In their relations to each other the villagers seem to have been on a footing of perfect equality. It is probable that there existed generally some sort of chief, but his power does not appear to have been very great, and for the most part he was merely a president of their assemblies, exercising only an influence in proportion to his personal qualifications. The real lawgivers and rulers of this society were the different individuals who constituted the assembly. These, however, did not comprise all the inhabitants of the village. Only the heads of the different families were properly included in the village assembly. But the household had no longer the same extended circle as formerly, and, so far as we can gather, there seems to have been little check on the division of families and the formation of new households. It must be borne in mind, however, that we have no existing institution exactly resembling the village community, such as we may suppose it to have originally been. As with the patriarchal family, we meet with it only after it has undergone considerable modification, and we have to reconstruct it from such modified forms and traditions as remain to us. Many minor details of its nature are therefore necessarily matters of speculation. The community, however, may still be found in a changed form in several localities; notably among the peasantry in Russia, where it bears the name of the _mir_, and among the native population of India. Its former existence among the Teuton tribes is attested by the clearest evidence. With each of these peoples, however, the form is somewhat varied from what we may conclude to have been its original nature; in each country it has been subject not only to the natural growth and development which every institution is liable to, but to special influences arising from the events connected with the nation’s history, and from the nature and extent of its territory. But before we inquire what these different influences may have been, let us notice first certain leading characteristics of this group, and consider how they probably arose. The first thing that we notice is the change in the source of authority in the Village Community as compared with that which existed in the patriarchal family. The ruling power is no longer placed in the hands of an individual [Sidenote: The assembly of householders.]