These chapters are not intended to form a whole by themselves. They are merely an enlarged version of a course of lectures in which European Political Institutions in general were treated historically and comparatively: and as I wish hereafter to make similar enlarged versions of the other parts of the course and to append them to what I have here written, I hope that these chapters on the Greek Institutions may prove to be only a first instalment of a book on Comparative Politics. The following pages contain what their title indicates, a description and examination of Greek governments: but in view of the additions which may probably be made to them, they also contain a small amount of matter which is necessary as a preliminary to an examination of European governments in general.
The attention which I have paid to method and definitions of terms might lead my readers to suppose that I conceive Comparative Politics to be a science. It is only fair to them to express the opinions that I have formed on the matter. I do think that the part of the comparative study of Politics, which deals with barbaric and more particularly with non-European peoples and their governments, has been placed on a scientific footing by Mr Herbert Spencer in his Political Institutions, though he has attained this great result by a method which is not purely comparative, and which, as it takes no heed of historical sequence of events, has not stood him in good stead where he treats of historical European communities and their constitutions. The part—the most interesting and important part—of the study, that which is concerned with civilised peoples and governments, seems to me not yet to be science. It does indeed enable us to lay down empirical rules, or rules founded solely on observation, about peoples and governments, just as the study of a language enables a grammarian to lay down empirical rules about words and sentences. And further, among the rules which have been laid down, there are some, (their number is, I believe, very small,) which seem to be distinguished from the rest in two respects, firstly because they are not subject to any known exception, and secondly because some of the causes which lie at the root of them have been discovered: and these rules have something of the character of scientific laws, or rules which are true, not only in all known instances, but universally. But, on the other hand, most of the rules which have as yet been laid down are of a different sort, and, either because they are vague and indefinite, or because they are subject to many exceptions, or for other like reasons, nothing of the nature of a scientific law has been founded on them.
It is however common to all studies to be imperfect and only half conclusive while they are in their infancy: many studies, especially among those which are based on comparisons, have before now progressed within the lapse of a few generations from a very lowly condition to the status of complete inductive sciences: and it is hard to see why the same good fortune should not at some future time fall to the lot of Comparative Politics.
The classification of European political bodies, which is given in my second chapter, was suggested to me in its main outlines by a lecture which I heard delivered in Cambridge many years ago by my friend Sir John Seeley: the usefulness of some such classification was made clear to me some years later but yet long ago by a course of lectures which was given by another friend Professor Henry Sidgwick: and I have constructed the classification as it stands in the second chapter with the intention of making it serve as a framework both for what I have here written about the Greeks and their governments and for what I hope to write hereafter about other European peoples and governments. To both the gentlemen whom I have named I desire to express my hearty thanks for the help and guidance that their lectures have given me in my attempts to study Politics methodically.
B. E. HAMMOND.
Trinity College, Cambridge.
December 12, 1894.
