But men, whether many or few, were still due from each district to the host, and a cry of war at once called town-reeve and hundred-reeve with their followers to the field.
The military organization of the tribe thus gave from the first its form to the civil organization.

But the peculiar shape which its civil organization assumed was determined by a principle familiar to the Germanic races and destined to exercise a vast influence on the future of mankind.

This was the principle of representation.

The four or ten villagers who followed the reeve of each township to the general muster of the hundred were held to represent the whole body of the township from whence they came.

Their voice was its voice, their doing its doing, their pledge its pledge.