It must begin to be apparent that the proposition is, that the evolution of government does not differ from that of simplest organic forms either in principle or in mode of operation. The same laws that govern the growth and multiply the plant also govern society and multiply it. The same laws that bring fruit to perfection and dissolution perfect and dissolve societies. The same laws that produce and control the units of the animal kingdom produce and control the units of society. The same law that governs the ebbing and flowing of the tides, that determines whether the component parts of water shall exist as water or vapor, determines the movements of society and the conditions of its existence; and the same law that produces an earthquake here, a volcanic eruption there or a terrific hurricane elsewhere, produces the earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and the hurricanes that are ever modifying and changing society. Symbols of all the various processes society passes through in its growth and extension can be found in every other department of the universe; or, to assert the same fact differently, everywhere in the universe there is a constant effort to attain an equilibrium—a continuous working to supply wants, an unceasing process of demand and supply, which are universal exemplifications of the law that motion is always in the direction of the least resistance or the greatest traction, or the resultant of the two operating conjointly. But what does history tell of the foundation and dissolution of governments, and what illustrations of the law of progress does it afford? As before stated, those who have most earnestly studied pre-historic time have found ample evidence that the time was when the head of the family was the highest sovereign power, and so absolute in its character that the individual was entirely submerged in it, and State supremacy was an impossibility. Nothing but anarchy and confusion could have attended such rule; constant rivalry, jealousy and contention must have kept up a continual strife between adjacent families, which could know no settlement except through the subjugation or destruction of the weaker of the contending parties. Of this order of governmental aggregations, it is questionable if the earth at present furnishes any illustrations, unless it be in some part thereof to which the discoverer has not yet penetrated. Of the next, or tribal, order of aggregates, it does, however; and with this second order the real analysis and comparison must begin, though we have no objective means of demonstrating the conditions stated as existing. When family sovereignty was universal it can readily be seen that the continued existence of such conditions would be impossible, for the continuous subjugations and amalgamations of families would lead directly to tribal communities, at first in absolute subjection to one tribe, which would grow into some power, distributed among the several tribes. So also would the joining