It is a general fact of history that there is a relation between the
culture of a people and the geographical extent of their voluntary
combinations. Whilst rude and uncultivated, with no facilities for
intercommunication, they form no permanent associations of any
considerable magnitude; but with the advance of general intelligence,
the rise of distinct classes and industrial and commercial interests,
together with the improvement of facilities for travel and trade, and
for the intercommunication of thought and feeling, there is developed a
general bond of sympathy between larger masses of mankind, and the
natural result is more extensive combination. The unity becomes more
comprehensive. We have observed this in our glance at European
development.

Let us trace the course of one of the lines of political movement. In a
primitive society, as among the ancient Germans, each individual has
the right of avenging himself, of taking justice into his own hands,
and determining what the measure of satisfaction shall be. The right of
private war, derived from rude society, remained for a long time in
Western Europe, and pertained to the clergy as well as to laymen--a
custom which was withal not very Christian-like. A step beyond this, and
there was recognized a regular method of determining the amount of
satisfaction due for an injury: composition for crime became fixed. We
observe here a development from absolute individuality in the matter of
determining justice to the recognition of a conventionalism--a law which
was the product of the sense of many individuals acting, it may have
been, in some cases, without conscious concert, yet in a social and
cooeperative way. As mankind grew out of their original rude conditions,
they relinquished the individual prerogative of taking justice into
their own hands, and appealed therefore to a tribunal which was
recognized as adequate to this end, and the jurisdiction of which seems
to have had a constant tendency to enlarge its territorial limits. Thus,
for a time, the feudal barons claimed the final adjudication of all
difficulties among their own vassals; but, gradually, dissatisfied
clients appealed to the king, who encouraged them to do so, and at
length the throne became the universally recognized centre and source of
all formal justice.

This was a movement occupying centuries for its consummation, a movement
which extended the jurisdiction of the tribunal of justice from the