. A person is described as living in such
a township, county, and state.<4> This seems to be a very simple and
natural division, but, like every thing else, it is the result of
growth--of a development. It took nearly three centuries of civilization
and a succession of able men, each improving on what the other had done,
to fully develop this system among the Greeks.<5> This is the basis of
the modern form of government. Whenever it was organized, it marked
the termination of ancient government. The other plan of government is
founded on personal relations.

A person would be described as of such a gens, phratry, and tribe. It
is sufficient to state the words gens, and phratry simply denote
subdivisions of a tribe.<6> This is the ancient system of government,
and goes very far back in the history of the race. It is that state of
society which everywhere preceded history and civilization. When we go
back to the first beginning of history in Europe, we find the Grecian,
Roman, and Germanic tribes in the act of substituting the modern system
of government for the tribal state, under which they had passed from
savagism into and through the various stages of barbarism, and entered
the confines of civilization. The Bible reveals to us the tribal state
of the Hebrews and the Canaanites.

Under the light of modern research, we can not doubt but what this
form of government was very ancient, and substantially universal. It
originated in the morning of time, and so completely answered all the
demands of primitive society that it advanced man from savagism,
through barbarism, and sufficed to enable him to make a beginning in
civilization. It was so firmly established as one of the primitive
institutions, that when it was found insufficient to meet the demands of
advancing society, it taxed to the utmost the skill of the Aryan tribes
to devise a system to take its place.

This was the system of government throughout North America when the
Spaniards landed on its shores. This is true, at least as far as our
investigations have gone.<7> In several cases tribes speaking dialects
of the same stock-language had united in a confederacy; as, for
instance, the celebrated league of the Iroquois, and in Mexico, the
union of the three Aztec tribes. But confederacies did not change the
nature of tribal government. As there was but one general form or plan
of government in vogue amongst the Aborigines of North America at the
time of discover