HOW THE ANCIENTS CONDUCTED THEIR ELECTIONS.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 2747, 12 January 1882, Page 2

HOW THE ANCIENTS CONDUCTED THEIR ELECTIONS.

As hitherto, so again we must go back to the beginning to take up the clue. Out of that 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 pre eminence,, the first step is to the .practice of election—-deliberate choice, of a , leader in war* About the conducting of elections in rude tribes travellers are silent. Probably the methods used are various. But we have accounts of elections as tjhey 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 and the shouts of the multitude," and among the ancient Germans he was carried on a shield. Recalling, as this ceremony does, the chairing of a newly elected member of Parliament up to recent times, aud reminding us that originally among ourselves election was by show of hands, we are taught that the choice of representative was once identical with the choice of a chief] Our House of Commons had its roots in local gatherings like those in which uncivilised tribes select head warriors.

Besides conscious selection, there occurs among rude peoples’ selection by lot. The Samoans, for instance, by spinning a cocoanut, which on coming to rest points to one of the surrounding persons, thereby signalling him out Early historic races supply illustrations, as the Hebrews in the affair of Saul and' Jonathan, 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 1 lot for political purposes among the. Romans, as, also in later times, the use of the lot for choosing deputies in some of the. Italian republics, and in Spain (as in,Leon during the twelfth century), was . influenced by a kindred belief; though, doubtless,..the desire to give equal chances to rich and poor, or else to assign without dispute a mission which was onerous or dangerous, entered into the motive or was even predominant. Here, however, the fact to be noted is, that this.mpde pf choice which plays a part in representation, may also be traced back to the usages of primitive peoples. 1 — (Herbert Spencer.) !I ■