[Upd-discuss] [sheffield-anti-war-coalition] constitution one

[Adam Moran]

25 Apr 2006 02:53:50 -0000 GERALD ALI wrote:


For all who are interested in science (knowledge) a few passages from 
Morgan, to illustrate some aspects of ''constitution'' all passages have 
the word constitution within them, the extracts are taken from his book 
Ancient Society.



It seems, from the rumours we are receiving in Britain, that there may 
be occasionally questioning  going about in the States regarding their 
constitution, some niggling worry over their freedoms apparently, and 
also the same question that is being asked in Iraq, What is a Democratic 
Republic ?



The American constitution is essentially the same as the English 
constitution, which dates back to the 1080's implemented by the Normans. 
Two references in the Anglo Saxon Chronicles openly state it is non 
religious.



England was maintained on the basis of the counties, around forty of 
them,  with a central government but no great central state machine, 
each county had it's own state and state machine, each with it's own 
democratic gov'.

No part of any American state can secede from the union, but any state 
can, because each state is a nation in it's own right.

Officially according to the constitution there is NO such thing as ''An 
American Nation'', officially it doesn't exist, except in ''dream'', the 
''religious opiate of Utopia''.



(The Normans lost out in 1150 to the Angevin French [franks, branch of 
the Germans and catholic, with a liking for the centralised monolithic 
state] their King Steven was defeated, the period is recorded as the 
''Anarchy'', a good period to study to find the correct meaning of 
anarchy, ''opposition to rule from above i.e. the state'' and gov' of 
the people,  not as the bourgeois anarchists claim ''no government''.)



The border of England had been defined: the borders were changed in the 
period of Henry 8th to include Wales based on a re-vision/ 
reinterpretation of history to justify the act.

Some time prior to the Norman arrival, some of the Angles with support 
from some of the Saxon group had invaded and occupied parts of Wales, 
short lived, they eventually lost and were removed.

The Normans fully accepted the Welsh English border as also the Scots 
English border.

It's only from the time of Henry 8th that the ''Anglo - Saxon myth'' has 
been in force.



According to Morgan researches, he was known as ''the Father of 
Anthropology'', he was accepted as such throughout the universities of 
both Britain and America, the American constitution is essentially the 
same as the one developed by the Seneca - Iroquois.



Gens means Clan.

Race in it's original meaning means ''sense of community within the 
clan'',  original  Ras   north Mediterranean.

Rac-ism is when race is miss-applied, i.e. a nation can be a race, basis 
of the racist, now taught to all in schools.

Love is what binds the extended family together, large well connected 
families are looked upon as the open expression of the love, in 
bourgeois terms it is mainly applied in emphasis to the subjective 
relationship between two people.

So 'race' is the bond of a number of extended family units into a clan, 
still a common form in many parts of the world.



---------------------------

Lewis Henry Morgan (1818-1881) was born near Aurora, New York, on the 
21st of November 1818. He graduated in 1840 at Union College, then 
studied law, was admitted to the bar, and practised his profession with 
success at Rochester, New York. Soon after leaving college Morgan went 
among the Iroquois, living as far as he could their life and studying 
their social organization.

In October 1847, he was formally adopted into the Hawk gens of the 
Seneca tribe, and received the name "ta-ya-da-wah-kugh."

The fruit of his researches was "The League of the Iroquois" (1851; new 
ed. 1904) which was the first scientific account of an Indian tribe ever 
given to the world.



Morgan was a member of the New York assembly in 1861 and of the New York 
senate in 1868-1869. In 1880 he was president of the American 
Association for the Advancement of Science.

About time someone did the research into his work as the 'president', 
they may be suprised by his 'legacy', the association covered many sciences.



In order to understand the condition of Grecian society, anterior to the 
formation of the state, it is necessary to know the constitution and 
principles of the Grecian gens;

for the character of the unit determines the character of its compounds 
in the ascending series, and can alone furnish the means for their 
explanation.



It is seen in the senate as a, council of chiefs, in the, comitia 
curiata, as an assembly of the people by curiae, in the office of a 
general military commander, and in the ascending series of 
organizations. It is seen more especially in the presence of the gentes, 
with their recognized rights, privileges and obligations.



We find liberty, equality and fraternity, written as plainly in the 
constitution of the Athenian gentes as in those of the Iroquois as 
Hereditary right to the principal office of the gens is totally 
inconsistent with the older doctrine of equal rights and privileges.



  The general features of the Iroquois Confederacy may be summarized in 
the following propositions:

I- The confederacy was a union of Five Tribes, composed of common 
gentes, under one government on the basis of equality; each Tribe 
remaining independent in all manners pertaining to local self-government.

II- It created a General Council of Sachems, who were limited in number, 
equal in rank and authority, and invested with supreme powers over all 
matters pertaining to the Confederacy.

III- Fifty Sachemships were created and named in perpetuity in certain 
gentes of the several Tribes; with power in these gentes to fill 
vacancies, as often as they occurred, by election from among their 
respective members, and with the further power to depose from office for 
cause; but the right to invest these Sachems with office was reserved to 
the General Council.

IV- The Sachems of the Confederacy were also Sachems in their respective 
Tribes, and with the Chiefs of these tribes formed the Council of each, 
which was supreme over all matters pertaining to the Tribe exclusively.

V- Unanimity in the Council of the Confederacy was made essential to 
every public act.

VI. In the General Council the Sachems voted by Tribes, which gave to 
each Tribe a negative upon the others.

VII. The Council of each Tribe had power to convene the General Council; 
but the latter had no power to convene itself.

VIII. The General Council was open to the orators of the people for the 
discussion of public questions; but the Council alone decided.

IX. The Confederacy had no chief Executive Magistrate, or official head.

X. Experiencing the necessity for a General Military Commander they 
created the office in a dual form, that one might neutralize the other. 
The two principal War- chiefs created were made equal in powers.

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1/.            Chapter XI. The Roman Gens

Italian Tribes Organized in Gentes. - founding of Rome. - Tribes 
Organized into a Military Democracy - The Roman Gens. - Definition of a 
Gentilis by Cicero. - By Festus. - By Varro. Descent in Male Line. - 
Marrying out of the Gens. - Rights, Privileges and Obligations of the 
Members of a Gens - Democratic Constitution of Ancient Latin Society. - 
Number of Persons in a Gens



2/.            It is well to obtain an impression of the relative amount 
and of the ratio of human progress in the several ethnical periods 
named, by grouping together the achievements of each, and comparing them 
with each other as distinct classes of facts. This will also enable us 
to form some conception of the relative duration of these periods. To 
render it forcible, such a survey must be general, and in the nature of 
a recapitulation. It should, likewise, be limited to the principal works 
of each period. Before man could have attained to the civilized state it 
was necessary that he should gain all the elements of civilization. This 
implies an amazing change of condition, first from a primitive savage to 
a barbarian of the lowest type, and then from the latter to a Greek of 
the Homeric period, or to a Hebrew of the time of Abraham The 
progressive development which history records in the period of 
civilization was not less true of man in each of the previous periods. 
By re-ascending along the several lines of human progress towards the 
primitive ages of man's existence, and removing one by one his principal 
institutions, inventions, and discoveries, in the order in which they 
have appeared, the advance made in each period will be realized. The 
principal contributions of modern civilization are the electric 
telegraph; coal gas; the spinning-jenny; and the power loom; the 
steam-engine with its numerous dependent machines, including the 
locomotive, the railway, and the steamship; the telescope; the discovery 
of the ponderability of the atmosphere and of the solar system; the art 
of printing; the canal lock; the mariner's compass; and gunpowder. The 
mass of other inventions, such, for example, as the Ericsson propeller, 
will be found to hinge upon one or another of those named as 
antecedents: hut there are exceptions, as photography, and numerous 
machines not necessary to be noticed. With these also should be removed 
the modern sciences; religious freedom and the common schools; 
representative democracy; constitutional monarchy with parliaments; the 
feudal kingdom; modern privileged classes; international, statute and 
common law. Modern civilization recovered and absorbed whatever was 
valuable in the ancient civilizations and although its contributions to 
the sum of human knowledge have been vast, brilliant and rapid, they are 
far from being so disproportionately large as to overshadow the ancient 
civilizations and sink them into comparative insignificance. Passing 
over the mediaeval period, which gave Gothic architecture, feudal 
aristocracy with hereditary titles of rank, and a hierarchy under the 
headship of a pope, we enter the Roman and Grecian civilizations. They 
will be found deficient in great inventions and discoveries, but 
distinguished in art, in philosophy, and in organic institutions. The 
principal contributions of these civilizations were imperial and kingly 
government; the civil law; Christianity; mixed aristocratical and 
democratical government, with a senate and consuls; democratical 
government with a council and popular assembly; the organization of 
armies into cavalry and infantry, with military discipline; the 
establishment of navies, with the practice of naval warfare; the 
formation of great, cities, with municipal law; commerce on the seas; 
the coinage of money; and the state, founded upon territory and upon 
property; and among inventions, fire-baked brick, the crane, the 
water-wheel for driving mills, the bridge, aqueduct and sewer; lead pipe 
used as a conduit with the faucet; the arch, the balance scale; the arts 
and sciences of the classical period, with their results, including the 
orders of architecture; the Arabic numerals and alphabetic writing.





3/.            It remains to notice an innovation upon the original 
constitution of the classes, and in favour of the gens, which reveals a 
movement, still pending, in the direction of the true ideal of the gens. 
It is shown in two particulars: firstly, in allowing each triad of 
gentes to intermarry with each other, to a limited extent; secondly, to 
marry into classes not before permitted. Thus, Iguana-Murri can now 
marry Mata in the Kangaroo gens, his collateral sister, whereas 
originally he was restricted to Buta in the opposite three. So 
Iguana-Kubbi can now marry Kapota, his collateral sister. Emu-Kumbo can 
now marry Buta, and Emu-Ippai can marry Ippata in the Blacksnake gens, 
contrary to original limitations. Each class of males in each triad of 
gentes seems now to be allowed one additional class of females in the 
two remaining gentes of the same triad, from which they were before 
excluded. The memoranda sent by Mr. Fison, however, do not show a change 
to the full extent here indicated[5].





4/.            An exposition of the elementary constitution of the gens, 
with its functions, rights, and privileges, requires our first 
attention; after which it will be traced, as widely as possible, among 
the tribes and nations of mankind in order to prove, by comparisons, its 
fundamental unity. It will then he seen that it must be regarded as one 
of the primary institutions of mankind.





5/.            This organization may be successfully studied both in its 
living and in its historical forms in a large number of tribes and 
races. In such an investigation it is preferable to commence with the 
gens in its archaic form, and then to follow it through its successive 
modifications among advanced nations, in order to discover both the 
changes and the causes which produced them. I shall commence, therefore, 
with the gens as it now exists among the American aborigines, where it 
is found in its archaic form, and among whom its theoretical 
constitution and practical; workings can be investigated more 
successfully than in the historical gentes of the Greeks and Romans. In 
fact to understand fully the gentes of the latter nations a knowledge of 
the functions, and of the rights, privileges and obligations of the 
members of the American Indian gens is imperatively necessary.



6/.            The right of deposing its sachem and chiefs.

This right, which was not less important, than that to elect, was 
reserved by the members of the gens. Although the office was nominally 
for life, the tenure was practically during good behaviour, in 
consequence of the power to depose. The installation of a, sachem was 
symbolized as 'putting on the horns,' and his deposition as 'taking oft 
the horns.' Among widely separated tribes of mankind horns have been 
made the emblem of office and of authority, suggested probably, as Tylor 
intimates, by the commanding appearance of the males among ruminant 
animals bearing horns. Unworthy behaviour, followed by a loss of 
confidence, furnished a sufficient round for deposition. When a sachem 
or chief had been deposed in due form by a council of his gens, he 
ceased thereafter to be recognized as such, and became thenceforth a. 
private person. The council of the tribe also had power to depose both 
sachems and chiefs, without waiting for the action of the gens, and even 
against its wishes. Through the existence and occasional exercise of 
this power the supremacy of the gentiles over their sachem and chiefs 
was asserted and preserved. It also reveals the democratic constitution 
of the gens.





7/.            Descent is in the female line, and intermarriage in the 
gens- prohibited. In 1869 the Cherokees numbered fourteen thousand which 
would give an average of seventeen hundred and fifty persons to each 
gens. This is the largest number, so far as the fact is known, ever 
found in a single gens among the American aborigines. The Cherokees and 
Ojibwas at the present time exceed all the remaining Indian tribes 
within the United States in the number of persons speaking the same 
dialect. It may be remarked further, that it is not probable that there 
ever was at any time in any part of North America a hundred thousand 
Indians who spoke the same dialect. The Aztecs, Tezcucans and Tlascalans 
were the only tribes of whom so large a number could, with any 
propriety, be claimed; and with respect to them it is. difficult to 
perceive how the existence of so large a number in either tribe could be 
established, at the epoch of the Spanish Conquest, upon trustworthy 
evidence. The unusual numbers of the Creeks and Cherokees is due to the 
possession of domestic animals and a well-developed field agriculture. 
They are now partially civilized, having substituted an elective 
constitutional government in the place of the ancient gentes, under the 
influence of which the latter are rapidly falling into decadence.





8/.            To the Village Indians of North and South America, whose 
indigenous culture had advanced them far into, and near the end of, the 
Middle Period of barbarism, our attention naturally turns for the 
transitional history of the gentes. The archaic constitution of the gens 
has been shown; its latest phases remain to be presented in the gentes 
of the Greeks and Romans; but the intermediate changes, both of descent 
and inheritance, which occurred in the Middle Period, are essential to a 
complete history of the gentile organization. Our information is quite 
ample with respect to the earlier and later condition of this great 
institution, but defective with respect to the transitional stage.



9/.             The Existence and Functions of the Council of Chiefs.

The existence of such a council among the Aztecs might have been 
predicted from the necessary constitution of Indian society. 
Theoretically, it would have been composed of that class of chiefs, 
distinguished as sachems, who represented bodies of kindred through an 
office perpetually maintained. Here again, as elsewhere, a necessity is 
seen for gentes, whose principal chiefs would represent the people in 
their ultimate social subdivisions as among the Northern tribes. Aztec 
gentes are fairly necessary to explain the existence of Aztec chiefs. Of 
the presence of an Aztec council there is no doubt whatever; but of the 
number of its members and of its functions we are left in almost total 
ignorance.







10/.            . As the title was that of war-chief, then held by many 
other persons, the compliment consisted in connecting with it a tribal 
designation. In Indian speech the office held by Montezuma was 
equivalent to head war-chief, and in English to general.

Clavigero recognizes this office in several Nahuiatlac tribes, but, 
never applies it to the Aztec war-chief. "The highest rank of nobility 
in Tlascala, in Huexotzinco and in Cholula was that of Teuctli. To 
obtain this rank it was necessary to be of noble birth, to have given 
proofs in several battles of the utmost courage, to have arrived at a 
certain age, and to command great riches for the enormous expenses which 
were necessary to be supported by the possessor of such a dignity[29]." 
After Montezuma had been magnified into an absolute potentate, with 
civil as well as military functions, the nature and powers of the 
office, he held were left in the background- in fact un-investigated. As 
their general military commander he possessed the means of winning the 
popular favour, and of commanding the popular respect. It was a 
dangerous but necessary office to the tribe and to the confederacy. 
Throughout human experience, from the Lower Status of barbarism to the 
present time, it has ever been a dangerous office. Constitutions and 
laws furnish the present security of civilized nations, so far as they 
have any. A body of usages and customs grew up, in all probability, 
among the advanced Indian tribes and among the tribes of the valley of 
Mexico, regulating the powers and prescribing the duties of this office. 
There are general reasons warranting the supposition that the Aztec 
council of chiefs was supreme, not only in civil affairs, but over 
military affairs, the person and direction of the war-chief included.





11/.            Athenian institutions are typical of Grecian 
institutions in general, in whatever relates to the constitution of the 
gens and tribe, down to the end of ancient society among them. At the 
commencement of the historical period, the Ionians of Attica were 
subdivided, as is well known, into four tribes (Geleontes, Hopletes, 
Aegicores, and Argades), speaking the same dialect, and occupying a 
common territory. They had coalesced into a nation as distinguished from 
a confederacy of tribes; but such a confederacy had probably existed in 
anterior times.[2] Each Attic tribe was composed of three phratries, and 
each phratry of thirty gentes, making an aggregate of twelve phratries, 
and of three hundred and sixty gentes in the four tribes, Such is the 
general form of the statement, the fact being constant with respect to 
the number of tribes, and the number of phratries in each, but liable to 
variation in the number of gentes in each phratry.



12/.            Hereditary succession, if it existed, would indicate a 
remarkable development of the aristocratical element in ancient society, 
in derogation of the democratical constitution of the gentes. Moreover, 
it would be a sign of the commencement, at least, of their decadence. 
All the members of a gens were free and equal, the rich and the poor 
enjoying equal rights and privileges, and acknowledging the same in each 
other. We find liberty, equality and fraternity, written as plainly in 
the constitution of the Athenian gentes as in those of the Iroquoi as 
Hereditary right to the principal office of the gens is totally 
inconsistent with the older doctrine of equal rights and privileges.





13/.            The gens existed in the Aryan family when the Latin, 
Grecian and Sanskrit speaking tribes were one people, as is shown by the 
presence in their dialects of the same term (gens, genos, and ganas) to 
express the organization. They derived it from their barbarous 
ancestors, and more remotely from their savage progenitors. If the Aryan 
family became differentiated as early as the Middle period of barbarism, 
which seems probable, the gens must have been transmitted to them in its 
archaic form. After that event, and during the long periods of time 
which elapsed between the separation of these tribes from each other and 
the commencement of civilization, those changes in the constitution of 
the gens, which have been noticed hypothetically, must, have occurred. 
It is impossible to conceive of the gens as appearing, for the first 
time, in any other than its archaic form; consequently the Grecian gens 
must have been originally in this form.





14/.            When the gens of the Iroquois, as it appeared in the 
Lower Status of barbarism, is placed beside the gens of the Grecian 
tribes as it appeared in the Upper Status, it is impossible not to 
perceive that they are the same organization, the one in its archaic and 
the other in its ultimate form. The differences between them are 
precisely those which would have been forced upon the gens by the 
exigencies of human progress.

Along with these mutations in the constitution of the gens are found the 
parallel mutations in the rule of inheritance.





15/.            In order to understand the condition of Grecian society, 
anterior to the formation of the state, it is necessary to know the 
constitution and principles of the Grecian gens; for the character of 
the unit determines the character of its compounds in the ascending 
series, and can alone furnish the means for their explanation.



16/.            When the several phratries of a tribe united in the 
commemoration of their religious observances it was in their higher 
organic constitution as a tribe. As such, they were under the 
presidency, as we find it expressed, of a phylo- basileus, who was the 
principal chief of the tribe. Whether he acted as their commander in the 
military service I am unable to state. He possessed priestly functions, 
always inherent in the office of basileus, and exercised a criminal 
jurisdiction in cases of murder; whether to try or to prose- cute a 
murderer, I am unable to state





17/.            It has been shown that among the Iroquois, in the Lower 
Status, the people presented their wishes to the council of chiefs 
through orators of their own selection, and that a popular influence was 
felt in the affairs of the confederacy; but an assembly of the people, 
with the right to adopt or reject public measures, would evince an 
amount of progress in intelligence and knowledge beyond the Iroquois. 
When the agora first appears, as represented in Homer, and in the Greek 
Tragedies, it had the same characteristics which it, afterwards 
maintained in the ecclesia of the Athenians, and in the comitia curiata 
of the Romans. It was the prerogative of the council of chiefs to mature 
public measures, and then submit them to the assembly of the people for 
acceptance or rejection, and their decision was final. The functions of 
the agora were limited to this single act. It could neither originate 
measures, nor interfere in the administration of affairs; but 
nevertheless it was a substantial power, eminently adapted to the 
protection of their liberties. In the heroic age certainly, and far back 
in the legendary period, the agora is a constant phenomenon among the 
Grecian tribes, and, in connection with the council, is conclusive 
evidence of the democratical constitution of gentile society throughout 
these periods. A public sentiment, as we have reason to suppose, was 
created among the people on all important questions, through the 
exercise of their intelligence, which the council of chiefs found it 
desirable as well as necessary to consult, both for the public good and 
for the maintenance of their own authority. After hearing the submitted 
question discussed, the assembly of the people, which was free to all 
who desired to speak made their decision in ancient times usually by a 
show of hands.[12] Through participation in public affairs, which 
affected the interests of all, the people were constantly learning the 
art of self-government, and a portion of them, as the Athenians, were 
preparing themselves for the full democracy subsequently established by 
the constitutions of Cleisthenes. The assembly of the people to 
deliberate upon public questions, not infrequently derided as a mob by 
writers who were unable to understand or appreciate the principle of 
democracy, was the germ of the ecclesia of the Athenians, and of the 
lower house of modern legislative bodies.





18/.            Our idea of a kingly government is essentially of a type 
in which a king, surrounded by a privileged and titled class in the 
ownership and possession of the lands, rules according to his own will 
and pleasure by edicts and decrees; claiming an hereditary right to 
rule, because he cannot allege the consent of the governed. Such 
governments have been self-imposed through the principle of hereditary 
right, to which the priesthood have sought to super-add a divine right. 
The Tudor kings of England and the Bourbon kings of France are 
illustrations. Constitutional monarchy is a modern development, and 
essentially different from the basileia of the Greeks. The basileia was 
neither an absolute nor a constitutional monarchy; neither was it a 
tyranny or a despotism. The question then is, what was it.





19/.            An Englishman, under his constitutional monarchy, is as 
free as an American under the republic, and his rights and liberties are 
as well protected; but he owes that freedom and protection to a body of 
written laws, created by legislation and enforced by courts of justice. 
In ancient Grecian society, usages and customs supplied the place of 
written laws, and the person depended for his freedom and protection 
upon the institutions of his social system. His safeguard was 
pre-eminently in such institutions as the elective tenure of office 
implies.



20/./            Mr. Grote remarks that "it any energetic man could by 
audacity or craft break down the constitution and render himself 
permanent ruler according to his own will and pleasure - even though he 
might rule well - he could never inspire the people with any sentiment 
of duty towards him. His sceptre was illegitimate from the beginning, 
and even the taking of his life, far from being interdicted by that 
moral feeling which condemned the shedder of blood in other cases, was 
considered meritorious."[19] 1t was not so much the illegitimate sceptre 
which aroused the hostility of the Greeks, as the antagonism of 
democratical with monarchical ideas, the former of which were inherited 
from the gentes.



21/.            We are now within the historical period, though near its 
threshold, where we meet the elective principle with respect to the 
highest office in the gift of the people clearly and completely 
established. It is precisely what would have been expected from the 
constitution and principles of the gentes, although the aristocratical 
principle, as we must suppose, had increased in force with the increase 
of property, and was the source through which hereditary right was 
introduced wherever found.





22/.        Boeckh remarks, "since the presiding officers of the 
naucraries are mentioned before the time of his legislation; and when 
Aristotle ascribes their institution to Solon, we may refer this account 
only to their confirmation by the political constitution of Solon."[4] 
Twelve naucraries formed a trittys, a larger territorial 
circumscription, but they were not necessarily contiguous. It was, in 
like manner, the germ of the county, the next territorial aggregate 
above the township.





23/.            Under the constitution of Solon their powers were real 
and durable, and their influence upon public affairs was permanent and 
substantial. All freemen, though not connected with a gens and tribe, 
were now brought into the government, to a certain extent, by becoming 
citizens and members of the assembly of the people with the powers 
named. This was one of the most important results of the legislation of 
Solon.



24/.            The idea of a military democracy, different in 
organization but the same theoretically as that of the previous period, 
re-appears in a new dress both in the Solonian and in the Servian 
constitution.





25/.            Under the constitution of Romulus, and the subsequent 
legislation of Servius Tullius, the government was essentially a 
military democracy, because the military spirit predominated in the 
government. But it may be remarked in passing that a new and 
antagonistic element; the Roman senate, was now incorporated in the 
centre of the social system, which conferred patrician rank upon its 
members and their posterity. A privileged class was thus created at a 
stroke, and intrenched first, in the gentile and afterwards in the 
political system, which ultimately overthrew the democratic principles 
inherited from the gentes, It was the Roman senate, with the patrician 
class it created, that, changed the institutions and the destiny of the 
Roman people, and turned them from a career, analogous to that of the 
Athenians, to which their inherited principles naturally and logically 
tended. In its main features the new organization was a masterpiece of 
wisdom for military purposes. It soon carried them entirely beyond the 
remaining Italian tribes, and ultimately into supremacy over the entire 
peninsula.



26/.            It is also in part due to a misconception, by some of 
the first named writers, of the relations of the family to the gens. 
They regard the gens as composed of families, whereas it was composed of 
parts of families; so that the gens and not the family was the unit of 
the social system. It may be difficult to carry the investigation much 
beyond the point where they have left it; but information drawn from the 
archaic constitution of the gens may serve to elucidate some of its 
characteristics which are now obscure.



27/.            Romulus formed the first Roman senate of a hundred 
elders; and as there were then but a hundred gentes, the inference is 
substantially conclusive that they were the chiefs of these gentes. The 
office was for life and non-hereditary; whence the final inference, that 
the office of chief was at the time elective. Had it been otherwise 
there is every probability that the Roman senate would have been 
instituted as an hereditary body. Evidence of the essentially democratic 
constitution of ancient society meets us at many points; which fact has 
failed to find its way into the modern historical expositions of Grecian 
and Roman gentile society.





28/.            Having considered the Roman gens, it remains to take up 
the curia composed of several gentes, the tribe composed of several 
curiae, and lastly the Roman people com- posed of several tribes. In 
pursuing the subject the inquiry will be limited to the constitution of 
society as it appeared from the time of Romulus to that, of Servius 
Tullius, with some notice of the changes which occurred in the early 
period of the republic while the gentile system was giving way, and the 
new political system was being established.



29/.            It is immaterial whether either of the seven so called 
kings of Rome were real or mythical persons, or. whether the legislation 
ascribed to either of them is fabulous or true, so far as this 
investigation is concerned because the facts with respect to the ancient 
constitution of Latin society remained incorporated in Roman 
institutions, and thus came down to the historical period. It, 
fortunately so, happens that the events of human progress embody 
themselves, independently of particular men, in a material record, which 
is crystallized in institutions, usages and custom, and preserved in 
inventions and discoveries.


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http://www.groupsense.co.nz/effective.html

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