Law and Institutions
in the Shire
 

Accompanying this was at least a degree of social mobility. Consider, for example the life of Sam Gamgee. The Gamgees by ancestry were part of the Shire's rural working class, but Sam's learning to read from Bilbo Baggins and reading the histories of the Elves began his social ascent, which ended with his long service as Mayor — in effect, chief executive officer of a fairly large state. We are not seeing anything like a rigid class structure.

Now, a question does arise here: if the Mayor was the chief executive of the Shire's civil government, where were the legislative functions assigned and who exercised them? There is no mention of any sort of regularly meeting law-making body in Tolkien's descriptions. The Shire-Moot, he tells us, had ceased to meet (Tolkien, 1965, p.30), and in any case its meetings were too infrequent at any period to allow for regular legislation. One of Tolkien's letters (Letters, Carpenter, 1981, letter #214) mentions the establishment of a rule regarding succession to the property of Shirefolk who passed over sea, and later refers to a "ruling of Master Samwise" (who was then Mayor); did the Mayor combine legislative and executive roles in his own person?

I believe that this was not the case. There is at least one other way of interpreting Tolkien's statement which is consistent with his phrasing: that Master Samwise was acting not as a legislator consciously designing a wholly new law, but as a magistrate extending existing law to cover a new case, in the traditional manner of English common law. It would be natural enough for the Mayor also to be the principal magistrate of his country when that function was needed. And, in fact, such an approach appears consistent with what Tolkien says elsewhere (Tolkien, 1965, p.30) about the Shirefolk's view of law:

Yet the Hobbits still said of wild folk and wicked things (such as trolls) that they had not heard of the king. For they attributed to the king of old all their essential laws; and usually they kept the laws of free will, because they were The Rules (as they said), both ancient and just.

Legislation indeed in the states of medieval and early modern times was a far less common matter than in our present time. Law was believed to derive either from nature itself or from the general custom of a people. It was thought to be a judge's office to find the law, that is, to research into a general body of principles for the correct solution of a specific problem to which they might be applied — and indeed, much new law grew up in this way over time. But it was no one's office to make new law by deliberate decision, unless indeed that of the whole people assembled. Tolkien seems to have given us a fairly clear portrait of this view of law.

The Shire at the time of the War of the Ring seems to have moved most of the way from chiefdom to state and from aristocracy to republic. The aftermath of the War, though, brought at least a brief revival of the old offices and functions. In effect, the old offices seem to have lain in reserve — and behind them, the old habits of looking to the regional chieftains for leadership. So, in effect, the two legal and political orders managed a harmonious coexistence.

Now, this mixing of institutions with different origins and histories and roles is nothing surprising in the Primary World. Indeed, hardly any society even approaches having the symmetry of rational design from first principles. Real societies have histories and therefore are complex and not entirely rational — just as is the case with real languages. Tolkien as an inventor of languages clearly was aware of this, in contrast to such utopians as the creators of Esperanto and Loglan. A similar awareness may have shaped his approach to history in general and thus helped give his imagined societies the feeling of reality that pervades them.

The Shire is perhaps unusual, though, in its blend of aristocracy and republicanism. There have certainly been aristocratic republics enough in history, but they have seldom been anything like the Shire. Characteristically they have been city states, from ancient Rome to Florence to Novgorod, where a wealthy mercantile class had come into power. Most rurally based aristocracies have been unified instead by monarchy.

So there is some question as to why the Shire took that particular form.