Maurya, Gupta, and Moghul empires of India were, except for short intervals, mere apologies for empires, if we strictly apply to them the test of Austinian sovereignty. These Weltherrschaften were really the nurseries of home rule, provincial autonomy, and local self-government.

It should not be surmised, however, that strong centripetal forces were wanting in India. From Sanskrit and Pali sources we learn, as in Radhakumud Mookerji's Fundamental Unity of India, that the conception of pan-Indian nationality and federation de l'empire was the permanent source of inspiration to all aspirants" (vijigeesoo) to the position of the chakravarti or the sarva-bhauma, i.e., the dominus omnium of Bartolus. And more than one oriental Napoleon succeeded in giving a unified administration, financial as well as judicial, to extensive provinces in Hindustan.

Organization in India under the sarva-bhauma or chakravarti emperors was no less thorough than in China under the Manchus. The census department of the Maurya empire, as described by Megasthenes and Kautilya, was a permanent institution. It numbered the whole population, says Narendranath Law," as well as the entire live stock, both rural and urban. Causes of immigration and emigration were found out. "Managers of charitable institutions were required to send information to the census officers." "Merchants, artizans, physicians, etc. had also under the city rules to make reports to the officer in charge of the capital regarding people violating the laws of commerce, sanitation, etc."

The centralization manifest in the collection of vital statistics marked every department of governmental machinery. The central government bestowed attention upon the question of irrigation even in the most remote provinces. "Although Girnar

" Pp. 70-74, 106, 108-111, etc.

"Cf. Williams, The Middle Kingdom, Vol. I, pp. 395–500. Tocqueville's adverse criticism of the centralization under the ancien régime (Brissaud's History of French Public Law, p. 396) would apply with no less force to the centralization of rural communes under the Kautilyan imperialism ("Chanakya's Land and Revenue Policy," by Shamasastry in the Indian Antiquary, 1905, pp. 7, 8). 8 Studies in Ancient Hindu Polity, Vol. I, pp. 106-114.

is situated close to the Arabian Sea, at a distance of at least 1000 miles from the Maurya capital (Pataliputra on the Ganges in Eastern India, the site of modern Patna), the needs of the local farmers did not escape the imperial notice."86 It is an open question if imperialism was ever more effective in any period of European history.

Chandragupta and Asoka's highest court of judicature87 might be the model of the Parlement of Paris, first organized in the thirteenth century by Louis IX. The judicial hierarchy of the traditional law books was also similar to that of the Chinese: "A case tried in the village assembly goes on appeal to the city court, and the one tried in the city court goes on appeal to the king."88

In Moghul India land revenue was assessed on a uniform basis of measurement. The France of Louis XIV, though about onethird of the contemporary Indian empire, did not possess this uniformity, in spite of the centralizing ambitions and exploits of the grand monarque. "On the eve of the French Revolution" there were about "three hundred and sixty distinct bodies of law, in force sometimes throughout a whole province, sometimes in a much smaller area." The administrative homogeneity of Moghul India was to no small extent brought about by the construction of roads which were maintained at a high level of excellence both for commercial and military purposes. Tavernier, the French merchant, found traveling in India in the seventeenth century "more commodious than anything that had been invented for ease in France or Italy."

But communication, conveyance, transmission of messages, transfer of officers, etc., howsoever efficiently managed, could not by any means cope with the area and the population except for short periods under masterful organizers. The "absolute limit" of imperialism was offered by the extent of territory and similar natural hindrances. Even the best conceived organs of unifi

86 Smith's Early History of India (ed. 1914), 132. 87 Law's Hindu Polity, Vol. I, pp. 117-121.

88 Narada, I, 11, in Jolly's Minor Law Books.

89 Cambridge Modern History, Vol. VIII, ch. 11, p. 49.

cation could not under the circumstances permanently withstand the tendencies to centrifugal disruption. No political organism of a tolerably large size could therefore possibly endure either in the East or the West. It is not a special vice of the Orient, as has been alleged, that the empires were ephemeral and that the kingdoms were in a "state of nature." Rather, on the basis of comparative history, it has to be admitted that, if the territorial limits and the duration of effective imperialism be carefully remembered, the oriental administrators would not yield the palm either to the Romans, or to the Franks and the Hapsburgs who prolonged the continuity of the Augustan empire by "legal fiction."

A consolidated empire worthy the name, i.e., one in which influences radiate from a common center as the sun of the administrative system, could not be a normal phenomenon anywhere on earth before the era of steam and the industrial revolution. It is this fundamental influence of physics on politics, that, more than any other single cause, forced the ancient and medieval empires of the world to remain but bundles of states, loose conglomerations of almost independent nationalities, statenbunden cemented with the dilutest mixture of political blood.

"Regional independence" was thus the very life and core of that system in Asia as in Europe. It was the privilege into which the provincial governors, the markgrafen, the local chiefs, and the aldermen of rural communes were born. Their dependence on their immediate superior consisted chiefly in the payment of annual tribute and in occasional military service. They had to be practically "let alone" in their own "platoons." Even the strongest "universal monarchs" such as Shi Hwang-ti, Han Wu-ti, Tang Tai-tsung, Manchu Kanghi, Chandragupta, Samudragupta, and Akbar, could not but have recourse to a general policy of laissez faire, especially in view of the fact that each of them had to administer a territory greater in size than the Napoleonic empire at its height.

CONCLUSION

No Guizot has yet attempted a history of popular institutions in the Orient. We do not know, age by age, and country by country, precisely to what extent the peoples actually participated in the work of government. Archeological researches have not been extensive enough to supply the details of financial and administrative history. It is not possible, therefore, on the one hand, to appraise clearly the organizing capacity of the oriental statesmen and rulers and, on the other, to check accurately the democratic theories of the philosophers with reference to the economico-political milieu. Studies in comparative politics must remain incomplete for a long time to come for want of historical material from the Asian side bearing on the world's primitive and medieval institutions.

It is already clear, at any rate, that the nineteenth century generalization about the Orient as the land exclusively of despotism, and as the only home of despotism, must be abandoned by students of political science and sociology. It is high time, therefore, that comparative politics, so far as the parallel study of Asian and Eur-American institutions and theories is considered, should be rescued from the elementary and, in many instances, unfair notions prevalent since the days of Maine and Max Müller, first, by a more intensive study of the Orient, and secondly, by a more honest presentation of occidental laws and constitutions, from Lycurgus and Solon to Frederick the Great and the successors of Louis XIV, that is, by a reform in the comparative method itself.

THE COMMITTEE SYSTEM IN STATE LEGISLATURES

C. LYSLE SMITH

Every state legislature in the United States is divided into a considerable number of standing committees. In spite of obvious advantages which seem to render it indispensable, the development of the committee system has been attended by great evils. Indeed, it is perhaps not too much to say that with the committee system the worst evils connected with legislative organization and procedure are intimately associated.

It is the chief purpose of this paper to point out the principal weaknesses or defects of the committee system in connection with state legislatures generally, and particularly the defects which have appeared in the practical operation of the system in the Illinois legislature; and at the same time to discuss certain proposals designed to remedy these defects.

These weaknesses and proposed remedies will be taken up in the following order:

I. Defects in the methods of making committee assignments. II. Defects due to the number of standing committees. III. Defects due to the size of committees.

IV. Defects due to the lack of a definite and fixed schedule of committee meetings.

V. Defects due to the lack of publicity and to the irresponsibility surrounding committee proceedings.

VI. Defects due to the insufficient control of each house over its committees.

VII. Defects peculiar to the committee on rules and the conference committee.

This article was awarded the first prize of $250 in the Harris Political Science prize essay contest in 1917, open to undergraduates in the colleges and universities of Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Iowa, Wisconsin and Minnesota. The writer was then a senior at Northwestern University, and is now in the United States Navy.