that every rich man should entertain under his protection a certain number of families of lower rank, who were called the ‘convicini,’ that is, ‘fellow-neighbours,’ a usage which recalled the Roman system of patron and client. The father of the family, as in Rome, had almost unlimited power over his children. All meetings of importance were presided over by the clergy.
It was, in fact, an assembly of the clergy and of fathers of families which, in each group of emigrants, had given the leader of the expedition the Roman title of Tribune; and after a leader’s death his successor was elected in the same way, very generally from amongst his direct descendants. If this occurred during three or four successive generations, his family became naturally invested with a real hereditary authority. The relation between the head of the family and the ‘fellow-neighbours’ consisted of generosity on the one hand and of gratitude on the other, a species of exchange of sentiments not likely to produce undue tension. But where the head of the colony was concerned, an ambitious tribune, who showed signs of trying to turn himself into an autocrat, was held in check by the necessity of being re-elected to his office every year. For in each island, on the feast of its particular patron saint, the people met together, either in the church or on the shore, to choose the chief for the next twelve months, and they often elected the same tribune again and again; but if he had done the slightest thing to displease them, they had it in their power to choose a better man in his place.
During his term of office the tribune took for himself tithes on game that was killed, fish that was caught, and crops that were harvested.
Properly speaking, there were neither magistrates nor tribunals at that time, for the tribune himself judged all causes in public, most often in the church. A few fragments of written law existed, no doubt, but they were wholly inadequate; and though it was attempted to supply their deficiencies by adding some articles from the Lombard code, the real law was tradition. Such was the good faith of that little golden age, that the sworn evidence of two respectable persons was enough to convict any misdoer without any further form of trial, and condign punishment followed directly upon conviction.