fication that we have indicated. This should indeed be so, and an important function of the archive administration should be to ensure for the future such a classification of current records in all the offices. But in the past many mistakes have been made and these should, if possible, be corrected when the archives receive their final classification.

The archives once classified and filed it becomes the duty of the archivist to make them accessible for administrative and literary purposes. Four classes of publications naturally suggest themselves: general guides, inventories or check lists, calendars, and collections of texts. The general guide should be an enumeration of the various groups or series of records, indicating for each series its title, the number of volumes composing it, and its limiting dates. It does not go into details but supplies a sort of first aid to those who would use the archives. Its compilation should go hand in hand with the arrangement of the records and their final grouping.

57

The next step is the preparation of inventories of the contents of the different series. Such an inventory indicates the title, dates, number of documents and, very briefly, the character of the contents of each volume, box, or portfolio, in any given series. An inventory of the records of a department would include all the series formed from the archives of that department, grouped under the respective offices from which they emanate.5 A series of such inventories covering all the groups of archives in the depot is probably the most satisfactory form in which to provide the student with an account of the available material. Their compactness, the ease with which they may be used, and the rapidity and economy with which they can be compiled, are all in their favor.

58

Then we may expect that calendars of certain of the more important documents will eventually be published. In this form of catalogue the individual document is the unit and the entry for it, besides stating its title, date, author, approximate length, etc., includes a more or less succinct résumé of its contents. A calendar may include all the documents in a given series or group or it may include

57 Such for example as Scargill-Bird, Guide to the Various Classes of Documents preserved in the Public Record Office (third ed., London, 1908), or the État Sommaire par Séries des Documents conservés aux Archives Nationales (Paris, 1891). The present Guide to the Archives of the Federal Government published by the Carnegie Institution is both more and less than such a guide: more in that it includes descriptive notes of various series, less in that it does not include all the series.

58 An excellent model of such an inventory is to be found in the État Sommaire des Archives de la Marine antérieures à la Révolution (Paris, 1898). More detailed inventories are those published by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs: Inventaire Sommaire des Archives du Département des Affaires Etrangères.

all documents on the same subject or of the same kind regardless of the series in which they are to be found.59 The résumé may be very detailed, so that for historical purposes it practically takes the place of the original, as in the well-known British Calendars of State Papers, or it may be much briefer as in the various volumes published by the Library of Congress. The latter form is much more rapidly compiled and is, in general, more practicable.

With regard to the publication of groups of documents it may with some reason be contended that this is not properly a function of the archivist. Rather should it be left to the various historical agencies of the country. A plan is now before Congress for the establishment of a permanent Commission on National Historical Publications which if adopted will provide in the most satisfactory and systematic fashion for the exploitation of the archives.

60

Finally, the question of the use of the archives both by officials and by students calls for attention. With regard to official use it may be assumed that in the great majority of cases this will take the form of a demand by a certain office for documents needed in the transaction of affairs, the transmission of the documents in question, their consultation in the office calling for them, and finally their return to the archives. The only problem is to provide for the immediate communication of such material, and, equally important, to ensure its prompt return to the archives. It may be however that certain offices, the principal function of which is to search the records, should be transferred bodily to the archives, or else abolished in their present form, and the function performed by a special corps of archive employees. Some such action would be necessary for example in the event of the transfer of the military records from which information is now furnished daily to the Pension Bureau. A third form of official use of the archives for which provision should be made, would occur when some special but extended investigation must be made on behalf of a certain office. This could be carried on, either by the employees of the archives, or by an employee of the office delegated for that purpose.

With regard to the use of the archives by students, lawyers, and others not attached to the service of the government, or by officials engaged in personal investigations, it becomes necessary to formulate regulations. We cannot here enter into a detailed discussion of such

59 A calendar of the first sort would, for example, be one of the Captains' Letters from the naval archives; of the second type, a calendar of papers relating to the administration of Indian affairs; of the third, a calendar of petitions to Congress.

eo See Report to the President by the Committee on Department Methods: Documentary Historical Publications of the United States Government (1909).

regulations but it would be well to indicate in a general way what classes of records may be made available for non-official use. In most countries a chronological dead-line is drawn beyond which the student may not extend his researches. Thus in France the archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs are open to February, 1848, while in the Archives Nationales documents over fifty years old may be called for. A limitation of this sort is undoubtedly convenient from the administrative point of view, but it is artificial and needlessly hampers or makes quite impossible many lines of investigation. A more satisfactory procedure would be to establish a chronological line on the earlier side of which any investigation (except possibly in certain specified cases) could be made without the obtaining of special consent, but on the later side of which each case should be treated on its merits, the decision as to whether the documents asked for should or should not be communicated to be made by the board of record commissioners after consultation with the department or office concerned. The principles upon which such decision should be based have been admirably stated by an official of the government as follows:61

(a) Archives which represent completed incidents which carry no sequence may cease to be confidential as soon as the incidents are closed.

(b) Archives which relate to political events may be open to general inspection when danger of inflaming public opinion by their revelations has passed.

(c) Archives which contain personal information affecting individuals may cease to be confidential after two generations have passed.

(d) Archives which pertain to international relations must remain confidential as long as they relate to pending negotiations, or if they contain information which would disturb or lessen international good feeling.

(e) Archives furnishing information which might be used against the government's interests should remain confidential.

Such, then, in outline is the plan offered for the administration of the national archives. It has been shown that the present conditions have become intolerable, and that the remedial measures thus far tried are but makeshifts, aggravating the many evils rather than affording relief. To continue as at present is to perpetuate inefficiency and extravagance and to incur risks for which no government should wish to be responsible to the nation. It is the plain duty of Congress to provide a better method, a system adequate to the

Paper by Gaillard Hunt, chief of the Division of Manuscripts in the Library of Congress, read at the congress of archivists held in Brussels in 1910 and included in the Documents Préliminaires printed by the committee of organization prior to the opening of the congress. Mr. Hunt's paper was offered in discussion of the subject "Comment doivent s'opérer les versements des archives des administrations contemporaines dans les archives anciennes?"

administrative needs of a great government, a building worthy of a great nation, in which both the requirements of public business and those of historical scholarship shall be completely satisfied. The very absence of a system and of a building leaves us carte blanche for arrangements marked by ideal excellence. Why should the nation. not have the best of all national archive buildings? Is it not incumbent upon all who cherish our history, and who desire that the rightful heritage of future generations shall pass to them unimpaired, to urge vigorously upon Congress the performance of this long-neglected duty, the meeting of this pressing problem by an ideal solution?

WALDO GIFFORD LELAND.

LEGALIZED ABSOLUTISM EN ROUTE FROM GREECE

TO ROME

THE deification of Hellenistic kings and Roman emperors is commonly regarded as a manifestation of religious life. In this paper, on the contrary, the view is maintained that it was essentially a political device. I have, accordingly, attempted in the following pages to arrange on a somewhat novel principle the chief materials bearing upon this institution during a critical period of its development. I believe that a better understanding of the significance and importance of the institution itself is the result.

In three specific points, moreover, I have failed to find my conclusions anticipated in the extensive and widely scattered literature of the subject. These three points are: (1) that the Roman Republic escaped the need of forming permanent treaties with the Greek states by exploiting the position and rights conveyed to it by deification (see below, pp. 30 and 37 ff.); (2) that the apotheosis. of rulers at their death, being necessary to validate their acta, was introduced expressly for this purpose (see below, pp. 33, 35, and 42 ff.); (3) that in the Roman application of the principle of deification of rulers an important distinction was drawn between ingenui and liberti-between citizens by birth and citizens by adoption (see below, pp. 40 and 43 ff.).

These conclusions, I believe, help materially to establish the truth of my original contention, that, as Tacitus says, the worship of rulers, specie religionis, was really an arx aeternae dominationis.

1

From the standpoint of the constitutional historian the most important product of the century which followed the birth of Alexander the Great was the union then achieved of groups of citystates into large territorial aggregates. The city-state seemed to the contemporaries of Aristotle, as to the contemporaries of Pericles, indispensable for the maintenance of civil liberty. It alone 1 Primitive man, who thought spirit powers to be incarnate in dangerous or useful animals, could hardly escape making his king a god (Frazer, The Golden Bough, third ed., vol. III., The Dying God). But when he ceased to be primitive his point of view changed. Thus in the time of Ptolemy II., Ergamenes, king of the Ethiopians, "having received a Greek education which emancipated him from the superstitions of his countrymen", refused to have his body treated as merely the receptacle of an ancestral deity. Yet we are commonly told that Alexandria and Athens accepted the ideas of animism at the very time that they were discarded in Meroe. Credat Judaeus Apella, non ego.

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