states. Here we adopt American usage in the names of the subordinate units of the nation. The people of the states are organized into the nation which we call the United States of America. Wherever the English language is spoken this nation is known as the Ameri- can nation. In considering this organization we must clearly conceive of its units as a hierarchy of subordinate units in the national unit, and that the nation is not something different in its personnel from the states, the state not something different in its personnel from the counties of which it is composed, the county not something different in its personnel from the townships of which it is composed, and the township not something different
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