GOVERNMENT. 7 sarily require a form of polity for the maintenance of internal order, for attack, and for defence; and for this purpose would elect an elder for their government, — officers to assist him, — and, perhaps, a priest or astrologer to make their peace with Hea- ven. This is precisely the form of the village as- sociations which, even at present, exist in Java, and the circumstances which have tended to per- petuate them there, while they have disappeared elsewhere, will be afterwards pointed out. The extension of the nation, or the formation of new villages, may be readily imagined. When the population began to press against the means of subsistence in the first association, by the ex- haustion of the good lands in the vicinity of the village, or by the incompetency of the sup- ply of fish, it is needless to say, that, in such a state of society, the village could not be extend- ed to the formation of a town. Emigrations would be the necessary recourse of the society, and a swarm would be thrown off to form a new settle- ment, as near to the parent one as circumstances would permit, in order that the infant settlement might receive its support and assistance. In seve- ral parts of Java, where the population is rapidly increasing, such a process is at present going for- was merely commencing, every city, for a long time, consti- tuted a separate state." — Humboldt's New Spain, Book III.
