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The answer was that, "owing to the too general combination of the people to oppose the revenue system, the laws could not be executed so as to afford him protection; that should the posse comitatus be ordered out to support the civil authority they would favor the party of the rioters."
Here is a justice of the peace in South Carolina or Georgia, or a county court, or a circuit court, that is called upon to execute this law. They appoint their own marshal, their deputy marshal, or their constable, and he calls upon the posse comitatus. Neither the judge, nor the jury, nor the officer, as we believe, is willing to execute the law.
Commendation, on the other hand, may have had a Gallic or Celtic origin, and an analogy only with the Roman clientship. The German comitatus, which seems to have ultimately merged its existence in one or other of these developments, is of course to be carefully distinguished in its origin from them.
"Your loving brother, * See note at end of chapter. "Sir Richard must know of this before daybreak," cried old Cary. "Eight hundred men landed! We must call out the Posse Comitatus, and sail with them bodily. I will go myself, old as I am. Spaniards in Ireland? not a dog of them must go home again." "Not a dog of them," answered Will; "but where is Mr. Winter and his squadron?"
Resting upon that opinion of Attorney-General Black, President Buchanan, in his Message, after referring to the solemn oath taken by the Executive "to take care that the laws be faithfully executed," and stating that there were now no longer any Federal Officers in South Carolina, through whose agency he could keep that oath, took up the laws of February 28, 1795, and March 3, 1807, as "the only Acts of Congress on the Statute-book bearing upon the subject," which "authorize the President, after he shall have ascertained that the Marshal, with his posse comitatus, is unable to execute civil or criminal process in any particular case, to call out the Militia and employ the Army and Navy to aid him in performing this service, having first, by Proclamation, commanded the insurgents to 'disperse and retire peaceably to their respective abodes, within a limited time'" and thereupon held that "This duty cannot, by possibility, be performed in a State where no judicial authority exists to issue process, and where there is no Marshal to execute it; and where even if there were such an officer, the entire population would constitute one solid combination to resist him."
The name, then, explains itself. The Olympians are the mountain gods of the old invading Northmen, the chieftains and princes, each with his comitatus or loose following of retainers and minor chieftains, who broke in upon the ordered splendours of the Aegean palaces and, still more important, on the ordered simplicity of tribal life in the pre-Hellenic villages of the mainland.
This officer was empowered to arrest all persons who should carry arms without the King's special license; to prevent all breaches of the peace; to employ the posse comitatus to apprehend offenders; and to cause four knights to be chosen as the representatives of the county in the next parliament.
The most they ever did was to conquer it. Zeus and his comitatus conquered Cronos and his; conquered and expelled them sent them migrating beyond the horizon, Heaven knows where. Zeus took the chief dominion and remained a permanent overlord, but he apportioned large kingdoms to his brothers Hades and Poseidon, and confirmed various of his children and followers in lesser fiefs.
Stannard found the Archers gone, found himself, as senior captain, temporarily in command of the post, and called upon to furnish military escort for the civil posse comitatus. Stannard was a soldier pure and simple. He would have shown as a mammoth bull in a china shop had he and his troop been at the moment in the Southern states, instead of the south-western territory.
This beggar must be a madman, she thought. But the eyes of the pilgrim looked at her reassuringly, and he said: "In token whereof, he sendeth thee this ring by me, his confidant and comitatus, Aurelian of Soissons." One of the king's special body-guard, from which comes the title comp, count.
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