Rensselaer Republican, Volume 14, Number 2, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 September 1881 — How the Ancients Conducted Their Elections. [ARTICLE]

How the Ancients Conducted Their Elections.

Herbert Spencer. As hitherto, so again, we must go back to the beginning and take up the clew. Out of the earliest stage of the savage horde in which there is no supremacy beyond that of the man whose strength, or courage or cunning gives him prominence, the first step is to the practice of election—deliberate choice of a leader in war. About the conducting of elections iu rude tribes travelers are silent; probably the methods used are various. But we have accounts of elections as they were made by European people during early times. In ancient Scandinavia, the chief of a province, chosen by the assembled people, was thereupon “elevated amid the clash of arms aud tbe shouts of the multitude;” and among the ancient Germans, he was carried on a shield. Recalling, as this ceremony does, the chairing of the newly elected member of Parliament up to recent times, and reminding us that originally among ourselves election was by show of bands, we are taught that tbe choice of a representative was once identical with the choice of a chief. Our House of Commons had its roots in local gatherings like those in which civilized tribes select their head warriors. Besides conscious selection, there occurs among lude people selection by lot. The Samoans, for instance, by spinning a cocoanut, which on coming to rest points to one of the surrounding persons, thereby single him out. Early historic races supply Illustrations, as the Hebrews in the affair of Haul and Johnathan, and as the Homeric Greeks when fixing on a champion to fight with Hector. In both these last cases there was belief in supernatural interference; the lot was supposed to be divinely determined And probably at the outset, choice by lot for political purposes among the Athenians, and for military purposes among the Romans, as also in later times, tbeuse of the lot for choosing deputies in some of the Italian Republics, * and in Spain (as Leon during the twelith century), was influenced by a kindred belief; though doubtless the desire to give- equal chances to rich aud poor, or else to assign without disp.te a mission which was onerous or dangerous, entered into the motive er wai even predominant. Here, however, the fact to be noted is, that this mode of choice which plays a part in representation may also be traced back to the uses of primative people.