Certain institutions and ideas were selected by the pressure of historical events and were capitalized into the effective local political and social traditions.

These traditions constituted the substance of the political and social bond.

They provided the forms which enabled the people of any group to realize a joint purpose or, if necessary, to discuss serious differences.

In their absence the very foundation of permanent political cohesion was lacking.

For a while the protection of these groups against domestic and foreign enemies demanded, as we have seen, the exercise of an absolute political authority and the severe suppression of any but time-honored individual or class interests; but when comparative order had been secured, a higher standard of association gradually came to prevail.