national assembly was a meeting of the chieftains, accompanied by their personal followers, voluntary and dependent.

Looking at the account of a general or national assembly among the early Germans, the account that Tacitus gives us in the eleventh chapter of his "Germania," and explaining it by the aid of modern political facts and modern political theories, we are inclined to say that the chieftains were the representative magistrates of the people. We are inclined to describe the assembly as democratic in character. But the modern point of view is not the only point of view, it is not the right point of view.

Do we not read in the Law of Athelstan, the Anglo-Saxon king, (Ord. 2,) that every man had a lord in the folkmoot? Canon Stubbs, Mr. Freeman, and most of the German writers, would say that this came to pass in course of time. But do we not learn from Tacitus what we learn from this law of Athelstan? He tells us that those who were not chieftains took their choice among those who were, and became their personal followers. It appears, therefore, that the folkmoot, or popular assembly, in the time of Tacitus, was what it was in the time of Athelstan-an assembly of chieftains accompanied by their personal adherents.

The philologists tells us that the German word König, our king, corresponds with the Sanskrit ganaka; and this signifies the father of a family. (See Max Müller, Science of Language, II, 284.) This is a text for us, pointing to the fact that the kingship or chieftainship of early times is rooted in the idea of paternity and paternal authority. The authority of the king or chieftain is primarily the authority of the father or the patriarch: and we may say that, among the branches of the Aryan race at least, the tap-root in the history of institutions is the patria potestas. It was an absolute authority, not over wife and child simply, but over followers in dependence, and slaves in servitude. The father of the family was its sovereign ruler; and the clans and the nations of men were associations of families bound together by the blood relationship of their heads. This blood relationship was the sole bond of their confederation; and we have what Mr. Grote has very happily described as the omnipotence of private force, tempered and guided by family sympathies. In the course of time, however, certain families became eminent above others by reason of their success in the struggle for existence. The movements of these families at first determined, and afterwards governed, those

of all the other families with which they were in any way associated; and the members of such prominent families became the leaders and the rulers of their fellow-men, as their chieftains or their kings; and the authority of these chieftains or kings was the authority of heads of families, which was the only sort of authority known to that early society, passing beyond the limits of families over bands of personal and voluntary adherents. It was an absolute authority, tempered only by the independence and liberty of those over whom it was exerted. It was a sovereign authority struggling under adverse condition.

It was a sovereignty, limited by competition. There were numbers of chieftains in every nation, and the people were free to transfer their allegiance from one to another; the result of which was, that the competition among the chieftains to get and retain the greatest number of devoted adherents caused their authority over these adherents to sink to a minimum. The real character of that authority is revealed only in the course of time, when this competition ceased, in consequence of the spread of dependence, of settled life and local attachment; or as the result of agreement among the chieftains in opposition to the independence and liberty of those whom they governed.

In the year 587, the Frankish kings Guntram and Childebert agreed that they would not attempt to allure one another's followers from their allegiance. They would neither persuade them to desert, nor receive them if they did so: similiter convenit ut nullus alterius leudes nec sollicitet nec venientes excipiat. As if our capitalists should agree not to solicit one another's workmen, nor to employ them should they come seeking labor. As if our great land-owners should agree not to receive one another's tenants, should they present themselves and ask for leases of land. such events should come to pass, the power of the capitalist and the landlord would be revealed to our amazement. So it was with the kings and chieftains of early times. So long as the competition among them to obtain the greatest number of devoted adherents was unchecked, their authority was kept at a minimum. But when this competition ceased, great powers, which had been latent before, became apparent to the world in the feudal monarchy of the Middle Ages.

If

The aim of the student who pretends to work in a scientific way is first to attain a point of view embracing all ascertainable

facts in their natural and true relationship, and then to lead others to that point of view. So now, if you have followed me through my argument, and if I have led you to comprehend the facts we have which relate to the political organization of early Teutonic society, we are prepared to reconsider together Mr. Freeman's picture of free institutions in the Swiss Cantons, and we are prepared to declare at once that it will not serve to describe the political organization of Teutonic society as revealed in the earliest accounts and records.

In early times the office of king or chieftain was hereditary. The office of magistrate in the Swiss commonwealth is elective. The elections take place periodically, and are accomplished by the concurrence and agreement of a majority of the electors. The early kings and chieftains were also elected; not, however, by majorities of the electors, but by divisions among them. Every freeman, who was not a dependent, chose among the kings or chieftains the one whom he personally preferred, and remained with him, under his leadership and government, as long as he pleased, and no longer. The government of the early kings and chieftains was paternal or monarchical, in early times rather paternal than monarchical, in later times the reverse of this. In either case the authority emanated from the persons who exercised it, and not from the persons over whom it was exercised. In the Swiss commonwealth, on the contrary, the chief magistrate is the representative of the people. It is their sovereignty, and not his own, that he administers. And as to the law; in early times it was the voice of the fathers, of the chieftains, of the kings, while in the modern democracy it is the voice of the people as a legislative body.

In no respect do we discover any resemblance between the constitution of the democratic Cantons of Switzerland and the political organization of early Teutonic society: and it follows. that the constituting of the Swiss commonwealth is not an archaic political institution that has survived to our day; but an institution which has come into being within comparatively recent times. Its origin is not prehistoric, not archaic, but medieval. Particularly what it was will be a subject for future investigation.

THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN IN EASTERN AMERICA, GEOLOGICALLY CONSIDERED. By HENRY CARVILL LEWIS, of Germantown, Pa.

[ABSTRACT.]

In the course of an investigation of the surface geology of southeast Pennsylvania, the writer has determined some facts regarding one of the gravels, which, bearing directly upon the antiquity of man in America, become of interest. In former papers the writer has shown that the gravels of the Delaware valley belong to several distinct ages; and if, therefore, at any place the remains of man are shown to occur, it will be important to know to which of these gravels they should be referred.

1

The surface formations of southeast Pennsylvania may be provisionally classified as five clays and four gravels. These are, beginning with the oldest: (1) Jurasso-cretaceous plastic clay, seen at Turkey Hill, Bucks Co.; (2) Tertiary clays of the "Brandon Period," associated with the iron ore, kaolin and lignite of the Montgomery county valley; (3) "Bryn Mawr gravel,” a high level gravel often found at elevations of four hundred feet, characterized by the presence of an iron conglomerate and of pebbles of Potsdam, but never of Triassic rocks, and conjectured to be late Tertiary; (4) "Branchtown clay" of probably similar age; (5) "Glassboro' gravel," of latest Pleiocene age, found also on the watershed in New Jersey, between the Atlantic and the Delaware, and known by its pebbles of Niagara limestone and of other fossiliferous rocks; (6) “Philadelphia red gravel,” of Champlain age, which contains numerous boulders of all materials, fragments of Triassic rocks, etc., which shows flow-and-plunge structure and wave action on a large scale; which rests on a decomposed gneiss, and which is confined to the river valley; (7) "Philadelphia brick clay," which, with its boulders, rests upon the last, and, like it, appears to have been deposited by the waters of the melting northern glacier; (8) "Trenton gravel," a sandy river gravel forming the bed of the Delaware; (9) the modern alluvial mud now forming in the tidewater swamps.

Of these formations, one of the least conspicuous at Philadelphia is that now called the Trenton gravel. It is a true river gravel, rising here but a few feet above the water, and forming a quicksand when below water level. It is of a gray color, and contains pebbles composed entirely of the rocks which form the upper valley of the river. Unlike older gravels, it has very few quartz pebbles, and its pebbles are generally flat. In the middle of the river at

Philadelphia it is one hundred feet deep. On tracing this gravel up the Delaware it is found to rise higher above the river and to extend farther back from it as we proceed up stream. Thus, at Bristol it extends two miles back from the river, and is bounded by a well-marked hill, upon which rest the older gravels. At Trenton, the limit of tidewater, the narrow upland portion of the valley begins; and from there up this gravel is shallow, and confined to the river bed. The oceanic gravels trend across New Jersey, and are no more seen. Two surface formations alone remain the river gravel of post-glacial age, and the brickclay, with its boulders, of Champlain age. The first lies within the last, and both can be traced up to the great terminal moraine which crosses the river at Belvidere. It is to be especially noted that the Trenton gravel is newer than a drift of Champlain age. It is in this Trenton gravel, and in this gravel only, that traces of man are found.

The Trenton gravel, at the locality which gives it its name, is remarkably well exposed. Trenton is at the point where a long narrow valley with continuous downward slope opens out into a wide alluvial plain, and where the rocky floor of the river suddenly descends below ocean level. It is here that the bulk of a gravel, swept down the upper valley, would, on meeting tidewater, stop in its course, and with its boulders be heaped up in a mass, immediately afterward to be cut through by the river. It was thus that a cliff of gravel fifty feet high was here formed, the river having cut through the gravel instead of flowing upon it, as at Philadelphia. This explanation dispenses with the necessity of assuming, as some geologists have done, the submergence of the land by the ocean at the time of the deposition of the gravel. That southern New Jersey was at that time dry land is shown by the fact that this gravel at Trenton extends inland a few miles only, and, having filled up a bay in the ancient flooded river, is bounded by hills of the older gravel which covers the southern portion of the state.

There are many facts indicating that the Trenton gravel is a true river gravel and not a glacial moraine. The absence of glacial marks on the rocks, the stratified character of the gravel, the topography of its banks, the comparative amount of its erosion and the character of its materials, all point to the conclusion that it was deposited by a great flood of the river; and this, when taken in connection with the fact that it lies in many places within a channel cut through gravel deposited by the waters of the melting glacier, indicates a post-glacial or at least very late glacial age of the Trenton gravel.