another; and when local divisions had to be created, these were made large enough to include a considerable area of territory and number of land-owning gentlemen. They were therefore rural divisions, counties framed on the model of English counties. Smaller circumscriptions there were, such as hundreds and parishes, but the hundred died out,' the parish ultimately became a purely ecclesiastical division, and the parish vestry was restricted to ecclesiastical functions, while the county remained the practically important unit of local administration, the unit to which the various functions of government were aggregated, and which, itself controlling minor authorities, was controlled by the State government alone. The affairs of the county were usually managed by a board of elective commissioners, and not, like those of the New England towns, by a primary assembly; and in an aristocratic society the leading planters had of course a predominating influence. Hence this form of local government was not only less democratic, but less stimulating and educative than that which prevailed in the New England States. Nor was the Virginian county, though so much larger than the New England town, ever as important an organism over against the State. It may almost be said, that while a New England State is a combination of towns, a Southern State is from the first an administrative as well as political whole, whose subdivisions, the counties, had never any truly inde

1 In Maryland hundreds, which still exist in Delaware, were for a long time the chief administrative divisions. We hear there also of "baronies" and "town-lands," as in Ireland; and Maryland is usually called a "province," while the other settlements are colonies. Among its judicial establishments there were courts of pypowdry (piè poudré) and "hustings." See the interesting paper on "Local Institutions in Maryland," by Dr. Wilhelm, in Johns Hopkins University Studies, Third Series.

The hundred is a division of small consequence in southern England, but in Lancashire it has some important duties. It repairs the bridges; it is liable for damage done in a riot; and it had its high constable.

pendent life, but were and are mere subdivisions for the convenient dispatch of judicial and financial business.

In the middle States of the Union, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York, settled or conquered by Englishmen some time later than New England, the town and town meeting did not as a rule exist, and the county was the original basis of organization. But as there grew up no planting aristocracy like that of Virginia or the Carolinas, the course of events took in the middle States a different direction. As trade and manufactures grew, population became denser than in the South. New England influenced them, and influenced still more the newer commonwealths which arose in the North-west, such as Ohio and Michigan, into which the surplus population of the East poured. And the result of this influence is seen in the growth through the middle and western States of a mixed system, which presents a sort of compromise between the County system of the South and the Town system of the Northeast. There are great differences between the arrangements in one or other of these middle and western States. But it may be said, speaking generally, that in them the county is relatively less important than in the southern States, the township less important than in New England. The county is perhaps to be regarded, at least in New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, as the true unit, and the townships (for so they are usually called) as its subdivisions. But the townships are vigorous organisms, which largely restrict the functions of the county authority, and give to local government, especially in the North-west, a character generally similar to that which it wears in New England.

So much for the history of the subject; a history far more interesting in its details than will be supposed

VOL. II

Q

from the rough sketch to which limits of space restrict me. Let us now look at the actual constitution and working of the organs of local government in the three several regions mentioned, beginning with New England and the town system.1 I will first set forth the dry but necessary outline, reserving comments for the following chapter.

The Town is in rural districts the smallest local circumscription. English readers must be reminded that it is a rural, not an urban community, and that the largest group of houses it contains may be only what would be called in England a hamlet or small village. Its area seldom exceeds five square miles; its population is usually small, averaging less than 3000, but occasionally ranges up to 13,000, and sometimes falls below 200. It is governed by an assembly of all qualified voters resident within its limits, which meets at least once a year, in the spring (a reminiscence of the Easter vestry of England), and from time to time as summoned. There are usually three or four meetings each year. Notice is required to be given at least ten days previously, not only of the hour and place of meeting, but of the business to be brought forward. This assembly has, like the Roman Comitia and the Landes

1 In New England the word "town" is the legal and usual one; in the rest of the country "township." I find in Massachusetts one town (Gosnold) with only 152 inhabitants, and one (Brockton) with 13,608. But both in this and other New England States most towns have a population of from 1200 to 2500.

2 The word Town, which I write with a capital when using it in the American sense, is the Icelandic tún, Anglo-Saxon tûn, German zaun, and seems originally to have meant a hedge, then a hedged or fenced plot or enclosure. In Scotland (where it is pronounced "toon ") it still denotes the farmhouse and buildings; in Iceland the manured grass plot, enclosed within a low green bank or raised dyke, which surrounds the baer or farmhouse. In parts of eastern England the chief cluster of houses in a parish is still often called "the town." In the North of England, where the parishes are more frequently larger than they are in the South, the civil divisions of a parish are called townships.

gemeinde in four of the older Swiss Cantons, the power both of electing officials and of legislating. It chooses the selectmen, school committee, and executive officers for the coming year; it enacts bye-laws and ordinances for the regulation of all local affairs; it receives the reports of the selectmen and the several committees, passes their accounts, hears what sums they propose to raise for the expenses of next year, and votes the necessary taxation accordingly, appropriating to the various local purposes -schools, aid to the poor, the repair of highways, and so forth-the sums directed to be levied. Its powers cover the management of the town lands and other property, and all local matters whatsoever, including police and sanitation. Every resident has the right to make, and to support by speech, any proposal. The meeting, which is presided over by a chairman called the Moderator -a name recalling the ecclesiastical assemblies of the English Commonwealth'-is held in the town hall, if the Town possesses one, or in the principal church or schoolhouse, but sometimes in the open air. The attendance is usually good; the debates sensible and practical. Much of course depends on the character and size of the population. Where it is of native American stock, and the number of voting citizens is not too great for thorough and calm discussion, no better school of politics can be imagined, nor any method of managing local affairs more certain to prevent jobbery and waste, to stimulate vigilance and breed contentment.2 When, however, the

1 The presiding officer in the synods and assemblies of the Scottish Presbyterian Churches is still called the Moderator. This is also the president's title in the synods of the American Presbyterian churches, and in the councils of the Congregationalist churches.

2 See an interesting account of the town meeting thirty years ago in Mr. J. K. Hosmer's Life of Samuel Adams, chap. xxiii. An instructive description of a typical New England Town may be found in a pamphlet entitled The Town of Groton, by Dr. S. Green, late Mayor of Boston.

town meeting has grown to exceed seven or eight hundred persons, and still more when any considerable section are strangers, such as the Irish or French Canadians who have latterly poured into New England, the institution works less perfectly, because the multitude is too large for debate, factions are likely to spring up, and the new immigrants, untrained in self-government, become the prey of wire-pullers or petty demagogues. Yet even under these drawbacks those who know the system commend its working, and echo the famous eulogism of Jefferson, who seventy years ago desired to see it transplanted to his own Virginia:

"Those wards called townships in New England are the vital principle of their governments, and have proved themselves the wisest invention ever devised by the wit of man for the perfect exercise of self-government, and for its preservation. . . . As Cato then concluded every speech with the words ' Carthago delenda est,' so do I every opinion with the injunction "Divide the counties. into wards."

The executive of a Town consists of the selectmen, from three to nine in number, usually either three, five, or seven. They are elected annually, and manage all the ordinary business, of course under the directions given them by the last preceding meeting. There is also a Town-clerk, who keeps the records, and minutes the proceedings of the meeting, and is generally also registrar of births and deaths; a treasurer; assessors, who make a valuation of property within the Town for the purposes of taxation; the collector, who gathers the taxes, and divers minor officers, such as hog-reeves1 (now usually

1 Mr. R. W. Emerson served in this capacity in his Town, fulfilling the duty understood to devolve on every citizen of accepting an office to which the Town appoints him.