Civil Government in the United States Considered with Some Reference to Its Origins
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Title: Civil Government in the United States Considered with Some Reference to Its Origins
Author: John Fiske
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CIVIL GOVERNMENT IN THE UNITED STATES CONSIDERED WITH SOME REFERENCE TO ITS ORIGINS ***
CIVIL GOVERNMENT
IN THE UNITED STATES
CONSIDERED WITH SOME REFERENCE
TO ITS ORIGINS
BY
JOHN FISKE
[Greek: Aissomai pai Zaevos Heleutheroiu,
Imeran eurnsthene amphipolei, Soteira Tucha
tiv gar en ponto kubernontai thoai
naes, en cherso te laipsaeroi polemoi
kagorai boulaphoroi.]
PINDAR, _Olymp_. xii.
Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State!
Sail on, O Union, strong and great!...
Our hearts, our hopes, are all with thee.
Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears,
Our faith triumphant o'er our fears,
Are all with thee,--are all with thee!
LONGFELLOW.
1890
BY JOHN FISKE.
_Dedication_
This little book is dedicated, with the author's best wishes and
sincere regard, to the many hundreds of young friends whom he has
found it so pleasant to meet in years past, and also to those whom he
looks forward to meeting in years to come, in studies and readings
upon the rich and fruitful history of our beloved country.
PREFACE.
Some time ago, my friends, Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., requested
me to write a small book on Civil Government in the United States,
which might be useful as a text-book, and at the same time serviceable
and suggestive to the general reader interested in American history.
In preparing the book certain points have been kept especially in
view, and deserve some mention here.
It seemed desirable to adopt a historical method of exposition, not
simply describing our political institutions in their present shape,
but pointing out their origin, indicating some of the processes
through which they have acquired that present shape, and thus keeping
before the student's mind the fact that government is perpetually
undergoing modifications in adapting itself to new conditions.
Inasmuch as such gradual changes in government do not make themselves,
but are made by men--and made either for better or for worse--it is
obvious that the history of political institutions has serious lessons
to teach us. The student should as soon as possible come to understand
that every institution is the outgrowth of experiences. One probably
gets but little benefit from abstract definitions and axioms
concerning the rights of men and the nature of civil society, such as
we often find at the beginning of books on government. Metaphysical
generalizations are well enough in their place, but to start with such
things--as the French philosophers of the eighteenth century were fond
of doing--is to get the cart before the horse. It is better to have
our story first, and thus find out what government in its concrete
reality has been, and is. Then we may finish up with the metaphysics,
or do as I have done--leave it for somebody else.
I was advised to avoid the extremely systematic, intrusively
symmetrical, style of exposition, which is sometimes deemed
indispensable in a book of this sort. It was thought that students
would be more likely to become interested in the subject if it were
treated in the same informal manner into which one naturally falls in
giving lectures to young people. I have endeavoured to bear this in
mind without sacrificing that lucidity in the arrangement of topics
which is always the supreme consideration. For many years I have been
in the habit of lecturing on history to college students in different
parts of the United States, to young ladies in private schools, and
occasionally to the pupils in high and normal schools, and in writing
this little book I have imagined an audience of these earnest and
intelligent young friends gathered before me.
I was especially advised--by my friend, Mr. James MacAlister,
superintendent of schools in Philadelphia, for whose judgment I have
the highest respect--to make it a _little_ book, less than three
hundred pages in length, if possible. Teachers and pupils do not have
time enough to deal properly with large treatises. Brevity, therefore,
is golden. A concise manual is the desideratum, touching lightly upon
the various points, bringing out their relationships distinctly, and
referring to more elaborate treatises, monographs, and documents, for
the use of those who wish to pursue the study at greater length.
Within limits thus restricted, it will probably seem strange to
some that so much space is given to the treatment of local
institutions,--comprising the governments of town, county, and city.
It may be observed, by the way, that some persons apparently conceive
of the state also as a "local institution." In a recent review of
Professor Howard's admirable "Local Constitutional History of the
United States," we read, the first volume, which is all that is yet
published, treats of the development of the township, hundred, and
shire; the second volume, we suppose, being designed to treat of
the State Constitutions. The reviewer forgets that there is such a
subject as the "development of the city and local magistracies" (which
is to be the subject of that second volume), and lets us see that in
his apprehension the American state is an institution of the same
order as the town and county. We can thus readily assent when we
are told that many youth have grown to manhood with so little
appreciation of the political importance of the state as to believe
it nothing more than a geographical division.[1] In its historic
genesis, the American state is not an institution of the same order
as the town and county, nor has it as yet become depressed or
"mediatized" to that degree. The state, while it does not possess such
attributes of sovereignty as were by our Federal Constitution granted
to the United States, does, nevertheless, possess many very important
and essential characteristics of a sovereign body, as is here
pointed out on pages 172-177. The study of our state governments is
inextricably wrapped up with the study of our national government,
in such wise that both are parts of one subject, which cannot be
understood unless both parts are studied. Whether in the course of our
country's future development we shall ever arrive at a stage in which
this is not the case, must be left for future events to determine.
But, if we ever do arrive at such a stage, "American institutions"
will present a very different aspect from those with which we are now
familiar, and which we have always been accustomed (even, perhaps,
without always understanding them) to admire.
[Footnote 1: Young's _Government Class Book_, p. iv.]
The study of local government properly includes town, county, and
city. To this part of the subject I have devoted about half of my
limited space, quite unheedful of the warning which I find in the
preface of a certain popular text-book, that "to learn the duties of
town, city, and county officers, has nothing whatever to do with the
grand and noble subject of Civil Government," and that "to attempt
class drill on petty town and county offices, would be simply
burlesque of the whole subject." But, suppose one were to say, with
an air of ineffable scorn, that petty experiments on terrestrial
gravitation and radiant heat, such as can be made with commonplace
pendulums and tea-kettles, have nothing whatever to do with the grand
and noble subject of Physical Astronomy! Science would not have got
very far on that plan, I fancy. The truth is, that science, while it
is perpetually dealing with questions of magnitude, and knows very
well what is large and what is small, knows nothing whatever of any
such distinction as that between things that are "grand" and things
that are "petty." When we try to study things in a scientific spirit,
to learn their modes of genesis and their present aspects, in order
that we may foresee their tendencies, and make our volitions count
for something in modifying them, there is nothing which we may safely
disregard as trivial. This is true of whatever we can study; it is
eminently true of the history of institutions. Government is not a
royal mystery, to be shut off, like old Deiokes,[2] by a sevenfold
wall from the ordinary business of life. Questions of civil government
are practical business questions, the principles of which are as often
and as forcibly illustrated in a city council or a county board of
supervisors, as in the House of Representatives at Washington. It is
partly because too many of our citizens fail to realize that local
government is a worthy study, that we find it making so much trouble
for us. The "bummers" and "boodlers" do not find the subject beneath
their notice; the Master who inspires them is wide awake and--for a
creature that divides the hoof--extremely intelligent.
[Footnote 2: Herodotus, i. 98.]
It is, moreover, the mental training gained through contact with
local government that enables the people of a community to conduct
successfully, through their representatives, the government of the
state and the nation. And so it makes a great deal of difference
whether the government of a town or county is of one sort or another.
If the average character of our local governments for the past quarter
of a century had been _quite_ as high as that of the Boston
town-meeting or the Virginia boards of county magistrates, in the days
of Samuel Adams and Patrick Henry, who can doubt that many an airy
demagogue, who, through session after session, has played his pranks
at the national capital, would long ago have been abruptly recalled to
his native heath, a sadder if not a wiser man? We cannot expect the
nature of the aggregate to be much better than the average natures
of its units. One may hear people gravely discussing the difference
between Frenchmen and Englishmen in political efficiency, and
resorting to assumed ethnological causes to explain it, when, very
likely, to save their lives they could not describe the difference
between a French commune and an English parish. To comprehend the
interesting contrasts between Gambetta in the Chamber of Deputies, and
Gladstone in the House of Commons, one should begin with a historical
inquiry into the causes, operating through forty generations, which
have frittered away self-government in the rural districts and small
towns of France, until there is very little left. If things in America
ever come to such a pass that the city council of Cambridge must ask
Congress each year how much money it can be allowed to spend for
municipal purposes, while the mayor of Cambridge holds his office
subject to removal by the President of the United States, we may
safely predict further extensive changes in the character of the
American people and their government. It was not for nothing that our
profoundest political thinker, Thomas Jefferson, attached so much
importance to the study of the township.
In determining the order of exposition, I have placed local government
first, beginning with the township as the simplest unit. It is well to
try to understand what is near and simple, before dealing with what is
remote and complex. In teaching geography with maps, it is wise to get
the pupil interested in the streets of his own town, the country roads
running out of it, and the neighbouring hills and streams, before
burdening his attention with the topographical details of Borrioboola
Gha. To study grand generalizations about government, before attending
to such of its features as come most directly before us, is to run the
risk of achieving a result like that attained by the New Hampshire
school-boy, who had studied geology in a text-book, but was not aware
that he had ever set eyes upon an igneous rock.
After the township, naturally comes the county. The city, as is here
shown, is not simply a larger town, but is much more complex in
organization. Historically, many cities have been, or still are,
equivalent to counties; and the development of the county must be
studied before we can understand that of the city. It has been briefly
indicated how these forms of local government grew up in England, and
how they have become variously modified in adapting themselves to
different social conditions in different parts of the United States.
Next in order come the general governments, those which possess and
exert, in one way or another, attributes of sovereignty. First, the
various colonial governments have been considered, and some features
of their metamorphosis into our modern state governments have been
described. In the course of this study, our attention is called to
the most original and striking feature of the development of civil
government upon American soil,--the written constitution, with the
accompanying power of the courts in certain cases to annul the acts
of the legislature. This is not only the most original feature of our
government, but it is in some respects the most important. Without the
Supreme Court, it is not likely that the Federal Union could have been
held together, since Congress has now and then passed an act which the
people in some of the states have regarded as unconstitutional and
tyrannical; and in the absence of a judicial method of settling such
questions, the only available remedy would have been nullification. I
have devoted a brief chapter to the origin and development of written
constitutions, and the connection of our colonial charters therewith.
Lastly, we come to the completed structure, the Federal Union; and by
this time we have examined so many points in the general theory
of American government, that our Federal Constitution can be more
concisely described, and (I believe) more quickly understood, than if
we had made it the subject of the first chapter instead of the last.
In conclusion, there have been added a few brief hints and suggestions
with reference to our political history. These remarks have been
intentionally limited. It is no part of the purpose of this book
to give an account of the doings of political parties under the
Constitution. But its study may fitly be supplemented by that of
Professor Alexander Johnston's "History of American Politics."
This arrangement not only proceeds from the simpler forms of
government to the more complex, but it follows the historical order of
development. From time immemorial, and down into the lowest strata
of savagery that have come within our ken, there have been clans and
tribes; and, as is here shown, a township was originally a stationary
clan, and a county was originally a stationary tribe. There were
townships and counties (or equivalent forms of organization) before
there were cities. In like manner there were townships, counties, and
cities long before there was anything in the world that could properly
be called a state. I have remarked below upon the way in which English
shires coalesced into little states, and in course of time the English
nation was formed by the union of such little states, which lost their
statehood (_i.e._, their functions of sovereignty, though not
their self-government within certain limits) in the process. Finally,
in America, we see an enormous nationality formed by the federation
of states which partially retain their statehood; and some of these
states are themselves of national dimensions, as, for example, New
York, which is nearly equal in area, quite equal in population, and
far superior in wealth, to Shakespeare's England.
In studying the local institutions of our different states, I have been
greatly helped by the "Johns Hopkins University Studies in History and
Politics," of which the eighth annual series is now in course of
publication. In the course of the pages below I have frequent occasion
to acknowledge my indebtedness to these learned and sometimes profoundly
suggestive monographs; but I cannot leave the subject without a special
word of gratitude to my friend, Dr. Herbert Adams, the editor of the
series, for the noble work which he is doing in promoting the study of
American history. It had always seemed to me that the mere existence of
printed questions in text-books proves that the publishers must have
rather a poor opinion of the average intelligence of teachers; and it
also seemed as if the practical effect of such questions must often be
to make the exercise of recitation more mechanical for both teachers and
pupils, and to encourage the besetting sin of "learning by heart."
Nevertheless, there are usually two sides to a case; and, in deference
to the prevailing custom, for which, no doubt, there is much to be said,
full sets of questions have been appended to each chapter and section.
It seemed desirable that such questions should be prepared by some one
especially familiar with the use of school-books; and for these I have
to thank Mr. F.A. Hill, Head Master of the Cambridge English High
School. I confess that Mr. Hill's questions have considerably modified
my opinion as to the merits of such apparatus. They seem to add very
materially to the usefulness of the book.
It will be observed that there are two sets of these questions,
entirely distinct in character and purpose. The first set--"Questions
on the Text"--is appended to each _section_, so as to be as near
the text as possible. These questions furnish an excellent topical
analysis of the text.[3] In a certain sense they ask "what the book
says," but the teacher is advised emphatically to discourage any such
thing as committing the text to memory. The tendency to rote-learning
is very strong. I had to contend with it in teaching history to
seniors at Harvard twenty years ago, but much has since been done
to check it through the development of the modern German seminary
methods. (For an explanation of these methods, see Dr. Herbert
Adams on "Seminary Libraries and University Extension," _J.H.U.
Studies_, V., xi.) With younger students the tendency is of course
stronger. It is only through much exercise that the mind learns how
to let itself--as Matthew Arnold used to say--"play freely about the
facts."
[Footnote 3: "This," says Mr. Hill, "will please those who prefer the
topical method, while it does not forbid the easy transformation
of topics to questions, which others may demand." In the table of
contents I have made a pretty full topical analysis of the book, which
may prove useful for comparison with Mr. Hill's.]
In order to supply the pupil with some wholesome exercise of this
sort, Mr. Hill has added, at the end of each _chapter_, a set of
"Suggestive Questions and Directions." Here he has thoroughly divined
the purpose of the book and done much to further it.
Problems or cases are suggested for the student to consider, and
questions are asked which cannot be disposed of by a direct appeal to
the text. Sometimes the questions go quite outside of the text, and
relate to topics concerning which it provides no information whatever.
This has been done with a purpose. The pupil should learn how to go
outside of the book and gather from scattered sources information
concerning questions that the book suggests. In other words, he should
begin to learn _how to make researches_, for that is coming to be
one of the useful arts, not merely for scholars, but for men and
women in many sorts of avocations. It is always useful, as well as
ennobling, to be able to trace knowledge to its sources. Work of this
sort involves more or less conference and discussion among classmates,
and calls for active aid from the teacher; and if the teacher does not
at first feel at home in these methods, practice will nevertheless
bring familiarity, and will prove most wholesome training. For the aid
of teachers and pupils, as well as of the general reader who wishes to
pursue the subject, I have added a bibliographical note at the end of
each chapter, immediately after Mr. Hill's "Suggestive Questions and
Directions."
This particular purpose in my book must be carefully borne in mind.
It explains the omission of many details which some text-books on the
same subject would be sure to include. To make a manual complete and
self-sufficing is precisely what I have not intended. The book is
designed to be suggestive and stimulating, to leave the reader with
scant information on some points, to make him (as Mr. Samuel Weller
says) "vish there wos more," and to show him how to go on by himself.
I am well aware that, in making an experiment in this somewhat new
direction, nothing is easier than to fall into errors of judgment. I
can hardly suppose that this book is free from such errors; but if in
spite thereof it shall turn out to be in any way helpful in bringing
the knowledge and use of the German seminary method into our higher
schools, I shall be more than satisfied.
Just here, let me say to young people in all parts of our country:--If
you have not already done so, it would be well worth while for you
to organize a debating society in your town or village, for the
discussion of such historical and practical questions relating to the
government of the United States as are suggested in the course of this
book. Once started, there need be no end of interesting and profitable
subjects for discussion. As a further guide to the books you need
in studying such subjects, use Mr. W.E. Foster's "References to the
Constitution of the United States," the invaluable pamphlet mentioned
below on page 277. If you cannot afford to buy the books, get the
public library of your town or village to buy them; or, perhaps,
organize a small special library for your society or club. Librarians
will naturally feel interested in such a matter, and will often
be able to help with advice. A few hours every week spent in such
wholesome studies cannot fail to do much toward the political
education of the local community, and thus toward the general
improvement of the American people. For the amelioration of things
will doubtless continue to be effected in the future, as it has been
effected in the past, not by ambitious schemes of sudden and universal
reform (which the sagacious man always suspects, just as he
suspects all schemes for returning a fabulously large interest upon
investments), but by the gradual and cumulative efforts of innumerable
individuals, each doing something to help or instruct those to whom
his influence extends. He who makes two clear ideas grow where there
was only one hazy one before, is the true benefactor of his species.
In conclusion, I must express my sincere thanks to Mr. Thomas Emerson,
superintendent of schools in Newton, for the very kind interest he has
shown in my work, in discussing its plan with me at the outset, in
reading the completed manuscript, and in offering valuable criticisms.
CAMBRIDGE, _August_ 5, 1890.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
TAXATION AND GOVERNMENT.
"Too much taxes".
What is taxation?
Taxation and eminent domain.
What is government?
The "ship of state".
"The government".
Whatever else it may be, "the government" is the power which imposes
taxes.
Difference between taxation and robbery.
Sometimes taxation is robbery.
The study of history is full of practical lessons, and helpful to
those who would be good citizens.
Perpetual vigilance is the price of liberty.
QUESTIONS ON THE TEXT.
SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS AND DIRECTIONS.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE.
CHAPTER II.
THE TOWNSHIP.
Section 1. _The New England Township_.
The most ancient and simple form of government.
New England settled by church congregations.
Policy of the early Massachusetts government as to land grants.
Smallness of the farms
Township and village
Social position of the settlers
The town-meeting
Selectmen; town-clerk
Town-treasurer; constables; assessors of taxes and overseers of the
poor
Act of 1647 establishing public schools
School committees
Field-drivers and pound-keepers; fence-viewers; other town officers
Calling the town-meeting
Town, county, and state taxes
Poll-tax
Taxes on real-estate; taxes on personal property
When and where taxes are assessed
Tax-lists
Cheating the government
The rate of taxation
Undervaluation; the burden of taxation
The "magic-fund" delusion
Educational value of the town-meeting
By-laws
Power and responsibility
There is nothing especially American, democratic, or meritorious about
"rotation in office"
QUESTIONS ON THE TEXT
Section 2. _Origin of the Township_.
Town-meetings in ancient Greece and Rome
Clans; the _mark_ and the _tun_
The Old-English township, the manor, and the parish
The vestry-meeting
Parish and vestry clerks; beadles, waywardens, haywards,
common-drivers, churchwardens, etc.
Transition from the English parish to the New England township
Building of states out of smaller political units
Representation; shire-motes; Earl Simon's Parliament
The township as the "unit of representation" in the shire-mote and in
the General Court
Contrast with the Russian village-community which is not represented
in the general government
QUESTIONS ON THE TEXT SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS AND DIRECTIONS
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
CHAPTER III.
THE COUNTY.
Section 1. _The County in its Beginnings_.
Why do we have counties?
Clans and tribes
The English nation, like the American, grew out of the union of small
states
Ealdorman and sheriff; shire-mote and county court
The coroner, or "crown officer"
Justices of the peace; the Quarter Sessions; the lord lieutenant
Decline of the English county; beginnings of counties in Massachusetts
QUESTIONS ON THE TEXT
Section 2. _The Modern County in Massachusetts_.
County commissioners, etc.; shire-towns and court-houses
Justices of the peace, and trial justices
The sheriff
QUESTIONS ON THE TEXT
Section 3. _The Old Virginia County_.
Virginia sparsely settled; extensive land grants to individuals
Navigable rivers; absence of towns; slavery
Social position of the settlers
Virginia parishes; the vestry was a close corporation
Powers of the vestry
The county was the unit of representation
The county court was virtually a close corporation
The county-seat, or Court House
Powers of the court; the sheriff
The county-lieutenant
Contrast between old Virginia and old New England, in respect of local
government
Jefferson's opinion of township government
"Court-day" in old Virginia
Virginia has been prolific in great leaders
QUESTIONS ON THE TEXT
SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS AND DIRECTIONS
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
CHAPTER IV.
TOWNSHIP AND COUNTY.
Section 1. _Various Local Systems._
Parishes in South Carolina
The back country; the "regulators"
The district system
The modern South Carolina county
The counties are too large
Tendency of the school district to develop into something like a
township
Local institutions in colonial Maryland; the hundred
Clans; brotherhoods, or phratries; and tribes
Origin of the hundred; the hundred court; the high constable
Decay of the hundred; hundred-meeting in Maryland
The hundred in Delaware; the levy court, or representative county
assembly
The old Pennsylvania county
Town-meetings in New Tort
The county board of supervisors
QUESTIONS ON THE TEXT
Section 2. _Settlement of the Public Domain._
Westward movement of population along parallels of latitude
Method of surveying the public lands
Origin of townships in the West
Formation of counties in the West
Some effects of this system
The reservation of a section for public schools
In this reservation there were the germs of township government
But at first the county system prevailed
QUESTIONS ON THE TEXT
Section 3. _The Representative Township-County System in the
West._
The town-meeting in Michigan
Conflict between township and county systems in Illinois
Effects of the Ordinance of 1787
Intense vitality of the township system
County option and township option in Missouri, Nebraska, Minnesota,
and Dakota
Grades of township government in the West
An excellent result of the absence of centralization in the United
States
Effect of the self-governing school district in the South, in preparing
the way for the self-governing township
Woman-suffrage in the school district
QUESTIONS ON THE TEXT
SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS AND DIRECTIONS
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
CHAPTER V.
THE CITY.
Section 1. _Direct and Indirect Government._
Summary of the foregoing results; township government is direct,
county government is indirect
Representative government is necessitated in a county by the extent of
territory, and in a city by the multitude of people
Josiah Quincy's account of the Boston town-meeting in 1830
Distinctions between towns and cities in America and in England
QUESTIONS ON THE TEXT
Section 2. _Origin of English Boroughs and Cities._
Origin of the _chesters_ and _casters_ in Roman camps
Coalescence of towns into fortified boroughs
The borough as a hundred; it acquires a court
The borough as a county; it acquires a sheriff
Government of London under Henry I
The guilds; the town guild, and Guild Hall
Government of London as perfected in the thirteenth century; mayor,
aldermen, and common council
The city of London, and the metropolitan district
English cities were for a long time the bulwarks of liberty
Simon de Montfort and the cities
Oligarchical abuses in English cities, beginning with the Tudor period
The Municipal Reform Act of 1835
Government of the city of New York before the Revolution
Changes after the Revolution
City government in Philadelphia in the eighteenth century
The very tradition of good government was lacking in these cities
QUESTIONS ON THE TEXT
Section 3. _The Government of Cities in the United States_.
Several features of our municipal governments
In many cases they do not seem to work well
Rapid growth of American cities
Some consequences of this rapid growth
Wastefulness resulting from want of foresight
Growth in complexity of government in cities
Illustrated by list of municipal officers in Boston.
How city government comes to be a mystery to the citizens, in some
respects harder to understand than state and national government
Dread of the "one-man power" has in many cases led to scattering and
weakening of responsibility
Committees inefficient for executive purposes; the "Circumlocution
Office"
Alarming increase of city debts, and various attempts to remedy the
evil
Experience of New York with state interference in municipal affairs;
unsatisfactory results
The Tweed Ring in New York
The present is a period of experiments
The new government of Brooklyn
Necessity of separating municipal from national politics
Notion that the suffrage ought to be restricted; evils wrought by
ignorant voters
Evils wrought by wealthy speculators; testimony of the Pennsylvania
Municipal Commission
Dangers of a restricted suffrage
Baneful effects of mixing city politics with national politics
The "spoils system" must be destroyed, root and branch; ballot reform
also indispensable
QUESTIONS ON THE TEXT
SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS AND DIRECTIONS
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
CHAPTER VI.
THE STATE.
Section 1. _The Colonial Governments_.
Claims of Spain to the possession of North America
Claims of France and England
The London and Plymouth Companies
Their common charter
Dissolution of the two companies
States formed in the three zones
Formation of representative governments; House of Burgesses in
Virginia
Company of Massachusetts Bay
Transfer of the charter from England to Massachusetts
The General Court; assistants and deputies
Virtual independence of Massachusetts, and quarrels with the Crown
New charter of Massachusetts in 1692; its liberties curtailed
Republican governments in Connecticut and Rhode Island
Counties palatine in England; proprietary charter of Maryland
Proprietary charter of Pennsylvania
Quarrels between Penns and Calverts; Mason and Dixon's line
Other proprietary governments
They generally became unpopular
At the time of the Revolution there were three forms of colonial
government: 1. Republican; 2. Proprietary; 3. Royal
(After 1692 the government of Massachusetts might be described as
Semi-royal)
In all three forms there was a representative assembly, which alone
could impose taxes
The governor's council was a kind of upper house
The colonial government was much like the English system in miniature
The Americans never admitted the supremacy of parliament
Except in the regulation of maritime commerce
In England there grew up the theory of the imperial supremacy of
parliament
And the conflict between the British and American theories was
precipitated by becoming involved in the political schemes of George
III.
QUESTIONS ON THE TEXT
Section 2. _The Transition from Colonial to State Governments._
Dissolution of assemblies and parliaments
Committees of correspondence; provincial congresses
Provisional governments; "governors" and "presidents"
Origin of the senates
Likenesses and differences between British and American systems
QUESTIONS ON THE TEXT
Section 3. _The State Governments_.
Later modifications
Universal suffrage
Separation between legislative and executive departments; its
advantages and disadvantages as compared with the European plan
In our system the independence of the executive is of vital importance
The state executive
The governor's functions: 1. Adviser of legislature; 2. Commander of
state militia; 3. Royal prerogative of pardon; 4. Veto power
Importance of the veto power as a safeguard against corruption In
building the state, the local self-government was left unimpaired
Instructive contrast with France
Some causes of French political incapacity
Vastness of the functions retained by the states in the American Union
Illustration from recent English history
Independence of the state courts
Constitution of the state courts
Elective and appointive judges
QUESTIONS ON THE TEXT
SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS AND DIRECTIONS
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
CHAPTER VII.
WRITTEN CONSTITUTIONS.
In the American state there is a power above the legislature
Germs of the idea of a written constitution
Development of the idea of contract in Roman law; mediaeval charters
The "Great Charter" (1215)
The Bill of Rights (1689)
Foreshadowing of the American idea by Sir Harry Vane (1666)
The Mayflower compact (1620)
The "Fundamental Orders" of Connecticut (1639)
Germinal development of the colonial charter toward the modern state
constitution
Abnormal development of some recent state constitutions, encroaching
upon the legislature
The process of amending constitutions
The Swiss "Referendum"
QUESTIONS ON THE TEXT
SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS AND DIRECTIONS
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
CHAPTER VIII.
THE FEDERAL UNION.
Section 1. _Origin of the Federal Union_.
Circumstances favourable to the union of the colonies. The New England
Confederacy (1643-84). Albany Congress (1754); Stamp Act Congress
(1765); Committees of Correspondence (1772-75). The Continental Congress
(1774-89). The several states were never at any time sovereign states.
The Articles of Confederation. Nature and powers of the Continental
Congress. It could not impose taxes, and therefore was not fully endowed
with sovereignty. Decline of the Continental Congress. Weakness of the
sentiment of union; anarchical tendencies. The Federal Convention
(1787).
QUESTIONS ON THE TEXT.
Section 2. _The Federal Congress_.
The House of Representatives. The three fifths compromise. The
Connecticut compromise. The Senate. Electoral districts; the
"Gerrymander". The election at large. Time of assembling. Privileges of
members. The Speaker. Impeachment in England; in the United States. The
president's veto power.
QUESTIONS ON THE TEXT.
Section 3. _The Federal Executive_.
The title of "President". The electoral college. The twelfth
amendment. The electoral commission (1877). Provisions against a lapse
of the presidency.
Original purpose of the electoral college not fulfilled
Electors formerly chosen in many states by districts; now always on a
general ticket
"Minority presidents"
Advantages of the electoral system
Nomination of candidates by congressional caucus (1800-24)
Nominating conventions; the "primary"; the district convention; the
national convention
Qualifications for the presidency; the term of office
Powers and duties of the president
The president's message
Executive departments; the cabinet
The secretary of state
Diplomatic and consular service
The secretary of the treasury
The other departments
QUESTIONS ON THE TEXT
Section 4. _The Nation and the States._
Difference between confederation and federal union
Powers granted to Congress
The "Elastic Clause"
Powers denied to the states
Evils of an inconvertible paper currency
Powers denied to Congress
Bills of attainder
Intercitizenship; mode of mating amendments
QUESTIONS ON THE TEXT
Section 5. _The Federal Judiciary._
Need for a federal judiciary
Federal courts and judges
District attorneys and marshals
The federal jurisdiction
QUESTIONS ON THE TEXT
Section 6. _Territorial Government._
The Northwest Territory and the Ordinance of 1787
Other territories and their government
QUESTIONS ON THE TEXT
Section 7. _Ratification and Amendments_.
Provisions for ratification
Concessions to slavery
Demand for a bill of rights
The first ten amendments
QUESTIONS ON THE TEXT
Section 8. _A Few Words about Politics_.
Federal taxation
Hamilton's policy; excise; tariff
Origin of American political parties; strict and loose construction of
the Elastic Clause
Tariff, Internal Improvements, and National Bank.
Civil Service reform
Origin of the "spoils system" in the state polities of New Tort and
Pennsylvania
"Rotation in office;" the Crawford Act
How the "spoils system" was made national
The Civil Service Act of 1883
The Australian ballot
The English system of accounting for election expenses
QUESTIONS ON THE TEXT
SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS AND DIRECTIONS
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
APPENDIX.
A. The Articles of Confederation
B. The Constitution of the United States
C. Magna Charta
D. Part of the Bill of Rights, 1689
E. The Fundamental Orders of Connecticut
F. The States classified according to origin
G. Table of states and territories
H. Population of the United States 1790-1880, with percentages of
urban population
I. An Examination Paper for Customs Clerks
J. The New York Corrupt Practices Act of 1890
K. Specimen of an Australian ballot
INDEX
CIVIL GOVERNMENT IN THE UNITED STATES, CONSIDERED WITH SOME REFERENCE
TO ITS ORIGINS.
CHAPTER I.
TAXATION AND GOVERNMENT.
In that strangely beautiful story, "The Cloister and the Hearth," in
which Charles Reade has drawn such a vivid picture of human life at the
close of the Middle Ages, there is a good description of the siege of a
revolted town by the army of the Duke of Burgundy. Arrows whiz,
catapults hurl their ponderous stones, wooden towers are built, secret
mines are exploded. The sturdy citizens, led by a tall knight who seems
to bear a charmed life, baffle every device of the besiegers. At length
the citizens capture the brother of the duke's general, and the
besiegers capture the tall knight, who turns out to be no knight after
all, but just a plebeian hosier. The duke's general is on the point of
ordering the tradesman who has made so much trouble to be shot, but the
latter still remains master of the situation; for, as he dryly observes,
if any harm comes to him, the enraged citizens will hang the general's
brother. Some parley ensues, in which the shrewd hosier promises for the
townsfolk to set free their prisoner and pay a round sum of money if the
besieging army will depart and leave them in peace. The offer is
accepted, and so the matter is amicably settled. As the worthy citizen
is about to take his leave, the general ventures a word of inquiry as to
the cause of the town's revolt. "What, then, is your grievance, my good
friend?" Our hosier knight, though deft with needle and keen with lance,
has a stammering tongue. He answers: "Tuta--tuta--tuta--tuta--too much
taxes!"
[Sidenote: "Too much taxes."]
"Too much taxes:" those three little words furnish us with a clue
wherewith to understand and explain a great deal of history. A great
many sieges of towns, so horrid to have endured though so picturesque
to read about, hundreds of weary marches and deadly battles, thousands
of romantic plots that have led their inventors to the scaffold, have
owed their origin to questions of taxation. The issue between the
ducal commander and the warlike tradesman has been tried over and
over again in every country and in every age, and not always has the
oppressor been so speedily thwarted and got rid of. The questions as
to how much the taxes shall be, and who is to decide how much they
shall be, are always and in every stage of society questions of most
fundamental importance. And ever since men began to make history, a
very large part of what they have done, in the way of making history,
has been the attempt to settle these questions, whether by discussion
or by blows, whether in council chambers or on the battlefield. The
French Revolution of 1789, the most terrible political convulsion of
modern times, was caused chiefly by "too much taxes," and by the fact
that the people who paid the taxes were not the people who decided
what the taxes were to be. Our own Revolution, which made the United
States a nation independent of Great Britain, was brought on by the
disputed question as to who was to decide what taxes American citizens
must pay.
[Sidenote: What is taxation?]
What, then, are taxes? The question is one which is apt to come up,
sooner or later, to puzzle children. They find no difficulty in
understanding the butcher's bill for so many pounds of meat, or the
tailor's bill for so many suits of clothes, where the value received
is something that can be seen and handled. But the tax bill, though
it comes as inevitably as the autumnal frosts, bears no such obvious
relation to the incidents of domestic life; it is not quite so clear
what the money goes for; and hence it is apt to be paid by the head
of the household with more or less grumbling, while for the younger
members of the family it requires some explanation.
It only needs to be pointed out, however, that in every town some
things are done for the benefit of all the inhabitants of the town,
things which concern one person just as much as another. Thus roads
are made and kept in repair, school-houses are built and salaries paid
to school-teachers, there are constables who take criminals to jail,
there are engines for putting out fires, there are public libraries,
town cemeteries, and poor-houses. Money raised for these purposes,
which are supposed to concern all the inhabitants, is supposed to be
paid by all the inhabitants, each one furnishing his share; and the
share which each one pays is his town tax.
[Sidenote: Taxation and eminent domain.]
From this illustration it would appear that taxes are private property
taken for public purposes; and in making this statement we come
very near the truth. Taxes are portions of private property which a
government takes for its public purposes. Before going farther, let
us pause to observe that there is one other way, besides taxation, in
which government sometimes takes private property for public purposes.
Roads and streets are of great importance to the general public; and
the government of the town or city in which you live may see fit, in
opening a new street, to run it across your garden, or to make you
move your house or shop out of the way for it. In so doing, the
government either takes away or damages some of your property. It
exercises rights over your property without asking your permission.
This power of government over private property is called "the right of
eminent domain." It means that a man's private interests must not be
allowed to obstruct the interests of the whole community in which
he lives. But in two ways the exercise of eminent domain is unlike
taxation. In the first place, it is only occasional, and affects only
certain persons here or there, whereas taxation goes on perpetually
and affects all persons who own property. In the second place, when
the government takes away a piece of your land to make a road, it pays
you money in return for it; perhaps not quite so much as you believe
the piece of land was worth in the market; the average human nature is
doubtless such that men seldom give fair measure for measure unless
they feel compelled to, and it is not easy to put a government under
compulsion. Still it gives you something; it does not ask you to part
with your property for nothing. Now in the case of taxation, the
government takes your money and seems to make no return to you
individually; but it is supposed to return to you the value of it in
the shape of well-paved streets, good schools, efficient protection
against criminals, and so forth.
[Sidenote: What is government?]
In giving this brief preliminary definition of taxes and taxation, we
have already begun to speak of "the government" of the town or city
in which you live. We shall presently have to speak of other
"governments,"--as the government of your state and the government of
the United States; and we shall now and then have occasion to allude
to the governments of other countries in which the people are free,
as, for example, England; and of some countries in which the people
are not free, as, for example, Russia. It is desirable, therefore,
that we should here at the start make sure what we mean by
"government," in order that we may have a clear idea of what we are
talking about.
[Sidenote: The "ship of state."]
Our verb "to govern" is an Old French word, one of the great host of
French words which became a part of the English language between the
eleventh and fourteenth centuries, when so much French was spoken in
England. The French word was _gouverner_, and its oldest form was
the Latin _gubernare_, a word which the Romans borrowed from
the Greek, and meant originally "to steer the ship." Hence it very
naturally came to mean "to guide," "to direct," "to command." The
comparison between governing and steering was a happy one. To govern
is not to command as a master commands a slave, but it is to issue
orders and give directions for the common good; for the interests of
the man at the helm are the same as those of the people in the ship.
All must float or sink together. Hence we sometimes speak of the "ship
of state," and we often call the state a "commonwealth," or something
in the weal or welfare of which all the people are alike interested.
Government, then, is the directing or managing of such affairs as
concern all the people alike,--as, for example, the punishment of
criminals, the enforcement of contracts, the defence against foreign
enemies, the maintenance of roads and bridges, and so on. To the
directing or managing of such affairs all the people are expected to
contribute, each according to his ability, in the shape of taxes.
Government is something which is supported by the people and kept
alive by taxation. There is no other way of keeping it alive.
[Sidenote: "The government."]
The business of carrying on government--of steering the ship of
state--either requires some special training, or absorbs all the
time and attention of those who carry it on; and accordingly, in all
countries, certain persons or groups of persons are selected or in
some way set apart, for longer or shorter periods of time, to perform
the work of government. Such persons may be a king with his council,
as in the England of the twelfth century; or a parliament led by a
responsible ministry, as in the England of to-day; or a president
and two houses of congress, as in the United States; or a board of
selectmen, as in a New England town. When we speak of "a government"
or "the government," we often mean the group of persons thus set
apart for carrying on the work of government. Thus, by "the Gladstone
government" we mean Mr. Gladstone, with his colleagues in the cabinet
and his Liberal majority in the House of Commons; and by "the Lincoln
government," properly speaking, was meant President Lincoln, with the
Republican majorities in the Senate and House of Representatives.
[Sidenote: Whatever else it may be, "the government" is the power which
taxes]
"The government" has always many things to do, and there are many
different lights in which we might regard it. But for the present
there is one thing which we need especially to keep in mind. "The
government" is the power which can rightfully take away a part of your
property, in the shape of taxes, to be used for public purposes. A
government is not worthy of the name, and cannot long be kept in
existence, unless it can raise money by taxation, and use force, if
necessary, in collecting its taxes. The only general government of the
United States during the Revolutionary War, and for six years after
its close, was the Continental Congress, which had no authority to
raise money by taxation. In order to feed and clothe the army and pay
its officers and soldiers, it was obliged to _ask_ for money from
the several states, and hardly ever got as much as was needed. It was
obliged to borrow millions of dollars from France and Holland, and to
issue promissory notes which soon became worthless. After the war was
over it became clear that this so-called government could neither
preserve order nor pay its debts, and accordingly it ceased to be
respected either at home or abroad, and it became necessary for the
American people to adopt a new form of government. Between the old
Continental Congress and the government under which we have lived
since 1789, the differences were many; but by far the most essential
difference was that the new government could raise money by taxation,
and was thus enabled properly to carry on the work of governing.
If we are in any doubt as to what is really the government of some
particular country, we cannot do better than observe what person or
persons in that country are clothed with authority to tax the people.
Mere names, as customarily applied to governments, are apt to be
deceptive. Thus in the middle of the eighteenth century France and
England were both called "kingdoms;" but so far as kingly power was
concerned, Louis XV. was a very different sort of a king from George
II. The French king could impose taxes on his people, and it might
therefore be truly said that the government of France was in the king.
Indeed, it was Louis XV's immediate predecessor who made the famous
remark, "The state is myself." But the English king could not impose
taxes; the only power in England that could do that was the House of
Commons, and accordingly it is correct to say that in England, at the
time of which we are speaking, the government was (as it still is) in
the House of Commons.
[Sidenote: Difference between taxation and robbery.]
I say, then, the most essential feature of a government--or at any
rate the feature with which it is most important for us to become
familiar at the start--is its power of taxation. The government is
that which taxes. If individuals take away some of your property for
purposes of their own, it is robbery; you lose your money and get
nothing in return. But if the government takes away some of your
property in the shape of taxes, it is supposed to render to you an
equivalent in the shape of good government, something without which
our lives and property would not be safe. Herein seems to lie the
difference between taxation and robbery. When the highwayman points
his pistol at me and I hand him my purse and watch, I am robbed. But
when I pay the tax-collector, who can seize my watch or sell my house
over my head if I refuse, I am simply paying what is fairly due from
me toward supporting the government.
[Sidenote: Sometimes taxation _is_ robbery.]
In what we have been saying it has thus far been assumed that the
government is in the hands of upright and competent men and is
properly administered. It is now time to observe that robbery may be
committed by governments as well as by individuals. If the business of
governing is placed in the hands of men who have an imperfect sense of
their duty toward the public, if such men raise money by taxation and
then spend it on their own pleasures, or to increase their political
influence, or for other illegitimate purposes, it is really robbery,
just as much as if these men were to stand with pistols by the
roadside and empty the wallets of people passing by. They make a
dishonest use of their high position as members of government, and
extort money for which they make no return in the shape of services
to the public. History is full of such lamentable instances of
misgovernment, and one of the most important uses of the study of
history is to teach us how they have occurred, in order that we may
learn how to avoid them, as far as possible, in the future.
[Sidenote: The study of history.]
When we begin in childhood the study of history we are attracted
chiefly by anecdotes of heroes and their battles, kings and their
courts, how the Spartans fought at Thermopylae, how Alfred let the
cakes burn, how Henry VIII. beheaded his wives, how Louis XIV. used to
live at Versailles. It is quite right that we should be interested in
such personal details, the more so the better; for history has been
made by individual men and women, and until we have understood the
character of a great many of those who have gone before us, and how
they thought and felt in their time, we have hardly made a fair
beginning in the study of history. The greatest historians, such as
Freeman and Mommsen, show as lively an interest in persons as in
principles; and I would not give much for the historical theories of a
man who should declare himself indifferent to little personal details.
[Sidenote: It is full of practical lessons;]
Some people, however, never outgrow the child's notion of history
as merely a mass of pretty anecdotes or stupid annals, without any
practical bearing upon our own every-day life. There could not be a
greater mistake. Very little has happened in the past which has not
some immediate practical lessons for us; and when we study history
in order to profit by the experience of our ancestors, to find out
wherein they succeeded and wherein they failed, in order that we may
emulate their success and avoid their errors, then history becomes the
noblest and most valuable of studies. It then becomes, moreover, an
arduous pursuit, at once oppressive and fascinating from its endless
wealth of material, and abounding in problems which the most diligent
student can never hope completely to solve.
[Sidenote: and helpful to those who would be good citizens.]
[Sidenote: Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.]
Few people have the leisure to undertake a systematic and thorough
study of history, but every one ought to find time to learn the
principal features of the governments under which we live, and to get
some inkling of the way in which these governments have come into
existence and of the causes which have made them what they are. Some
such knowledge is necessary to the proper discharge of the duties of
citizenship. Political questions, great and small, are perpetually
arising, to be discussed in the newspapers and voted on at the polls;
and it is the duty of every man and woman, young or old, to try to
understand them. That is a duty which we owe, each and all of us, to
ourselves and to our fellow-countrymen. For if such questions are
not settled in accordance with knowledge, they will be settled in
accordance with ignorance; and that is a kind of settlement likely
to be fraught with results disastrous to everybody. It cannot be too
often repeated that eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.
People sometimes argue as if they supposed that because our national
government is called a republic and not a monarchy, and because we
have free schools and universal suffrage, therefore our liberties are
forever secure. Our government is, indeed, in most respects, a marvel
of political skill; and in ordinary times it runs so smoothly that now
and then, absorbed as most of us are in domestic cares, we are apt to
forget that it will not run of itself. To insure that the government
of the nation or the state, of the city or the township, shall
be properly administered, requires from every citizen the utmost
watchfulness and intelligence of which he is capable.
QUESTIONS ON THE TEXT.
_To the teacher_. Encourage full answers. Do not permit anything
like committing the text to memory. In the long run the pupil who
relies upon his own language, however inferior it may be to that of
the text, is better off. Naturally, with thoughtful study, the pupil's
language will feel the influence of that of the text, and so improve.
The important thing in any answer is the fundamental thought. This
idea once grasped, the expression of it may receive some attention.
The expression will often be broken and faulty, partly because of
the immaturity of the pupil, and partly because of the newness and
difficulty of the theme. Do not let the endeavour to secure excellent
expression check a certain freedom and spontaneity that should be
encouraged in the pupil. When the teacher desires to place special
stress on excellent presentation, it is wise to assign topics
beforehand, so that each pupil may know definitely what is expected of
him, and prepare himself accordingly.
1. Tell the story that introduces the chapter.
2. What lesson is it designed to teach?
3. What caused the French Revolution?
4. What caused the American Revolution?
5. Compare the tax bill with that of the butcher or tailor.
6. What are taxes raised for in a town? For whose benefit?
7. Define taxes.
8. Define the right of eminent domain.
9. Distinguish between taxes and the right of eminent domain.
10. What is the origin of the word "govern"?
11. Define government.
12. By whom is it supported, how is it kept alive, and by whom is it
carried on?
13. Give illustrations of governments.
14. What one power must government have to be worthy of the name?
15. What was the principal weakness of the government during the
American Revolution?
16. Compare this government with that of the United States since 1789.
17. If it is doubtful what the real government of a country is, how
may the doubt be settled?
18. Illustrate by reference to France and England in the eighteenth
century.
19. What is the difference between taxation and robbery?
20. Under what conditions may taxation become robbery?
21. To what are we easily attracted in our first study of history?
22. What ought to be learned from history?
23. What sort of knowledge is helpful in discharging the duties of
citizenship?
24. Show how "eternal vigilance is the price of liberty."
SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS AND DIRECTIONS.
_To the teacher_. The object of this series of questions and
suggestions is to stimulate reading, investigating, and thinking. It
is not expected, indeed it is hardly possible, that each pupil shall
respond to them all. A single question may cost prolonged study.
Assign the numbers, therefore, to individuals to report upon at a
subsequent recitation,--one or more to each pupil, according to the
difficulty of the numbers. Reserve some for class consideration or
discussion. Now and then let the teacher answer a question himself,
partly to furnish the pupils with good examples of answers, and partly
to insure attention to matters that might otherwise escape notice.
1. Are there people who receive no benefit from their payment of
taxes?
2. Are the benefits received by people in proportion to the amounts
paid by them?
3. Show somewhat fully what taxes had to do with the French
Revolution.
4. Show somewhat fully what taxes had to do with the American
Revolution.
5. Give illustrations of the exercise of the right of eminent domain
in your own town or county or state.
6. Do railroad corporations exercise such a right? How do they succeed
in getting land for their tracks?
7. In case of disagreement, how is a fair price determined for
property taken by eminent domain?
8. What persons are prominent to-day in the government of your own
town or city? Of your own county? Of your own state? Of the United
States?
9. Who constitute the government of the school to which you belong?
Does this question admit of more than one answer? Has the government
of your school any power to tax the people to support the school?
10. What is the difference between a state and the government of a
state?
11. Which is the more powerful branch of the English Parliament? Why?
12. Is it a misuse of the funds of a city to provide entertainments
for the people July 4? To expend money in entertaining distinguished
guests? To provide flowers, carriages, cigars, wines, etc., for such
guests?
13. What is meant by subordinating public office to private ends? Cite
instances from history.
14. What histories have you read? What one of them, if any, would you
call a "child's history," or a "drum and trumpet" history? What one of
them, if any, has impressed any lessons upon you?
15. Mention some principles that history has taught you.
16. Mention a few offices, and tell the sort of intelligence that is
needed by the persons who hold them. What results might follow if such
intelligence were lacking?
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE.
It is designed in the bibliographical notes to indicate some
authorities to which reference may be made for greater detail than is
possible in an elementary work like the present. It is believed
that the notes will prove a help to teacher and pupil in special
investigations, and to the reader who may wish to make selections from
excellent sources for purposes of self-culture. It is hardly necessary
to add that it is sometimes worth much to the student to know where
valuable information may be obtained, even when it is not practicable
to make immediate use of it.
Certain books should always be at the teacher's desk during the
instruction in civil government, and as easily accessible as the large
dictionary; as, for instance, the following: The General Statutes of the
state, the manual or blue-book of the state legislature, and, if the
school is in a city, the city charter and ordinances. It is also
desirable to add to this list the statutes of the United States and a
manual of Congress or of the general government. Manuals may be obtained
through representatives in the state legislature and in Congress. They
will answer nearly every purpose if they are not of the latest issue.
The _Statesman's Year Book_, published by Macmillan & Co., New York,
every year, is exceedingly valuable for reference. Certain almanacs,
particularly the comprehensive ones issued by the New York _Tribune_ and
the New York _World_, are rich in state and national statistics, and so
inexpensive as to be within everybody's means.
TAXATION AND GOVERNMENT.--As to the causes of the American revolution,
see my _War of Independence_, Boston, 1889; and as to the weakness of
the government of the United States before 1789, see my _Critical Period
of American History_, Boston, 1888. As to the causes of the French
revolution, see Paul Lacombe, _The Growth of a People_, N.Y., 1883, and
the third volume of Kitchin's _History of France_, London, 1887; also
Morse Stephens, _The French Revolution_, vol. i., N.Y., 1887; Taine,
_The Ancient Regime_,--N.Y., 1876, and _The Revolution_, 2 vols., N.Y.,
1880. The student may read with pleasure and profit Dickens's _Tale of
Two Cities_. For the student familiar with French, an excellent book is
Albert Babeau, _Le Village sous l'ancien Régime_, Paris, 1879; see also
Tocqueville, _L'ancien Régime et la Révolution_, 7th ed., Paris, 1866.
There is a good sketch of the causes of the French revolution in the
fifth volume of Leeky's _History of England in the Eighteenth Century_,
N.Y., 1887; see also Buckle's _History of Civilization_, chaps,
xii.-xiv. There is no better commentary on my first chapter than the
lurid history of France in the eighteenth century. The strong contrast
to English and American history shows us most instructively what we have
thus far escaped.
CHAPTER II.
THE TOWNSHIP.
Section 1. _The New England Township_.
Of the various kinds of government to be found in the United States,
we may begin by considering that of the New England township. As
we shall presently see, it is in principle of all known forms of
government the oldest as well as the simplest. Let us observe how the
New England township grew up.
[Sidenote: New England was settled by church congregations.]
When people from England first came to dwell in the wilderness of
Massachusetts Bay, they settled in groups upon small irregular-shaped
patches of land, which soon came to be known as townships. There were
several reasons why they settled thus in small groups, instead of
scattering about over the country and carving out broad estates for
themselves. In the first place, their principal reason for coming to
New England was their dissatisfaction with the way in which church
affairs were managed in the old country. They wished to bring about a
reform in the church, in such wise that the members of a congregation
should have more voice than formerly in the church-government, and
that the minister of each congregation should be more independent than
formerly of the bishop and of the civil government. They also wished
to abolish sundry rites and customs of the church of which they had
come to disapprove. Finding the resistance to their reforms quite
formidable in England, and having some reason to fear that they might
be themselves crushed in the struggle, they crossed the ocean in order
to carry out their ideas in a new and remote country where they might
be comparatively secure from interference. Hence it was quite natural
that they should come in congregations, led by their favourite
ministers,--such men, for example, as Higginson and Cotton, Hooker and
Davenport. When such men, famous in England for their bold preaching
and imperiled thereby, decided to move to America, a considerable
number of their parishioners would decide to accompany them, and
similarly minded members of neighbouring churches would leave their
own pastor and join in the migration. Such a group of people, arriving
on the coast of Massachusetts, would naturally select some convenient
locality, where they might build their houses near together and all go
to the same church.
[Sidenote: Land grants.]
This migration, therefore, was a movement, not of individuals or of
separate families, but of church-congregations, and it continued to be
so as the settlers made their way inland and westward. The first
river towns of Connecticut were founded by congregations coming from
Dorchester, Cambridge, and Watertown. This kind of settlement was
favoured by the government of Massachusetts, which made grants of
land, not to individuals but to companies of people who wished to live
together and attend the same church.
In the second place, the soil of New England was not favourable to the
cultivation of great quantities of staple articles, such as rice
or tobacco, so that there was nothing to tempt people to undertake
extensive plantations.
[Sidenote: Small farms.]
Most of the people lived on small farms, each family raising but
little more than enough food for its own support; and the small size
of the farms made it possible to have a good many in a compact
neighbourhood. It appeared also that towns could be more easily
defended against the Indians than scattered plantations; and this
doubtless helped to keep people together, although if there had been
any strong inducement for solitary pioneers to plunge into the great
woods, as in later years so often happened at the West, it is not
likely that any dread of the savages would have hindered them.
[Sidenote: Township and village.]
[Sidenote: Social positions of settlers.]
Thus the early settlers of New England came to live in townships. A
township would consist of about as many farms as could be disposed
within convenient distance from the meeting-house, where all the
inhabitants, young and old, gathered every Sunday, coming on horseback
or afoot. The meeting-house was thus centrally situated, and near
it was the town pasture or "common," with the school-house and the
block-house, or rude fortress for defence against the Indians. For the
latter building some commanding position was apt to be selected, and
hence we so often find the old village streets of New England running
along elevated ridges or climbing over beetling hilltops. Around the
meeting-house and common the dwellings gradually clustered into a
village, and after a while the tavern, store, and town-house made
their appearance.
Among the people who thus tilled the farms and built up the villages of
New England, the differences in what we should call social position,
though noticeable, were not extreme. While in England some had been
esquires or country magistrates, or "lords of the manor,"--a phrase
which does not mean a member of the peerage, but a landed proprietor
with dependent tenants[1]; some had been yeomen, or persons holding
farms by some free kind of tenure; some had been artisans or tradesmen
in cities. All had for many generations been more or less accustomed to
self-government and to public meetings for discussing local affairs.
That self-government, especially as far as church matters were
concerned, they were stoutly bent upon maintaining and extending.
Indeed, that was what they had crossed the ocean for. Under these
circumstances they developed a kind of government which we may describe
in the present tense, for its methods are pretty much the same to-day
that they were two centuries ago.
[Footnote 1: Compare the Scottish "laird."]
[Sidenote: The town-meeting.]
In a New England township the people directly govern themselves; the
government is the people, or, to speak with entire precision, it is
all the male inhabitants of one-and-twenty years of age and upwards.
The people tax themselves. Once each year, usually in March but
sometimes as early as February or as late as April, a "town-meeting"
is held, at which all the grown men of the township are expected to be
present and to vote, while any one may introduce motions or take part
in the discussion. In early times there was a fine for non-attendance,
but at is no longer the case; it is supposed that a due regard to his
own interests will induce every man to come.
The town-meeting is held in the town-house, but at first it used to be
held in the church, which was thus a "meeting-house" for civil as well
as ecclesiastical purposes. At the town-meeting measures relating
to the administration of town affairs are discussed and adopted or
rejected; appropriations are made for the public expenses of the
town, or in other words the amount of the town taxes for the year is
determined; and town officers are elected for the year. Let us first
enumerate these officers.
[Sidenote: Selectmen.]
The principal executive magistrates of the town are the selectmen.
They are three, five, seven, or nine in number, according to the size
of the town and the amount of public business to be transacted. The
odd number insures a majority decision in case of any difference of
opinion among them. They have the general management of the public
business. They issue warrants for the holding of town-meetings, and
they can call such a meeting at any time during the year when there
seems to be need for it, but the warrant must always specify the
subjects which are to be discussed and acted on at the meeting. The
selectmen also lay out highways, grant licenses, and impanel jurors;
they may act as health officers and issue orders regarding sewerage,
the abatement of nuisances, or the isolation of contagious diseases;
in many cases they act as assessors of taxes, and as overseers of the
poor. They are the proper persons to listen to complaints if anything
goes wrong in the town. In county matters and state matters they speak
for the town, and if it is a party to a law-suit they represent it in
court; for the New England town is a legal corporation, and as such
can hold property, and sue and be sued. In a certain sense the
selectmen may be said to be "the government" of the town during the
intervals between the town-meetings.
[Sidenote: Town-clerk.]
An officer no less important than the selectmen is the town-clerk. He
keeps the record of all votes passed in the town-meetings. He also
records the names of candidates and the number of votes for each in
the election of state and county officers. He records the births,
marriages, and deaths in the township, and issues certificates to
persons who declare an intention of marriage. He likewise keeps on
record accurate descriptions of the position and bounds of public
roads; and, in short, has general charge of all matters of
town-record.
[Sidenote: Town-treasurer.]
Every town has also its treasurer, who receives and takes care of the
money coming in from the taxpayers, or whatever money belongs to the
town. Out of this money he pays the public expenses. He must keep a
strict account of his receipts and payments, and make a report of them
each year.
[Sidenote: Constables.]
Every town has one or more constables, who serve warrants from the
selectmen and writs from the law courts. They pursue criminals and
take them to jail. They summon jurors. In many towns they serve as
collectors of taxes, but in many other towns a special officer is
chosen for that purpose. When a person, fails to pay his taxes,
after a specified time the collector has authority to seize upon his
property and sell it at auction, paying the tax and costs out of the
proceeds of the sale, and handing over the balance to the owner. In
some cases, where no property can be found and there is reason to
believe that the delinquent is not acting in good faith, he can be
arrested and kept in prison until the tax and costs are paid, or until
he is released by the proper legal methods.
[Sidenote: Assessors of taxes and overseers of the poor.]
Where the duties of the selectmen are likely to be too numerous, the
town may choose three or more assessors of taxes to prepare the tax
lists; and three or more overseers of the poor, to regulate the
management of the village almshouse and confer with other towns
upon such questions as often arise concerning the settlement and
maintenance of homeless paupers.
[Sidenote: Public schools.]
Every town has its school committee. In 1647 the legislature of
Massachusetts enacted a law with the following preamble: "It being
one chief project of that old deluder, Satan, to keep men from the
knowledge of the Scriptures, as in former times by keeping them in an
unknown tongue, so in these latter times by persuading from the use of
tongues, that so at least the true sense and meaning of the original
might be clouded and corrupted with false glosses of deceivers; to the
end that learning may not be buried in the graves of our forefathers,
in church and commonwealth, the Lord assisting our endeavours;" it was
therefore ordered that every township containing fifty families or
householders should forthwith set up a school in which children might
be taught to read and write, and that every township containing one
hundred families or householders should set up a school in which
boys might be fitted for entering Harvard College. Even before this
statute, several towns, as for instance Roxbury and Dedham, had begun
to appropriate money for free schools; and these were the beginnings
of a system of public education which has come to be adopted
throughout the United States.
[Sidenote: School committees.]
The school committee exercises powers of such a character as to make
it a body of great importance. The term of service of the members is
three years, one third being chosen annually. The number of members
must therefore be some multiple of three. The slow change in the
membership of the board insures that a large proportion of the members
shall always be familiar with the duties of the place. The school
committee must visit all the public schools at least once a month, and
make a report to the town every year. It is for them to decide what
text-books are to be used. They examine candidates for the position
of teacher and issue certificates to those whom they select. The
certificate is issued in duplicate, and one copy is handed to the
selectmen as a warrant that the teacher is entitled to receive a
salary. Teachers are appointed for a term of one year, but where their
work is satisfactory the appointments are usually renewed year after
year. A recent act in Massachusetts _permits_ the appointment of
teachers to serve during good behaviour, but few boards have as yet
availed themselves of this law. If the amount of work to be done seems
to require it, the committee appoints a superintendent of schools. He
is a sort of lieutenant of the school committee, and under its general
direction carries on the detailed work of supervision.
Other town officers are the surveyors of highways, who are responsible
for keeping the roads and bridges in repair; field-drivers and
pound-keepers; fence-viewers; surveyors of lumber, measurers of wood,
and sealers of weights and measures.
[Sidenote: Field-drivers and pound keepers.]
The field-driver takes stray animals to the pound, and then notifies
their owner; or if he does not know who is the owner he posts a
description of the animals in some such place as the village store
or tavern, or has it published in the nearest country newspaper.
Meanwhile the strays are duly fed by the pound-keeper, who does not
let them out of his custody until all expenses have been paid.
[Sidenote: Fence-viewers.]
If the owners of contiguous farms, gardens, or fields get into a
dispute about their partition fences or walls, they may apply to
one of the fence-viewers, of whom each town has at least two. The
fence-viewer decides the matter, and charges a small fee for his
services. Where it is necessary he may order suitable walls or fences
to be built.
[Sidenote: Other officers.]
The surveyors of lumber measure and mark lumber offered for sale.
The measurers of wood do the same for firewood. The sealers test the
correctness of weights and measures used in trade, and tradesmen
are not allowed to use weights and measures that have not been thus
officially examined and sealed. Measurers and sealers may be appointed
by the selectmen.
Such are the officers always to be found in the Massachusetts town,
except where the duties of some of them are discharged by the
selectmen. Of these officers, the selectmen, town-clerk, treasurer,
constable, school committee, and assessors must be elected by ballot
at the annual town-meeting.
[Sidenote: Calling the town-meeting.]
When this meeting is to be called the selectmen issue a warrant for
the purpose, specifying the time and place of meeting and the nature
of the business to be transacted. The constable posts copies of the
warrant in divers conspicuous places not less than a week before the
time appointed. Then, after making a note upon the warrant that he has
duly served it, he hands it over to the town-clerk. On the appointed
day, when the people have assembled, the town-clerk calls the meeting
to order and reads the warrant. The meeting then proceeds to choose by
ballot its presiding officer, or "moderator," and business goes on
in accordance with parliamentary customs pretty generally recognized
among all people who speak English.
[Sidenote: Town, country, and state taxes.]
At this meeting the amount of money to be raised by taxation for town
purposes is determined. But, as we shall see, every inhabitant of a
town lives not only under a town government, but also under a county
government and a state government, and all these governments have to
be supported by taxation. In Massachusetts the state and the county
make use of the machinery of the town government in order to assess
and collect their taxes. The total amounts to be raised are equitably
divided among the several towns and cities, so that each town pays its
proportionate share. Each year, therefore, the town assessors know
that a certain amount of money must be raised from the taxpayers of
their town,--partly for the town, partly for the county, partly for
the state,--and for the general convenience they usually assess it
upon the taxpayers all at once. The amounts raised for the state and
county are usually very much smaller than the amount raised for
the town. As these amounts are all raised in the town and by town
officers, we shall find it convenient to sum up in this place what we
have to say about the way in which taxes are raised. Bear in mind that
we are still considering the New England system, and our illustration
is taken from the practice in Massachusetts. But the general
principles of taxation are so similar in the different states that,
although we may now and then have to point to differences of detail,
we shall not need to go over the whole subject again. We have now to
observe how and upon whom the taxes are assessed.
[Sidenote: Poll-tax.]
They are assessed partly upon persons, but chiefly upon property, and
property is divisible into real estate and personal estate. The tax
assessed upon persons is called the poll-tax, and cannot exceed the
sum of two dollars upon every male citizen over twenty years old. In
cases of extreme poverty the assessors may remit the poll-tax.
[Sidenote: Real-estate taxes.]
As to real estate, there are in every town some lands and buildings
which, for reasons of public policy, are exempted from paying taxes;
as, for example, churches, graveyards, and tombs; many charitable
institutions, including universities and colleges; and public
buildings which belong to the state or to the United States. All lands
and buildings, except such as are exempt by law, must pay taxes.
[Sidenote: Taxes on personal property.]
Personal property includes pretty much everything that one can own
except lands and buildings,--pretty much everything that can be moved
or carried about from one place to another. It thus includes ready
money, stocks and bonds, ships and wagons, furniture, pictures, and
books. It also includes the amount of debts due to a person in excess
of the amount that he owes; also the income from his employment,
whether in the shape of profits from business or a fixed salary.
Some personal property is exempted from taxation; as, for example,
household furniture to the amount of $1,000 in value, and income
from employment to the extent of $2,000. The obvious intent of this
exemption is to prevent taxation from bearing too hard upon persons
of small means; and for a similar reason the tools of farmers and
mechanics are exempted.[2]
[Footnote 2: United States bonds are also especially exempted from
taxation.]
[Sidenote: When and where taxes are assessed.]
The date at which property is annually reckoned for assessment is in
Massachusetts the first day of May. The poll-tax is assessed upon each
person in the town or city where he has his legal habitation on that
day; and as a general rule the taxes upon his personal property are
assessed to him in the same place. But taxes upon lands or buildings
are assessed in the city or town where they are situated, and to the
person, wherever he lives, who is the owner of them on the first day
of May. Thus a man who lives in the Berkshire mountains, say for
example in the town of Lanesborough, will pay his poll-tax to that
town. For his personal property, whether it he bonds of a railroad in
Colorado, or shares in a bank in New York, or costly pictures in his
house at Lanesborough, he will likewise pay taxes to Lanesborough. So
for the house in which he lives, and the land upon which it stands, he
pays taxes to that same town. But if he owns at the same time a house
in Boston, he pays taxes for it to Boston, and if he owns a block of
shops in Chicago he pays taxes for the same to Chicago. It is very apt
to be the case that the rate of taxation is higher in large cities
than in villages; and accordingly it often happens that wealthy
inhabitants of cities, who own houses in some country town, move into
them before the first of May, and otherwise comport themselves as
legal residents of the country town, in order that their personal
property may be assessed there rather than in the city.
[Sidenote: Tax lists.]
About the first of May the assessors call upon the inhabitants of
their town to render a true statement as to their property. The most
approved form is for the assessors to send by mail to each taxable
inhabitant a printed list of questions, with blank spaces which he is
to fill with written answers. The questions relate to every kind
of property, and when the person addressed returns the list to the
assessors he must make oath that to the best of his knowledge and
belief his answers are true. He thus becomes liable to the penalties
for perjury if he can be proved to have sworn falsely. A reasonable
time--usually six or eight weeks--is allowed for the list to be
returned to the assessors. If any one fails to return his list by the
specified time, the assessors must make their own estimate of the
probable amount of his property. If their estimate is too high, he may
petition the assessors to have the error corrected, but in many cases
it may prove troublesome to effect this.
[Sidenote: Cheating the government.]
Observe here an important difference between the imposition of taxes
upon real estate and upon personal property. Houses and lands cannot
run away or be tucked out of sight. Their value, too, is something
of which the assessors can very likely judge as well as the owner.
Deception is therefore extremely difficult, and taxation for real
estate is pretty fairly distributed among the different owners. With
regard to personal estate it is very different. It is comparatively
easy to conceal one's ownership of some kinds of personal property, or
to understate one's income. Hence the temptation to lessen the burden
of the tax bill by making false statements is considerable, and
doubtless a good deal of deception is practised. There are many people
who are too honest to cheat individuals, but still consider it a
venial sin to cheat the government.
[Sidenote: The rate of taxation.]
After the assessors have obtained all their returns they can calculate
the total value of the taxable property in the town; and knowing the
amount of the tax to be raised, it is easy to calculate the rate at
which the tax is to be assessed. In most parts of the United States a
rate of one and a half per cent, or $15 tax on each $1,000 worth of
property, would be regarded as moderate; three per cent would be
regarded as excessively high. At the lower of these rates a man worth
$50,000 would pay $750 for his yearly taxes. The annual income of
$50,000, invested on good security, is hardly more than $2,500.
Obviously $750 is a large sum to subtract from such an income.
[Sidenote: Undervaluation.]
[Sidenote: The burden of taxation.]
In point of fact, however, the tax is seldom quite as heavy as
this. It is not easy to tell exactly how much a man is worth, and
accordingly assessors, not wishing to be too disagreeable in the
discharge of their duties, have naturally fallen into a way of giving
the lower valuation the benefit of the doubt, until in many places a
custom has grown up of regularly undervaluing property for purposes of
taxation. Very much as liquid measures have gradually shrunk until
it takes five quart bottles to hold a gallon, so there has been a
shrinkage of valuations until it has become common to tax a man for
only three fourths or perhaps two thirds of what his property is
worth in the market. This makes the rate higher, to be sure, but
the individual taxpayer nevertheless seems to feel relieved by it.
Allowing for this undervaluation, we may say that a man worth $50,000
commonly pays not less than $500 for his yearly taxes, or about one
fifth of the annual income of the property. We thus begin to see what
a heavy burden taxes are, and how essential to good government it is
that citizens should know what their money goes for, and should be
able to exert some effective control over the public expenditures.
Where the rate of taxation in a town rises to a very high point, such
as two and a half or three per cent, the prosperity of the town is apt
to be seriously crippled. Traders and manufacturers move away to other
towns, or those who would otherwise come to the town in question stay
away, because they cannot afford to use up all their profits in paying
taxes. If such a state of things is long kept up, the spirit of
enterprise is weakened, the place shows signs of untidiness and want
of thrift, and neighbouring towns, once perhaps far behind it in
growth, by and by shoot ahead of it and take away its business.
[Sidenote: The "magic fund" delusion.]
Within its proper sphere, government by town-meeting is the form of
government most effectively under watch and control. Everything is
done in the full daylight of publicity. The specific objects for which
public money is to be appropriated are discussed in the presence of
everybody, and any one who disapproves of any of these objects, or of
the way in which it is proposed to obtain it, has an opportunity to
declare his opinions. Under this form of government people are not
so liable to bewildering delusions as under other forms. I refer
especially to the delusion that "the Government" is a sort of
mysterious power, possessed of a magic inexhaustible fund of wealth,
and able to do all manner of things for the benefit of "the People."
Some such notion as this, more often implied than expressed, is very
common, and it is inexpressibly dear to demagogues. It is the prolific
root from which springs that luxuriant crop of humbug upon which
political tricksters thrive as pigs fatten upon corn. In point of
fact no such government, armed with a magic fund of its own, has ever
existed upon the earth. No government has ever yet used any money
for public purposes which it did not first take from its own
people,--unless when it may have plundered it from some other people
in victorious warfare.
The inhabitant of a New England town is perpetually reminded that "the
Government" is "the People." Although he may think loosely about
the government of his state or the still more remote government at
Washington, he is kept pretty close to the facts where local affairs
are concerned, and in this there is a political training of no small
value.
[Sidenote: Educational value of the town-meeting.]
In the kind of discussion which it provokes, in the necessity of facing
argument with argument and of keeping one's temper under control, the
town-meeting is the best political training school in existence. Its
educational value is far higher than that of the newspaper, which, in
spite of its many merits as a diffuser of information, is very apt to do
its best to bemuddle and sophisticate plain facts. The period when
town-meetings ware most important from the wide scope of their
transactions was the period of earnest and sometimes stormy discussion
that ushered in our Revolutionary war. Country towns were then of more
importance relatively than now; one country town--Boston--was at the
same time a great political centre; and its meetings were presided over
and addressed by men of commanding ability, among whom Samuel Adams,
"the man of the town-meeting," was foremost[3]. In those days
great principles of government were discussed with a wealth of knowledge
and stated with masterly skill in town-meeting.
[Footnote 3: The phrase is Professor Hosmer's: see his _Samuel Adams, the
Man of the Town Meeting_, in "Johns Hopkins Univ. Studies," vol. II. no.
iv.; also his _Samuel Adams_, in "American Statesmen" series; Boston,
1885.]
[Sidenote: By-laws.]
The town-meeting is to a very limited extent a legislative body; it can
make sundry regulations for the management of its local affairs. Such
regulations are known by a very ancient name, "by-laws." _By_ is an Old
Norse word meaning "town," and it appears in the names of such towns as
_Derby_ and _Whitby_ in the part of England overrun by the Danes in the
ninth and tenth centuries. By-laws are town laws[4].
[Footnote 4: In modern usage the roles and regulations of clubs, learned
societies, and other associations, are also called by-laws.]
[Sidenote: Power and responsibility.]
In the selectmen and various special officers the town has an
executive department; and here let us observe that, while these
officials are kept strictly accountable to the people, they are
entrusted with very considerable authority. Things are not so arranged
that an officer can plead that he has failed in his duty from lack of
power. There is ample power, joined with complete responsibility. This
is especially to be noticed in the case of the selectmen. They must
often be called upon to exercise a wide discretion in what they do,
yet this excites no serious popular distrust or jealousy. The annual
election affords an easy means of dropping an unsatisfactory officer.
But in practice nothing has been more common than for the same persons
to be reelected as selectmen or constables or town-clerks for year
after year, as long as they are able or willing to serve. The notion
that there is anything peculiarly American or democratic in what
is known as "rotation in office" is therefore not sustained by the
practice of the New England town, which is the most complete democracy
in the world. It is the most perfect exhibition of what President
Lincoln called "government of the people by the people and for the
people."
QUESTIONS ON THE TEXT.
1. What reason exists for beginning the study of government with that of
the New England township?
2. Give the origin of the township in New England according to the
following analysis:--
a. Settlement in groups.
b. The chief reason for coming to New England.
c. The leaders of the groups.
d. The favouring action of the Massachusetts government.
e. Small farms.
f. Defence against the Indians.
g. The limits of a township.
h. The village within the township.
3. What was the social standing of the first settlers?
4. What training had they received in self-government?
5. Who do the governing in a New England township?
6. Give an account of the town-meeting in accordance with the following
analysis:--
a. The name of the meeting.
b. The time for holding it.
c. The place for holding it.
d. The persons who take part in it.
e. The sort of business done in it.
7. Give an account of the selectmen:--
a. Their number.
b. The reason for an odd number.
c. Their duties.
8. When public schools were established by Massachusetts in 1647, what
reasons were assigned for the law?
9. What classes or grades of schools were then established?
10. What are the duties of the Massachusetts school committee?
11. What is the term of service of teachers in that state?
12. What are the duties of the following officers?--
a. Field-drivers.
b. Pound-keepers.
c. Fence-viewers.
d. Surveyors of lumber.
e. Measurers of wood.
f. Sealers of weights and measures.
13. What are the duties of the following officers?--
a. The town-clerk.
b. The treasurer.
c. Constables.
d. Assessors.
e. Overseers of the poor.
14. Describe a warrant for a town-meeting.
15. For what other purposes than those of the town are taxes raised?
16. Explain the following:--
a. The poll-tax.
b. The tax on personal property,
c. The tax on real estate.
17. What kinds of real estate are exempted from taxation, and why?
18. What kinds of personal property are exempted, and why?
19. Where must the several kinds of taxes be assessed and paid?
Illustrate.
20. If a person changes his residence from one town in the state to
another before May 1, what consequences about taxes might follow?
21. How do the assessors ascertain the property for which one should be
taxed?
22. What difficulties beset the taxation of personal property?
23. Mention a common practice in assigning values to property.
What is the effect on the tax-rate? Illustrate.
24. How do high taxes operate as a burden?
25. Describe a delusion from which people who directly govern
themselves are practically free.
26. What is the educational value of the town-meeting?
27. What are by-laws? Explain the phrase.
28. What of the power and responsibility of selectmen?
Section 2. _Origin of the Township_.
[Sidenote: Town-meetings in Greece and Rome.]
It was said above that government by town-meeting is in principle the
oldest form of government known in the world. The student of ancient
history is familiar with the _comitia_ of the Romans and the
_ecclesia_ of the Greeks. These were popular assemblies, held in
those soft climates in the open air, usually in the market-place,--the
Roman _forum_, the Greek _agora_. The government carried on
in them was a more or less qualified democracy. In the palmy days of
Athens it was a pure democracy. The assemblies which in the Athenian
market-place declared war against Syracuse, or condemned Socrates to
death, were quite like New England town-meetings, except that they
exercised greater powers because there was no state government above
them.
[Sidenote: Clans.]
The principle of the town-meeting, however, is older than Athens or
Rome. Long before streets were built or fields fenced in, men wandered
about the earth hunting for food in family parties, somewhat as lions
do in South Africa. Such family groups were what we call _clans_,
and so far as is known they were the earliest form in which civil
society appeared on the earth. Among all wandering or partially
settled tribes the clan is to be found, and there are ample
opportunities for studying it among our Indians in North America. The
clan usually has a chief or head-man, useful mainly as a leader in
wartime; its civil government, crude and disorderly enough, is in
principle a pure democracy.
[Sidenote: The _mark_ and the _tun_.]
When our ancestors first became acquainted with American Indians, the
most advanced tribes lived partly by hunting and fishing, but partly
also by raising Indian corn and pumpkins. They had begun to live in
wigwams grouped together in small villages and surrounded by strong rows
of palisades for defence. Now what these red men were doing our own
fair-haired ancestors in northern and central Europe had been doing some
twenty centuries earlier. The Scandinavians and Germans, when first
known in history, had made considerable progress in exchanging a
wandering for a settled mode of life. When the clan, instead of moving
from place to place, fixed upon some spot for a permanent residence, a
village grew up there, surrounded by a belt of waste land, or somewhat
later by a stockaded wall. The belt of land was called a _mark_, and the
wall was called a _tun_.[5] Afterwards the enclosed space came to be
known sometimes as the _mark_, sometimes as the _tun_ or _town_. In
England the latter name prevailed. The inhabitants of a mark or town
were a stationary clan. It was customary to call them by the clan name,
as for example "the Beorings" or "the Crossings;" then the town would be
called _Barrington_, "town of the Beorings," or _Cressingham_,
"home of the Cressings." Town names of this sort, with which the map of
England is thickly studded, point us back to a time when the town was
supposed to be the stationary home of a clan.
[Footnote 1: Pronounced "toon."]
[Sidenote: The Old English township.]
[Sidenote: The manor.]
The Old English town had its _tungemot_, or town-meeting, in
which "by-laws" were made and other important business transacted.
The principal officers were the "reeve" or head-man, the "beadle" or
messenger, and the "tithing-man" or petty constable. These officers
seem at first to have been elected by the people, but after a while,
as great lordships grew up, usurping jurisdiction over the land, the
lord's steward and bailiff came to supersede the reeve and beadle.
After the Norman Conquest the townships, thus brought under the sway
of great lords, came to be generally known by the French name of
manors or "dwelling places." Much might be said about this change, but
here it is enough for us to bear in mind that a manor was essentially
a township in which the chief executive officers were directly
responsible to the lord rather than to the people. It would be
wrong, however, to suppose that the manors entirely lost their
self-government. Even the ancient town-meeting survived in them, in a
fragmentary way, in several interesting assemblies, of which the most
interesting were the _court leet_, for the election of certain
officers and the trial of petty offences, and the _court baron_,
which was much like a town-meeting.
[Sidenote: The parish.]
Still more of the old self-government would doubtless have survived
in the institutions of the manor if it had not been provided for in
another way. The _parish_ was older than the manor. After the
English had been converted to Christianity local churches were
gradually set up all over the country, and districts called parishes
were assigned for the ministrations of the priests. Now a parish
generally coincided in area with a township, or sometimes with a group
of two or three townships. In the old heathen times each town seems to
have had its sacred place or shrine consecrated to some local deity,
and it was a favourite policy with the Roman missionary priests to
purify the old shrine and turn it into a church. In this way the
township at the same time naturally became the parish.
[Sidenote: Township, manor, and parish.]
[Sidenote: The vestry-meeting.]
As we find it in later times, both before and since the founding of
English colonies in North America, the township in England is likely
to be both a manor and a parish. For some purposes it is the one, for
some purposes it is the other. The townsfolk may be regarded as a
group of tenants of the lord's manor, or as a group of parishioners of
the local church. In the latter aspect the parish retained much of the
self-government of the ancient town. The business with which the lord
was entitled to meddle was strictly limited, and all other business
was transacted in the "vestry-meeting," which was practically the old
town-meeting under a new name. In the course of the thirteenth century
we find that the parish had acquired the right of taxing itself for
church purposes. Money needed for the church was supplied in the
form of "church-rates" voted by the ratepayers themselves in the
vestry-meeting, so called because it was originally held in a room of
the church in which vestments were kept.
[Sidenote: Parish officers.]
The officers of the parish were the constable, the parish and vestry
clerks,[6] the beadle,[7] the "waywardens" or surveyors of highways,
the "haywards" or fence-viewers, the "common drivers," the collectors
of taxes, and at the beginning of the seventeenth century overseers of
the poor were added. There were also churchwardens, usually two for
each, parish. Their duties were primarily to take care of the church
property, assess the rates, and call the vestry-meetings. They also
acted as overseers of the poor, and thus in several ways remind one of
the selectmen of New England. The parish officers were all elected by
the ratepayers assembled in vestry-meeting, except the common driver
and hayward, who were elected by the same ratepayers assembled in
court leet. Besides electing parish officers and granting the rates,
the vestry-meeting could enact by-laws; and all ratepayers had an
equal voice in its deliberations.
[Footnote 6: Of these two officers the vestry clerk is the counterpart
of the New England town-clerk.]
[Footnote 7: Originally a messenger or crier, the beadle came to
assume some of the functions of the tithing-man or petty constable,
such as keeping order in church, punishing petty offenders, waiting on
the clergyman, etc. In New England towns there were formerly officers
called tithing-men, who kept order in church, arrested tipplers,
loafers, and Sabbath-breakers, etc.]
[Sidenote: The transition from England to New England.]
During the last two centuries the constitution of the English parish
has undergone some modifications which need not here concern us. The
Puritans who settled in New England had grown up under such parish
government as is here described, and they were used to hearing the
parish called, on some occasions and for some purposes, a township. If
we remember now that the earliest New England towns were founded
by church congregations, led by their pastors, we can see how town
government in New England originated. It was simply the English
parish government brought into a new country and adapted to the new
situation. Part of this new situation consisted in the fact that the
lords of the manor were left behind. There was no longer any occasion
to distinguish between the township as a manor and the township as a
parish; and so, as the three names had all lived on together, side by
side, in England, it was now the oldest and most generally descriptive
name, "township," that survived, and has come into use throughout a
great part of the United States. The townsfolk went on making by-laws,
voting supplies of public money, and electing their magistrates in
America, after the fashion with which they had for ages been familiar
in England. Some of their offices and customs were of hoary antiquity.
If age gives respectability, the office of constable may vie with that
of king; and if the annual town-meeting is usually held in the month
of March, it is because in days of old, long before Magna Charta was
thought of, the rules and regulations for the village husbandry were
discussed and adopted in time for the spring planting.
[Sidenote: Building up states.]
To complete our sketch of the origin of the New England town, one
point should here be briefly mentioned in anticipation of what will
have to be said hereafter; but it is a point of so much importance
that we need not mind a little repetition in stating it.
[Sidenote: Representation.]
We have seen what a great part taxation plays in the business of
government, and we shall presently have to treat of county, state, and
federal governments, all of them wider in their sphere than the town
government. In the course of history, as nations have gradually been
built up, these wider governments have been apt to absorb or supplant
and crush the narrower governments, such as the parish or township;
and this process has too often been destructive to political freedom.
Such a result is, of course, disastrous to everybody; and if it were
unavoidable, it would be better that great national governments need
never be formed. But it is not unavoidable. There is one way of
escaping it, and that is to give the little government of the town
some real share in making up the great government of the state. That
is not an easy thing to do, as is shown by the fact that most peoples
have failed in the attempt. The people who speak the English language
have been the most successful, and the device by which they have
overcome the difficulty is REPRESENTATION. The town sends to the wider
government a delegation of persons who can _represent_ the town
and its people. They can speak for the town, and have a voice in the
framing of laws and imposition of taxes by the wider government.
[Sidenote: Shire-motes.]
[Sidenote: Earl Simon's Parliament.]
In English townships there has been from time immemorial a system of
representation. Long before Alfred's time there were "shire-motes," or
what were afterwards called county meetings, and to these each town
sent its reeve and "four discreet men" as _representatives_. Thus
to a certain extent the wishes of the townsfolk could be brought to
bear upon county affairs. By and by this method was applied on a much
wider scale. It was applied to the whole kingdom, so that the people
of all its towns and parishes succeeded in securing a representation
of their interests in an elective national council or House of
Commons. This great work was accomplished in the thirteenth century by
Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, and was completed by Edward
I. Simon's parliament, the first in which the Commons were fully
represented, was assembled in 1265; and the date of Edward's
parliament, which has been called the Model Parliament, was 1295.
These dates have as much interest for Americans as for Englishmen,
because they mark the first definite establishment of that grand
system of representative government which we are still carrying on
at our various state capitals and at Washington. For its humble
beginnings we have to look back to the "reeve and four" sent by the
ancient townships to the county meetings.
[Sidenote: Township as unit of representation.]
The English township or parish was thus at an early period the "unit
of representation" in the government of the county. It was also a
district for the assessment and collection of the national taxes; in
each parish the assessment was made by a board of assessors chosen by
popular vote. These essential points reappear in the early history of
New England. The township was not only a self-governing body, but
it was the "unit of representation" in the colonial legislature,
or "General Court;" and the assessment of taxes, whether for town
purposes or for state purposes, was made by assessors elected by the
townsfolk. In its beginnings and fundamentals our political liberty
did not originate upon American soil, but was brought hither by
our forefathers the first settlers. They brought their political
institutions with them as naturally as they brought their language and
their social customs.
[Sidenote: The Russian village community; not represented in the
national government.]
Observe now that the township is to be regarded in two lights. It must
be considered not only in itself, but as part of a greater whole.
We began by describing it as a self-governing body, but in order to
complete our sketch we were obliged to speak of it as a body which
has a share in the government of the state and the nation. The latter
aspect is as important as the former. If the people of a town had only
the power of managing their local affairs, without the power of taking
part in the management of national affairs, their political freedom
would be far from complete. In Russia, for example, the larger part of
the vast population is resident in village communities which have to a
considerable extent the power of managing their local affairs. Such
a village community is called a _mir_, and like the English
township it is lineally descended from the stationary clan. The people
of the Russian _mir_ hold meetings in which they elect sundry
local officers, distribute the burden of local taxation, make
regulations concerning local husbandry and police, and transact other
business which need not here concern us. But they have no share in the
national government, and are obliged to obey laws which they have
no voice in making, and pay taxes assessed upon them without their
consent; and accordingly we say with truth that the Russian people do
not possess political freedom. One reason for this has doubtless
been that in times past the Russian territory was the great frontier
battle-ground between civilized Europe and the wild hordes of western
Asia, and the people who lived for ages on that turbulent frontier
were subjected to altogether too much conquest. They have tasted too
little of civil government and too much of military government,--a
pennyworth of wholesome bread to an intolerable deal of sack. The
early English, in their snug little corner of the world, belted by
salt sea, were able to develop their civil government with less
destructive interference. They made a sound and healthful beginning
when they made the township the "unit of representation" for the
county. Then the township, besides managing its own affairs, began to
take part in the management of wider affairs.
QUESTIONS ON THE TEXT.
SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS AND DIRECTIONS.
1. Obtain the following documents:--
a. A town warrant.
b. A town report.
c. A tax bill, a permit, a certificate, or any town paper that
has or may have an official signature.
d. A report of the school committee.
If you live in a city, send to the clerk of a neighbouring town for a
warrant, inclosing a stamp for the reply. City documents will answer
most of the purposes of this exercise.
Make any of the foregoing documents the basis of a report.
2. Give an account of the following:--
a. The various kinds of taxes raised in your town, the amount of each
kind, the valuation, the rate, the proposed use of the money, etc.
b. The work of any department of the town government for a year, as, for
example, that of the overseers of the poor.
c. Any pressing need of your town, public sentiment towards it, the
probable cost of satisfying it, the obstacles in the way of meeting
it, etc.
3. A good way to arouse interest in the subject of town government is to
organize the class as a town-meeting, and let it discuss live local
questions in accordance with articles in a warrant. For helpful details
attend a town-meeting, read the record of some meeting, consult some
person familiar with town proceedings, or study the General Statutes.
To insure a discussion, it may be necessary at the outset for the
teacher to assign to the several pupils single points to be expanded and
presented in order.
There is an advantage in the teacher's serving as moderator. He may, as
teacher, pause to give such directions and explanations as may be
helpful to young citizens.
The pupils should be held up to the more obvious requirements of
parliamentary law, and shown how to use its rules to accomplish various
purposes.
4. Has the state a right to direct the education of its youth? If the
state has such a right, are there any limits to the exercise of it? Does
the right to direct the education of its youth carry with it the right
to abolish private schools?
5. Is it wise to assist private educational institutions with public
funds?
6. Ought teachers, if approved, to be appointed for one year only, or
during good behaviour?
7. What classes of officers in a town should serve during good
behaviour? What classes may be frequently changed without injury to the
public?
8. Compare the school committee in your own state (if it is not
Massachusetts) with that in Massachusetts.
9. Illustrate from personal knowledge the difference between
real estate and personal property.
10. A loans B $1000. May A be taxed for the $1000? Why? May B be taxed
for the $1000? Why? Is it right to tax both for $1000? Suppose B with
the money buys goods of C. Is it right to tax the three for $1000 each?
11. A taxpayer worth $100,000 in personal property makes no return to
the assessors. In their ignorance the assessors tax him for $50,000
only, and the tax is paid without question. Does the taxpayer act
honourably?
12. What difficulties beset the work of the assessors?
13. Would anything be gained by exempting personal property from
taxation? If so, what? Would anything be lost? If so, what?
14. Does any one absolutely escape taxation?
15. Does the poll-tax payer pay, in any sense, more than his poll-tax?
16. Are there any taxes that people pay without seeming to know it? If
so, what? (See below, chap. viii. section 8.).
17. Have we clans to-day among ourselves? (Think of family reunions,
people of the same name in a community, descendants of early settlers,
etc.). What important differences exist between these modern so-called
clans and the ancient ones?
18. What is a "clannish" spirit? Is it a good spirit or a bad
one? Is it ever the same as patriotism?
19. Look up the meaning of _ham_, _wick_, and _stead_. Think of towns
whose names contain these words; also of towns whose names contain the
word _tun_ or _ton_ or _town_.
20. Give an account of the tithing-man in early New England.
21. In what sense is the word "parish" commonly used in the United
States? Is the parish the same as the church? Has it any limits of
territory?
22. In Massachusetts, clergymen were formerly paid out of the taxes of
the township. How did this come about? In this practice was there a
union or a separation of church and state?
23. Ministers are not now supported by taxation in the United States.
What important change in the parish idea does this fact indicate? Is it
a change for the better?
24. Are women who do not vote represented in town government?
25. Are boys and girls represented in town government?
26. Is there anybody in a town who is not represented in its government?
27. How are citizens of a town represented in state government?
28. How are citizens of a town represented in the national government?
29. Imagine a situation in which the ballot of a single voter in
a town might affect the action of the national government.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE.
Section 1. THE NEW ENGLAND TOWNSHIP. There is a good account in
Martin's _Text Book on Civil Government in the United States_. N.
T. & Chicago, 1875.
Section 2. ORIGIN OF THE TOWNSHIP. Here the _Johns Hopkins University
Studies in Historical and Political Science_, edited by Dr. Herbert
Adams, are of great value. Note especially series I, no. i, E. A.
Freeman, _Introduction to American Institutional History_; I., ii. iv.
viii. ix.-x. H. B. Adams, _The Germanic Origin of New England Towns,
Saxon Tithing-Men in America, Norman Constables in America, Village
Communities of Cape Ann and Salem_; II., x. Edward Channing, _Town and
County Government in the English Colonies of North America_; IV.,
xi.-xii. Melville Egleston, _The Land System of the New England
Colonies_; VII., vii.-ix. C. M. Andrews, _The River Towns of
Connecticut_.
See also Howard's _Local Constitutional History of the United
States_, vol. i. "Township, Hundred, and Shire," Baltimore, 1889, a
work of extraordinary merit.
The great book on local self-government in England is Toulmin Smith's
_The Parish_, 2d ed., London, 1859. For the ancient history of the
township, see Gomme's _Primitive Folk-Moots_, London, 1880; Gomme's
_Village Community_, London, 1890; Seebohm's _English Village
Community_, London, 1883; Nasse's _Agricultural Community of the Middle
Ages_, London, 1872; Laveleye's _Primitive Property_, London, 1878;
Phear's _Aryan Village in India and Ceylon_, London, 1880; Hearn (of the
University of Melbourne, Australia), _The Aryan Household_, London &
Melbourne, 1879; and the following works of Sir Henry Maine: _Ancient
Law_, London, 1861; _Village Communities in the East and West_, London,
1871; _Early History of Institutions_, London, 1875; _Early Law and
Custom_, London, 1883. All of Maine's works are republished in New York.
See also my _American Political Ideas_, N. Y., 1885.
Gomme's _Literature of Local Institutions_, London, 1886,
contains an extensive bibliography of the subject, with valuable
critical notes and comments.
CHAPTER III.
THE COUNTY.
Section 1. _The County in its Beginnings._
It is now time for us to treat of the county, and we may as well begin
by considering its origin. In treating of the township we began by
sketching it in its fullest development, as seen in New England. With.
the county we shall find it helpful to pursue a different method and
start at the beginning.
If we look at the maps of the states which make up our Union, we see
that they are all divided into counties (except that in Louisiana the
corresponding divisions are named parishes). The map of England shows
that country as similarly divided into counties.
[Sidenote: Why do we have counties?]
If we ask why this is so, some people will tell us that it is
convenient, for purposes of administration, to have a state, or a
kingdom, divided into areas that are larger than single towns. There
is much truth in this. It is convenient. If it were not so, counties
would not have survived, so as to make a part of our modern maps.
Nevertheless, this is not the historic reason why we have the
particular kind of subdivisions known as counties. We have them
because our fathers and grandfathers had them; and thus, if we would
find out the true reason, we may as well go back to the ancient times
when our forefathers were establishing themselves in England.
[Sidenote: Clans and tribes.]
We have seen how the clan of our barbarous ancestors, when it became
stationary, was established as the town or township. But in those early
times _clans_ were generally united more or less closely into _tribes_.
Among all primitive or barbarous races of men, so far as we can make
out, society is organized in tribes, and each tribe is made up of a
number of clans or family groups. Now when our English forefathers
conquered Britain they settled there as clans and also as tribes. The
clans became townships, and the tribes became shires or counties; that
is to say, the names were applied first to the people and afterwards to
the land they occupied. A few of the oldest county names in England
still show this plainly. _Essex_, _Middlesex_, and _Sussex_ were
originally "East Saxons," "Middle Saxons," and "South Saxons;" and on
the eastern coast two tribes of Angles were distinguished as "North
folk" and "South folk," or _Norfolk_ and _Suffolk_. When you look on the
map and see the town of _Icklinghiam_ in the county of _Suffolk_, it
means that this place was once known as the "home" of the "Icklings" or
"children of Ickel," a clan which formed part of the tribe of "South
folk."
[Sidenote: The English nation, like the American, grew out of the
union of small states.]
In those days there was no such thing as a Kingdom of England; there
were only these groups of tribes living side by side. Each tribe had its
leader, whose title was _ealdorman_ or "elder man." [1] After a while, as
some tribes increased in size and power, their ealdormen took the title
of kings. The little kingdoms coincided sometimes with a single shire,
sometimes with two or more shires. Thus there was a kingdom of Kent, and
the North and South Folk were combined in a kingdom of East Anglia. In
course of time numbers of shires combined into larger kingdoms, such as
Northumbria, Mercia, and the West Saxons; and finally the king of the
West Saxons became king of all England, and the several _shires_ became
subordinate parts or "shares" of the kingdom. In England, therefore, the
shires are older than the nation. The shires were not made by dividing
the nation, but the nation was made by uniting the shires. The English
nation, like the American, grew out of the union of little states that
had once been independent of one another, but had many interests in
common. For not less than three hundred years after all England had been
united under one king, these shires retained their self-government
almost as completely as the several states of the American Union.[2] A
few words about their government will not be wasted, for they will help
to throw light upon some things that still form a part of our political
and social life.
[Footnote 1: The pronunciation, was probably something like yáwl-dor-man.]
[Footnote 2: Chalmers, _Local Government_, p. 90.]
[Sidenote: Shire-mote, ealdorman, and sheriff.]
The shire was governed by the _shire-mote_ (i.e. "meeting"),
which was a representative body. Lords of lands, including abbots and
priors, attended it, as well as the reeve and four selected men
from each township. There were thus the germs of both the kind of
representation that is seen in the House of Lords and the much more
perfect kind that is seen in the House of Commons. After a while,
as cities and boroughs grew in importance, they sent representative
burghers to the shire-mote. There were two presiding officers; one was
the _ealdorman_, who was now appointed by the king; the other was
the _shire-reeve_ (i.e. "sheriff"), who was still elected by the
people and generally held office for life.
[Sidenote: The county court.]
This shire-mote was both a legislative body and a court of justice. It
not only made laws for the shire, but it tried civil and criminal
causes. After the Norman Conquest some changes occurred. The shire now
began to be called by the French name "county," because of its analogy
to the small pieces of territory on the Continent that were governed by
"counts." [3] The shire-mote became known as the county court, but cases
coming before it were tried by the king's _justices in eyre_, or circuit
judges, who went about from county to county to preside over the
judicial work. The office of ealdorman became extinct. The sheriff was
no longer elected by the people for life, but appointed by the king for
the term of one year. This kept him strictly responsible to the king. It
was the sheriff's duty to see that the county's share of the national
taxes was duly collected and paid over to the national treasury. The
sheriff also summoned juries and enforced the judgments of the courts,
and if he met with resistance in so doing he was authorized to call out
a force of men, known as the _posse comitatus_ (i.e. power of the
county), and overcome all opposition. Another county officer was the
_coroner_, or crowner_,[4] so called because originally (in Alfred's
time) he was appointed by the king, and was especially the crown officer
in the county. Since the time of Edward I., however, coroners have been
elected by the people. Originally coroners held small courts of inquiry
upon cases of wreckage, destructive fires, or sudden death, but in
course of time their jurisdiction became confined to the last-named
class of cases. If a death occurred under circumstances in any way
mysterious or likely to awaken suspicion, it was the business of the
coroner, assisted by not less than twelve _jurors_ (i. e, "sworn men"),
to hold an _inquest_ for the purpose of ascertaining the cause of death.
The coroner could compel the attendance of witnesses and order a medical
examination of the body, and if there were sufficient evidence to charge
any person with murder or manslaughter, the coroner could have such
person arrested and committed for trial.
[Footnote 3: Originally _comites_, or "companions" of the king.]
[Footnote 4: This form of the word, sometimes supposed to be a vulgarism,
is as correct as the other. See Skeat, _Etym_. Dict., s.v.]
[Sidenote: Justices of the peace.]
[Sidenote: The Quarter sessions.]
[Sidenote: The lord-lieutenant.]
Another important county officer was the _justice of the peace_.
Originally six were appointed by the crown in each county, but in
later times any number might be appointed. The office was created by a
series of statutes in the reign of Edward III., in order to put a stop
to the brigandage which still flourished in England; it was a common
practice for robbers to seize persons and hold them for ransom.[5] By
the last of these statutes, in 1362, the justices of the peace in each
county were to hold a court four times in the year. The powers of this
court, which came to be known as the Quarter Sessions, were from time
to time increased by act of parliament, until it quite supplanted the
old county court. In modern times the Quarter Sessions has become
an administrative body quite as much as a court. The justices, who
receive no salary, hold office for life, or during good behaviour.
They appoint the chief constable of the county, who appoints the
police. They also take part in the supervision of highways and
bridges, asylums and prisons. Since the reign of Henry VIII., the
English county has had an officer known as the lord-lieutenant, who
was once leader of the county militia, but whose functions to-day are
those of keeper of the records and principal justice of the peace.
[Footnote 5: Longman's _Life and Times of Edward III._, vol. i.
p. 301.]
[Sidenote: Beginnings of Massachusetts counties.]
During the past five hundred years the English county has gradually
sunk from a self-governing community into an administrative district;
and in recent times its boundaries have been so crossed and
crisscrossed with those of other administrative areas, such as those
of school-boards, sanitary boards, etc., that very little of the old
county is left in recognizable shape. Most of this change has been
effected since the Tudor period. The first English settlers in America
were familiar with the county as a district for the administration of
justice, and they brought with them coroners, sheriffs, and quarter
sessions. In 1635 the General Court of Massachusetts appointed four
towns--Boston, Cambridge, Salem, and Ipswich--as places where courts
should be held quarterly. In 1643 the colony, which then included
as much of New Hampshire as was settled, was divided into four
"shires,"--Suffolk, Essex, Middlesex, and Norfolk, the latter lying
then to the northward and including the New Hampshire towns. The
militia was then organized, perhaps without consciousness of the
analogy, after a very old English fashion; the militia of each town
formed a company, and the companies of the shire formed a regiment.
The county was organized from the beginning as a judicial district,
with its court-house, jail, and sheriff. After 1697 the court, held by
the justices of the peace, was called the Court of General Sessions.
It could try criminal causes not involving the penalty of death or
banishment, and civil causes in which the value at stake was less than
forty shillings. It also had control over highways going from town to
town; and it apportioned the county taxes among the several towns.
The justices and sheriff were appointed by the governor, as in England
by the king.
QUESTIONS ON THE TEXT.
1. Why do we have counties in the United States? Contrast the popular
reason with the historic.
2. What relation did the tribe hold to the clan among our ancestors?
3. In time what did the clans and the tribes severally become?
4. Show how old county names in England throw light on the
county development.
5. Trace the growth of the English nation in accordance with
the following outline:--
a. Each tribe and its leader,
b. A powerful tribe and its leader.
c. The relation of a little kingdom to the shire.
d. The final union under one king.
e. The relative ages of the shire and the nation.
6. Give an account (1) of the shire-mote, (2) of the two kinds
of representation in it, (3) of its presiding officers, and
(4) of its two kinds of duties.
7. Let the pupil make written analyses or outlines of the following
topics, to be used by him in presenting the topics
orally, or to be passed in to the teacher:--
a. What changes took place in the government of the shire
after the Norman Conquest?
b. Trace the development of the coroner's office.
c. Give an account of the justices of the peace and the courts
held by them.
d. Show what applications the English settlers in Massachusetts made of
their knowledge of the English county.
Section 2. The Modern County in Massachusetts.
The modern county system of Massachusetts may now be very briefly
described. The county, like the town, is a corporation; it can hold
property and sue or be sued. It builds the court-house and jail, and
keeps them in repair. The town in which these buildings are placed is
called, as in England, the shire town.
[Sidenote: County commissioners.]
In each county there are three commissioners, elected by the people.
Their term of service is three years, and one goes out each year.
These commissioners represent the county in law-suits, as the
selectmen represent the town. They "apportion the county taxes among
the towns;" "lay out, alter, and discontinue highways within the
county;" "have charge of houses of correction;" and erect and keep in
repair the county buildings.[6]
[Footnote 6: Martin's _Civil Government_, p. 197.]
[Sidenote: County treasurer.]
The revenues of the county are derived partly from taxation and partly
from the payment of fines and costs in the courts. These revenues are
received and disbursed by the county treasurer, who is elected by the
people for a term of three years.
[Sidenote: Courts.]
The Superior Court of the state holds at least two sessions annually
in each county, and tries civil and criminal causes. There is also
in each county a probate court with jurisdiction over all matters
relating to wills, administration of estates, and appointment of
guardians; it also acts as a court of insolvency. The custody of wills
and documents relating to the business of this court is in the hands
of an officer known as the register of probate, who is elected by the
people for a term of five years.
[Sidenote: Shire town and court-house.]
To preserve the records of all land-titles and transfers of land
within the county, all deeds and mortgages are registered in an
office in the shire town, usually within or attached to the court The
register of deeds is an officer elected by the people for a term of
three years. In counties where there is much business there may be
more than one.
[Sidenote: Justices of the peace.]
Justices of the peace are appointed by the governor for a term of seven
years, and the appointment may be renewed. Their functions have been
greatly curtailed, and now amount to little more than administering
oaths, and in some cases issuing warrants and taking bail. They may join
persons in marriage, and, when specially commissioned as "trial
justices," have criminal jurisdiction over sundry petty offences.
[Sidenote: The Sheriff.]
The sheriff is elected by the people for a term of three years. He may
appoint deputies, for whom he is responsible, to assist him in his
work. He must attend all county courts, and the meetings of the county
commissioners whenever required. He must inflict, either personally
or by deputy, the sentence of the court, whether it be fine,
imprisonment, or death. He is responsible for the preservation of the
peace within the county, and to this end must pursue criminals and may
arrest disorderly persons. If he meets with resistance he may call out
the _posse comitatus_; if the resistance grows into insurrection
he may apply to the governor and obtain the aid of the state militia;
if the insurrection proves too formidable to be thus dealt with, the
governor may in his behalf apply to the president of the United States
for aid from the regular army. In this way the force that may be
drawn upon, if necessary, for the suppression of disorder in a single
locality, is practically unlimited and irresistible.
We have now obtained a clear outline view of the township and county in
themselves and in their relation to one another, with an occasional
glimpse of their relation to the state; in so far, at least, as such a
view can be gained from a reference to the history of England and of
Massachusetts. We must next trace the development of local government in
other parts of the United States; and in doing so we can advance at
somewhat quicker pace, not because our subject becomes in any wise less
important or less interesting, but because we have already marked out
the ground and said things of general application which will not need to
be said over again.
QUESTIONS ON THE TEXT.
Give an account of the modern county in Massachusetts under
the following heads:--
1. The county a corporation.
2. The county commissioners and their duties.
3. The county treasurer and his duties.
4. The courts held in a county.
5. The shire town and the court-house.
6. The register of deeds and his duties.
7. Justices of the peace and trial justices.
8. The sheriff and his duties.
9. The force at the sheriff's disposal to suppress disorder.
Section 3. _The Old Virginia County._
By common consent of historians, the two most distinctive and most
characteristic lines of development which English forms of government
have followed, in propagating themselves throughout the United States,
are the two lines that have led through New England on the one hand
and through Virginia on the other. We have seen what shape local
government assumed in New England; let us now observe what shape it
assumed in the Old Dominion.
[Sidenote: Virginia sparsely settled.]
The first point to be noticed in the early settlement of Virginia is
that people did not live so near together as in New England. This was
because tobacco, cultivated on large estates, was a source of wealth.
Tobacco drew settlers to Virginia as in later days gold drew settlers
to California and sparsely Australia. They came not in organized
groups or congregations, but as a multitude of individuals. Land
was granted to individuals, and sometimes these grants were of
enormous extent. John Bolling, who died in 1757, left an estate of
40,000 acres, and this is not mentioned as an extraordinary amount of
land for one man to own.[7] From an early period it was customary
to keep these great estates together by entailing them, and this
continued until entails were abolished in 1776 through the influence
of Thomas Jefferson.
[Footnote 7: Edward Channing, "Town and County Government," in
_Johns Hopkins University Studies_, vol. ii. p. 467.]
[Sidenote: Absence of towns.]
A glance at the map of Virginia shows to what a remarkable degree it
is intersected by navigable rivers. This fact made it possible for
plantations, even at a long distance from the coast, to have each its
own private wharf, where a ship from England could unload its cargo of
tools, cloth, or furniture, and receive a cargo of tobacco in return.
As the planters were thus supplied with most of the necessaries of
life, there was no occasion for the kind of trade that builds up
towns. Even in comparatively recent times the development of town life
in Virginia has been very slow. In 1880, out of 246 cities and towns
in the United States with a population exceeding 10,000, there were
only six in Virginia.
[Sidenote: Slavery]
The cultivation of tobacco upon large estates caused a great demand for
cheap labour, and this was supplied partly by bringing negro slaves from
Africa, partly by bringing criminals from English jails. The latter were
sold into slavery for a limited term of years, and were known as
"indentured white servants." So great was the demand for labour that it
became customary to kidnap poor friendless wretches on the streets of
seaport towns in England and ship them off to Virginia to be sold into
servitude. At first these white servants were more numerous than the
negroes, but before the end of the seventeenth century the blacks had
come to be much the more numerous.
[Sidenote: Social position of settlers.]
In this rural community the owners of plantations came from the same
classes of society as the settlers of New England; they were for the
most part country squires and yeomen. But while in New England there
was no lower class or society sharply marked off from the upper, on
the other hand in Virginia there was an insurmountable distinction
between the owners of plantations and the so-called "mean whites" or
"white trash." This class was originally formed of men and women
who had been indentured white servants, and was increased by such
shiftless people as now and then found their way to the colony, but
could not win estates or obtain social recognition. With such a
sharp division between classes, an aristocratic type of society was
developed in Virginia as naturally as a democratic type was developed
in New England.
[Sidenote: Virginia parishes.]
[Sidenote: The vestry of a close corporation.]
In Virginia there were no town-meetings. The distances between
plantations cooperated with the distinction between classes to prevent
the growth of such an institution. The English parish, with its
churchwardens and vestry and clerk, was reproduced in Virginia under
the same name, but with some noteworthy peculiarities. If the whole
body of ratepayers had assembled in vestry meeting, to enact by-laws
and assess taxes, the course of development would have been like that
of the New England town-meeting. But instead of this the vestry, which
exercised the chief authority in the parish, was composed of twelve
chosen men. This was not government by a primary assembly, it was
representative government. At first the twelve vestrymen were elected
by the people of the parish, and thus resembled the selectmen of
New England; but after a while "they obtained the power of filling
vacancies in their own number," so that they became what is called a
"close corporation," and the people had nothing to do with choosing
them. Strictly speaking, that was not representative government; it
was a step on the road that leads towards oligarchical or despotic
government.
[Sidenote: Powers of the vestry.]
It was the vestry, thus constituted, that apportioned the parish
taxes, appointed the churchwardens, presented the minister for
induction into office, and acted as overseers of the poor. The
minister presided in all vestry meetings. His salary was paid in
tobacco, and in 1696 it was fixed by law at 16,000 pounds of tobacco
yearly. In many parishes the churchwardens were the collectors of the
parish taxes. The other officers, such as the sexton and the parish
clerk, were appointed either by the minister or by the vestry.
With the local government thus administered, we see that the larger
part of the people had little directly to do. Nevertheless in these
small neighbourhoods government was in full sight of the people. Its
proceedings went on in broad daylight and were sustained by public
sentiment. As Jefferson said, "The vestrymen are usually the most
discreet farmers, so distributed through the parish that every part of
it may be under the immediate eye of some one of them. They are well
acquainted with the details and economy of private life, and they
find sufficient inducements to execute their charge well, in their
philanthropy, in the approbation of their neighbours, and the
distinction which that gives them." [8]
[Footnote 8: See Howard, _Local Constitutional History of the United
States_, vol. i. p. 122.]
[Sidenote: The county was the unit of representation.]
The difference, however, between the New England township and the
Virginia parish, in respect of self-government, was striking enough.
We have now to note a further difference. In New England, as we have
seen, the township was the unit of representation in the colonial
legislature; but in Virginia the parish was not the unit of
representation. The county was that unit. In the colonial legislature
of Virginia the representatives sat not for parishes, but for
counties. The difference is very significant. As the political life of
New England was in a manner built up out of the political life of
the towns, so the political life of Virginia was built up out of the
political life of the counties. This was partly because the vast
plantations were not grouped about a compact village nucleus like the
small farms at the North, and partly because there was not in Virginia
that Puritan theory of the church according to which each congregation
is a self-governing democracy. The conditions which made the New
England town-meeting were absent. The only alternative was some kind
of representative government, and for this the county was a small
enough area. The county in Virginia was much smaller than in
Massachusetts or Connecticut. In a few instances the county consisted
of only a single parish; in some cases it was divided into two
parishes, but oftener into three or more.
[Sidenote: The county court was virtually a close corporation.]
In Virginia, as in England and in New England, the county was an area
for the administration of justice. There were usually in each county
eight justices of the peace, and their court was the counterpart of
the Quarter Sessions in England. They were appointed by the governor,
but it was customary for them to nominate candidates for the governor
to appoint, so that practically the court filled its own vacancies and
was a close corporation, like the parish vestry. Such an arrangement
tended to keep the general supervision and control of things in the
hands of a few families.
This county court usually met as often as once a month in some
convenient spot answering to the shire town of England or New England.
More often than not the place originally consisted of the court-house
and very little else, and was named accordingly from the name of the
county, as Hanover Court House or Fairfax Court House; and the small
shire towns that have grown up in such spots often retain these names
to the present day. Such names occur commonly in Virginia, West
Virginia, and South Carolina, very rarely in Kentucky, North Carolina,
Alabama, Ohio, and nowhere else in the United States.[9] Their number
has diminished from the tendency to omit the phrase "Court House,"
leaving the name of the county for that of the shire town, as for
example in Culpeper, Va. In New England the process of naming has been
just the reverse; as in Hartford County, Conn., or Worcester County,
Mass., which have taken their names from the shire towns. In this,
as in so many cases, whole chapters of history are wrapped up in
geographical names.[10]
[Footnote 9: In Mitchell's Atlas, 1883, the number of cases is in Va.
38, W. Va. 13, S. C. 16, N. C. 2, Ala. 1, Ky. 1, Ohio, 1.]
[Footnote 10: A few of the oldest Virginia counties, organized as
such in 1634, had arisen from the spreading and thinning of single
settlements originally intended to be cities and named accordingly.
Hence the curious names (at first sight unintelligible) of "James City
County," and "Charles City County."]
[Sidenote: Powers of the court]
The county court in Virginia had jurisdiction in criminal actions not
involving peril of life or limb, and in civil suits where the sum at
stake exceeded twenty-five shillings. Smaller suits could be tried
by a single justice. The court also had charge of the probate and
administration of wills. The court appointed its own clerk, who kept
the county records. It superintended the construction and repair of
bridges and highways, and for this purpose divided the county into
"precincts," and appointed annually for each precinct a highway
surveyor. The court also seems to have appointed constables, one for
each precinct. The justices could themselves act as coroners, but
annually two or more coroners for each parish were appointed by the
governor. As we have seen that the parish taxes--so much for salaries
of minister and clerk, so much for care of church buildings, so much
for relief of the poor, etc.--were computed and assessed by the
vestry; so the county taxes, for care of court-house and jail, roads
and bridges, coroner's fees, and allowances to the representatives
sent to the colonial legislature, were computed and assessed by the
county court. The general taxes for the colony were estimated by a
committee of the legislature, as well as the county's share of the
colony tax.
[Sidenote: The sheriff.]
The taxes for the county, and sometimes the taxes for the parish also,
were collected by the sheriff. They were usually paid, not in money,
but in tobacco; and the sheriff was the custodian of this tobacco,
responsible for its proper disposal. The sheriff was thus not only
the officer for executing the judgments of the court, but he was also
county treasurer and collector, and thus exercised powers almost as
great as those of the sheriff in England in the twelfth century. He
also presided over elections for representatives to the legislature.
It is interesting to observe how this very important officer was
chosen. "Each year the court presented the names of three of its
members to the governor, who appointed one, generally the senior
justice, to be the sheriff of the county for the ensuing year." [11]
Here again we see this close corporation, the county court, keeping
the control of things within its own hands.
[Footnote 11: Edward Channing, _op. cit_. p. 478.]
[Sidenote: The county lieutenant]
One other important county officer needs to be mentioned. We have seen
that in early New England each town had its train-band or company of
militia, and that the companies in each county united to form the
county regiment. In Virginia it was just the other way. Each county
raised a certain number of troops, and because it was not convenient
for the men to go many miles from home in assembling for purposes of
drill, the county was subdivided into military districts, each with
its company, according to rules laid down by the governor. The
military command in each county was vested in the county lieutenant,
an officer answering in many respects to the lord lieutenant of
the English shire at that period. Usually he was a member of the
governor's council, and as such exercised sundry judicial functions.
He bore the honorary title of "colonel," and was to some extent
regarded as the governor's deputy; but in later times his duties were
confined entirely to military matters.[12]
[Footnote 12: For an excellent account of local government in Virginia
before the Revolution, see Howard, _Local Const. Hist. of the U.S._,
vol. i. pp. 388-407; also Edward Ingle in _Johns Hopkins Univ.
Studies_, III., ii.-iii.]
If now we sum up the contrasts between local government in Virginia
and that in New England, we observe:--
1. That in New England the management of local affairs was mostly in the
hands of town officers, the county being superadded for certain
purposes, chiefly judicial; while in Virginia the management was chiefly
in the hands of county officers, though certain functions, chiefly
ecclesiastical, were reserved to the parish.
2. That in New England the local magistrates were almost always, with
the exception of justices, chosen by the people; while in Virginia,
though some of them were nominally appointed by the governor, yet in
practice they generally contrived to appoint themselves--in other
words the local boards practically filled their own vacancies and were
self-perpetuating.
[Sidenote: Jefferson's opinion of township government.]
These differences are striking and profound. There can be no doubt
that, as Thomas Jefferson clearly saw, in the long run the interests
of political liberty are much safer under the New England system
than under the Virginia system. Jefferson said, "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[13]....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!" [14]
[Footnote 13: Jefferson's _Works_, vii. 13.]
[Footnote 14: _Id_., vi. 544]
[Sidenote: "Court Day."]
We must, however, avoid the mistake of making too much of this contrast.
As already hinted, in those rural societies where people generally knew
one another, its effects were not so far-reaching as they would be in
the more complicated society of to-day. Even though Virginia had not the
town-meeting, it had its familiar court-day, which was a holiday for
all the country-side, especially in the fall and spring. From all
directions came in the people on horseback, in wagons, and afoot. On the
court-house green assembled, in indiscriminate confusion, people of all
classes,--the hunter from the backwoods, the owner of a few acres, the
grand proprietor, and the grinning, heedless negro. Old debts were
settled, and new ones made; there were auctions, transfers of property,
and, if election times were near, stump-speaking.[15]
[Sidenote: Virginia prolific in great leaders.]
For seventy years or more before the Declaration of Independence the
matters of general public concern, about which stump speeches were made
on Virginia court-days, were very similar to those that were discussed
in Massachusetts town-meetings when representatives were to be chosen
for the legislature. Such questions generally related to some real or
alleged encroachment upon popular liberties by the royal governor, who,
being appointed and sent from beyond sea, was apt to have ideas and
purposes of his own that conflicted with those of the people. This
perpetual antagonism to the governor, who represented British imperial
interference with American local self-government, was an excellent
schooling in political liberty, alike for Virginia and for
Massachusetts. When the stress of the Revolution came, these two leading
colonies cordially supported each other, and their political
characteristics were reflected in the kind of achievements for which
each was especially distinguished. The Virginia system, concentrating
the administration of local affairs in the hands of a few county
families, was eminently favourable for developing skilful and vigorous
leadership. And while in the history of Massachusetts during the
Revolution we are chiefly impressed with the wonderful degree in which
the mass of the people exhibited the kind of political training that
nothing in the world except the habit of parliamentary discussion can
impart; on the other hand, Virginia at that time gave us--in Washington,
Jefferson, Henry, Madison, and Marshall, to mention no others--such a
group of consummate leaders as the world has seldom seen equalled.
[Footnote 15: Ingle, _loc. cit._]
QUESTIONS ON THE TEXT.
1. Why was Virginia more sparsely settled than Massachusetts?
2. Why was it that towns were built up more slowly in Virginia than in
Massachusetts?
3. How was the great demand for labour in Virginia met?
4. What distinction of classes naturally arose?
5. Contrast the type of society thus developed in Virginia with that
developed in New England.
6. Compare the Virginia parish in its earlier government with the
English parish from which it was naturally copied.
7. Show how the vestry became a close corporation.
8. Who were usually chosen as vestrymen, and what were their powers?
9. Compare Virginia's unit of representation in the colonial
legislature with that of Massachusetts, and give the reason for the
difference.
10. Describe the county court, showing in particular how it became a
close corporation.
11. Bring out some of the history wrapped up in the names of county
seats.
12. What were the chief powers of the county court?
13. Describe the assessment of the various taxes.
14. What were the sheriff's duties?
15. Describe the organization and command of the militia in each
county.
16. Sum up the differences between local government in Virginia and
that in New England (1) as to the management of local affairs and (2)
as to the choice of local officers.
17. What did Jefferson think of the principle of township government?
18. What was the equivalent in Virginia of the New England
town-meeting?
19. What was the value of this frequent assembling?
20. What schooling in political liberty before the Revolution did
Virginia and Massachusetts alike have?
21. What was an impressive feature of the New England system?
22. What was an impressive feature of the Virginia system?
SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS AND DIRECTIONS.
1. How many counties are there in your state?
2. Name and place them if the number is small.
3. In what county do you live?
4. Give its dimensions. Are they satisfactory? Why?
5. Give its boundaries.
6. Is there anything interesting in the meaning or origin of its name?
7. How many towns and cities does it contain?
8. What is the county seat? Is it conveniently situated? Reasons for
thinking so?
9. If convenient, visit any county building, note the uses to which it
is put, and report such facts as may be thus found out.
10. Obtain a deed, no matter how old, and answer these questions about
it:--
a. Is it recorded? If so, where?
b. Would it be easy for you to find
the record?
c. Why should such a record be kept?
d. What officer
has charge of such records?
e. What sort of work must he and his
assistants do?
f. The place of such records is called what?
g. What sort of facilities for the public should such a place have? What
safety precautions should be observed there?
h. Why should the county
keep such records rather than the city or the town?
i. Is there a record of the deed by which the preceding owner came into
possession of the property?
j. What sort of title did the first owner have? Is
there any record of it? Was the first owner Indian or European?
(The teacher might obtain a deed and base a class exercise upon it. It
is easy with a deed for a text to lead pupils to see the common-sense
basis of an important county institution, and thereafter to give very
sensible views as to what it should be, even if it is not fully known
what it is.)
11. Is there a local court for your town or city? 12. How do its cases
compare in magnitude with those tried at the county seat?
13. If a man steals and is prosecuted, who becomes the plaintiff?
14. If a man owes and is sued for debt, who becomes the plaintiff?
15. What is a criminal action?
16. What is a civil action?
17. What is the result to the defendant in the former case, if he is
convicted?
18. What is the result to the defendant in the latter case, if the
decision is against him?
19. Is lying a crime or a sin? May it ever become a crime?
20. Are courts of any service to the vast numbers who are never
brought before them? Why?
21. May good citizens always keep out of the courts if they choose? Is
it their duty always to keep out of them?
22. Is there any aversion among people that you know to being brought
before the courts? Why?
23. What is the purpose of a jail? Is this purpose realized in fact?
24. Should a disturbance of a serious nature break out in your town,
whose immediate duty would it be to quell it? Suppose this duty should
prove too difficult to perform, then what?
25. What is the attitude of good citizenship towards officers who are
trying to enforce the laws? What is the attitude of good citizenship
if the laws are not satisfactory or if the officers are indiscreet in
enforcing them?
26. Suppose a man of property dies and leaves a will, what troubles
are possible about the disposal of his property? Suppose he leaves no
will, what troubles are possible? Whose duty is it to exercise control
over such matters and hold people up to legal and honourable conduct
in them?
27. What is an executor? What is an administrator?
28. If parents die, whose duty is it to care for their children? If
property is left to such children, are they free to use it as they
please? What has the county to do with such cases?
29. How much does your town or city contribute towards county
expenses? How does this amount compare with that raised by other towns
in the county?
30. Give the organization of your county government.
31. Would it be better for the towns to do themselves the work now
done for them by the county?
* * * * *
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE.
Section 1. THE COUNTY IN ITS BEGINNINGS. This subject is treated in
connection with the township in several of the books above mentioned.
See especially Howard, _Local Const. Hist._
Section 2. THE MODERN COUNTY IN MASSACHUSETTS. There is a good account
in Martin's _Text Book_ above mentioned.
Section 3. THE OLD VIRGINIA COUNTY. The best account is in _J.H.U.
Studies_, III., ii.-iii. Edward Ingle, _Virginia Local Institutions._
In dealing with the questions on page 69, both teachers and pupils
will find Dole's _Talks about Law_ (Boston, 1887) extremely
valuable and helpful.
CHAPTER IV.
TOWNSHIP AND COUNTY.
Section 1. _Various Local Systems_.
We have now completed our outline sketch of town and county government
as illustrated in New England on the one hand and in Virginia on the
other. There are some important points in the early history of local
government in other portions of the original thirteen states, to
which we must next call attention; and then we shall be prepared to
understand the manner in which our great western country has been
organized under civil government. We must first say something about
South Carolina and Maryland.
[Sidenote: Parishes in South Carolina.]
South Carolina was settled from half a century to a century later
than Massachusetts and Virginia, and by two distinct streams of
immigration. The lowlands near the coast were settled by Englishmen
and by French Huguenots, but the form of government was purely
English. There were parishes, as in Virginia, but popular election
played a greater part in them. The vestrymen were elected yearly by
all the taxpayers of the parish. The minister was also elected by his
people, and after 1719 each parish sent its representatives to the
colonial legislature, though in a few instances two parishes were
joined together for the purpose of choosing representatives. The
system was thus more democratic than in Virginia; and in this
connection it is worth while to observe that parochial libraries and
free schools were established as early as 1712, much earlier than in
Virginia.
[Sidenote: The back country]
During the first half of the eighteenth century a very different stream
of immigration, coming mostly along the slope of the Alleghanies from
Virginia and Pennsylvania, and consisting in great part of Germans,
Scotch Highlanders, and Scotch-Irish, peopled the upland western regions
of South Carolina. For some time this territory had scarcely any civil
organization. It was a kind of "wild West." There were as yet no
counties in the colony. There was just one sheriff for the whole colony,
who "held his office by patent from the crown." [1] A court sat in
Charleston, but the arm of justice was hardly long enough to reach
offenders in the mountains. "To punish a horse-thief or prosecute a
debtor one was sometimes compelled to travel a distance of several
hundred miles, and be subjected to all the dangers and delays incident
to a wild country." When people cannot get justice in what in civilized
countries is the regular way, they will get it in some irregular way. So
these mountaineers began to form themselves into bands known as
"regulators," quite like the "vigilance committees" formed for the same
purposes in California a hundred years later. For thieves and murderers
the "regulators" provided a speedy trial, and the nearest tree served as
a gallows.
[Footnote 1: B. J. Ramage, in _Johns Hopkins Univ. Studies_, I., xii.]
[Sidenote: The district system.]
In order to put a stop to this lynch law, the legislature in 1768
divided the back country into districts, each with its sheriff and
court-house, and the judges were sent on circuit through these
districts. The upland region with its districts was thus very
differently organized from the lowland region with its parishes, and the
effect was for a while almost like dividing South Carolina into two
states. At first the districts were not allowed to choose their own
sheriffs, but in course of time they acquired this privilege. It was
difficult to apportion the representation in the state legislature so as
to balance evenly the districts in the west against the parishes in the
east, and accordingly there was much dissatisfaction, especially in the
west which did not get its fair share. In 1786 the capital was moved
from Charleston to Columbia as a concession to the back country, and in
1808 a kind of compromise was effected, in such wise that the uplands
secured a permanent majority in the house of representatives, while the
lowlands retained control of the senate. The two sections had each its
separate state treasurer, and this kind of double government lasted
until the Civil War.
[Sidenote: The modern South Carolina county.]
At the close of the war "the parishes were abolished and the district
system was extended to the low country." But soon afterward, by the
new constitution of 1868, the districts were abolished and the state
was divided into 34 counties, each of which sends one senator to the
state senate, while they send representatives in proportion to
their population. In each county the people elect three county
commissioners, a school commissioner, a sheriff, a judge of probate,
a clerk, and a coroner. In one respect the South Carolina county is
quite peculiar: it has no organization for judicial purposes. "The
counties, like their institutional predecessor the district, are
grouped into judicial circuits, and a judge is elected by the
legislature for each circuit. Trial justices are appointed by the
governor for a term of two years."
[Sidenote: The counties are too large.]
This system, like the simple county system everywhere, is a
representative system; the people take no direct part in the
management of affairs. In one respect it seems obviously to need
amendment. In states where county government has grown up naturally,
after the Virginia fashion, the county is apt to be much smaller than
in states where it is simply a district embracing several township
governments. Thus the average size of a county in Massachusetts is 557
square miles, and in Connecticut 594 square miles; but in Virginia
it is only 383 and in Kentucky 307 square miles. In South Carolina,
however, where the county did not grow up of itself, but has been
enacted, so to speak, by a kind of afterthought, it has been made too
large altogether. The average area of the county in South Carolina is
about 1,000 square miles. Charleston County, more than 40 miles in
length and not less than 35 in average width, is larger than the
state of Rhode Island. Such an area is much too extensive for
local self-government. Its different portions are too far apart to
understand each other's local wants, or to act efficiently toward
supplying them; and roads, bridges, and free schools suffer
accordingly. An unsuccessful attempt has been made to reduce the size
of the counties. But what seems perhaps more likely to happen is the
practical division of the counties into school districts, and the
gradual development of these school districts into something like
self-governing townships. To this very interesting point we shall
again have occasion to refer.
[Sidenote: The _hundred_ in Maryland.]
[Sidenote: Clans, brotherhoods, and tribes]
We come now to Maryland. The early history of local institutions in
this state is a fascinating subject of study. None of the American
colonies had a more distinctive character of its own, or reproduced
old English usages in a more curious fashion. There was much in
colonial Maryland, with its lords of the manor, its bailiffs and
seneschals, its courts baron and courts leet, to remind one of the
England of the thirteenth century. But of these ancient institutions,
long since extinct, there is but one that needs to be mentioned in the
present connection. In Maryland the earliest form of civil community
was called, not a parish or township, but a _hundred_. This
curious designation is often met with in English history, and the
institution which it describes, though now almost everywhere extinct,
was once almost universal among men. It will be remembered that the
oldest form of civil society, which is still to be found among some
barbarous races, was that in which families were organized into clans
and clans into tribes; and we saw that among our forefathers in
England the dwelling-place of the clan became the township, and the
home of the tribe became the shire or county. Now, in nearly all
primitive societies that have been studied, we find a group that is
larger than the clan but smaller than the tribe,--or, in other words,
intermediate between clan and tribe. Scholars usually call this group
by its Greek name, _phratry_ or "brotherhood", for it was known
long ago that in ancient Greece clans were grouped into brotherhoods
and brotherhoods into tribes. Among uncivilized people all over the
world we find this kind of grouping. For example, a tribe of North
American Indians is regularly made up of phratries, and the phratries
are made up of clans; and, strange as it might at first seem, a good
many half-understood features of early Greek and Roman society have
had much light thrown upon them from the study of the usages of
Cherokees and Mohawks.
Wherever men have been placed, the problem of forming civil society
has been in its main outlines the same; and in its earlier stages it
has been approached in pretty much the same way by all.
[Sidenote: The hundred court.]
The ancient Romans had the brotherhood, and called it a _curia_.
The Roman people were organized in clans, curies, and tribes. But for
military purposes the curia was called a _century_, because
it furnished a quota of one hundred men to the army. The word
_century_ originally meant a company of a hundred men, and it was
only by a figure of speech that it afterward came to mean a period
of a hundred years. Now among all Germanic peoples, including the
English, the brotherhood seems to have been called the hundred.
Our English forefathers seem to have been organized, like other
barbarians, in clans, brotherhoods, and tribes; and the brotherhood
was in some way connected with the furnishing a hundred warriors to
the host. In the tenth century we find England covered with small
districts known as hundreds. Several townships together made a
hundred, and several hundreds together made a shire. The hundred
was chiefly notable as the smallest area for the administration of
justice. The hundred court was a representative body, composed of the
lords of lands or their stewards, with the reeve and four selected men
and the parish priest from each township. There was a chief magistrate
for the hundred, known originally as the hundredman, but after the
Norman conquest as the high constable.
[Sidenote: Decay of the hundred.]
[Sidenote: Hundred meetings in Maryland]
By the thirteenth century the importance of the hundred had much
diminished. The need for any such body, intermediate between township
and county, ceased to be felt, and the functions of the hundred were
gradually absorbed by the county. Almost everywhere in England, by the
reign of Elizabeth, the hundred had fallen into decay. It is curious
that its name and some of its peculiarities should have been brought
to America, and should in one state have remained to the present day.
Some of the early settlements in Virginia were called hundreds, but
they were practically nothing more than parishes, and the name soon
became obsolete, except upon the map, where we still see, for example,
Bermuda Hundred. But in Maryland the hundred flourished and became the
political unit, like the township in New England. The hundred was the
militia district, and the district for the assessment of taxes. In the
earliest times it was also the representative district; delegates
to the colonial legislature sat for hundreds. But in 1654 this was
changed, and representatives were elected by counties. The officers
of the Maryland hundred were the high constable, the commander of
militia, the tobacco-viewer, the overseer of roads, and the assessor
of taxes. The last-mentioned officer was elected by the people, the
others were all appointed by the governor. The hundred had also its
assembly of all the people, which was in many respects like the New
England town-meeting. These hundred-meetings enacted by-laws, levied
taxes, appointed committees, and often exhibited a vigorous political
life. But after the Revolution they fell into disuse, and in 1824 the
hundred became extinct in Maryland; its organization was swallowed up
in that of the county.
[Sidenote: The hundred in Delaware]
[Sidenote: The levy court, or representative county assembly.]
In Delaware, however, the hundred remains to this day. There it
is simply an imperfectly developed township, but its relations with
the county, as they have stood with but little change since 1743,
are very interesting. Each hundred used to choose its own assessor
of taxes, and every year in the month of November the assessors from
all the hundreds used to meet in the county court-house, along with
three or more justices of the peace and eight grand jurors, and assess
the taxes for the ensuing year. A month later they assembled again,
to hear complaints from persons who considered themselves overtaxed;
and having disposed of this business, they proceeded to appoint
collectors, one for each hundred. This county assembly was known as
the "court of levy and appeal," or more briefly as the levy court.
It appointed the county treasurer, the road commissioners, and the
overseers of the poor. Since 1793 the levy court has been composed
of special commissioners chosen by popular vote, but its essential
character has not been altered. As a thoroughly representative body,
it reminds one of the county courts of the Plantagenet period.
[Sidenote: The old Pennsylvania county.]
We next come to the great middle colonies, Pennsylvania and New York.
The most noteworthy feature of local government in Pennsylvania was
the general election of county officers by popular vote. The county
was the unit of representation in the colonial legislature, and on
election days the people of the county elected at the same time their
sheriffs, coroners, assessors, and county commissioners. In this
respect Pennsylvania furnished a model which has been followed by most
of the states since the Revolution, as regards the county governments.
It is also to be noted that before the Revolution, as Pennsylvania
increased in population, the townships began to participate in the
work of government, each township choosing its overseers of the poor,
highway surveyors, and inspectors of elections.[3]
[Footnote 3: Town-meetings were not quite unknown in Pennsylvania;
see W. P. Holcomb, "Pennsylvania Boroughs," _J. H. U. Studies_,
IV., iv.]
[Sidenote: Town-meetings in New York.]
[Sidenote: The county board of supervisors.]
New York had from the very beginning the rudiments of an excellent
system of local self-government. The Dutch villages had their
assemblies, which under the English rule were developed into
town-meetings, though with less ample powers than those of New
England. The governing body of the New York town consisted of the
constable and eight overseers, who answered in most respects to the
selectmen of New England. Four of the overseers were elected each year
in town-meeting, and one of the retiring overseers was at the same
time elected constable. In course of time the elective offices came
to include assessors and collectors, town clerk, highway surveyors,
fence-viewers, pound-masters, and overseers of the poor. At first
the town-meetings seem to have been held only for the election of
officers, but they acquired to a limited extent the power of levying
taxes and enacting by-laws. In 1703 a law was passed requiring each
town to elect yearly an officer to be known as the "supervisor," whose
duty was "to compute, ascertain, examine, oversee, and allow the
contingent, publick, and necessary charges" of the county.[4] For
this purpose the supervisors met once a year at the county town. The
principle was the same as that of the levy court in Delaware. This
board of supervisors was a strictly representative government, and
formed a strong contrast to the close corporation by which county
affairs were administered in Virginia. The New York system is
of especial interest, because it has powerfully influenced the
development of local institutions throughout the Northwest.
[Footnote 4: Howard, _Local Const. Hist_., i. 111.]
QUESTIONS ON THE TEXT.
1. Describe the early local government of eastern South Carolina.
2. Describe the early local government of western South Carolina.
3. Explain the difference.
4. What effort was made in 1768 to put a stop to lynch law?
5. What difficulties arose from the attempted adjustment of
1768?
6. What compromises were made between the two sections
down to the time of the Civil War?
7. What changes have been made in local government since the
Civil War?
8. Mention a peculiarity of the South Carolina county.
9. Compare its size with that of counties in other states.
10. What disadvantage is due to this great size?
11. What was the earliest form of civil community in Maryland,
and from what source did it come?
12. Trace the development of the hundred in accordance with
the following outline:--
a. Intermediate groups between clans and tribes.
b. Illustrations from Greece and the North American Indians.
c. The Roman century and the German hundred.
13. Describe the English hundred in the tenth century.
14. Describe the hundred court.
15. Describe the Maryland hundred and its decay.
16. What is the relation of the Delaware hundred to the county?
17. Describe the Delaware levy court.
18. What were the prominent features of the Pennsylvania
county?
19. Compare the town-meetings of New York with those of New
England.
20. What was the government of the New York county?
21. How did this government compare with that of the Virginia county?
Section 2. _Settlement of the Public Domain._
[Sidenote: Westward movement of population.]
The westward movement of population in the United States has for the
most part followed the parallels of latitude. Thus Virginians and
North Carolinians, crossing the Alleghanies, settled Kentucky and
Tennessee; thus people from New England filled up the central and
northern parts of New York, and passed on into Michigan and Wisconsin;
thus Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois received many settlers from New York
and Pennsylvania. In the early times when Kentucky was settled, the
pioneer would select a piece of land wherever he liked, and after
having a rude survey made, and the limits marked by "blazing" the
trees with a hatchet, the survey would be put on record in the state
land-office. So little care was taken that half a dozen patents would
sometimes be given for the same tract. Pieces of land, of all shapes
and sizes, lay between the patents.... Such a system naturally begat
no end of litigation, and there remain in Kentucky curious vestiges of
it to this day. [5]
[Footnote 5: Hinsdale, _Old Northwest_, p. 261.]
[Sidenote: Method of surveying the public lands.]
[Sidenote: Origins of Western townships.]
In order to avoid such confusion in the settlement of the territory
north of the Ohio river, Congress passed the land-ordinance of 1785,
which was based chiefly upon the suggestions of Thomas Jefferson, and
laid the foundation of our simple and excellent system for surveying
national lands. According to this system as gradually perfected, the
government surveyors first mark out a north and south line which is
called the _principal meridian_. Twenty-four such meridians have been
established. The first was the dividing line between Ohio and Indiana;
the last one runs through Oregon a little to the west of Portland. On
each side of the principal meridian there are marked off subordinate
meridians called _range [6] Then a true parallel of latitude is drawn,
crossing these meridians at right angles. It is called the _base line_,
or standard parallel. Eleven such base lines, for example, run across
the great state of Oregon. Finally, on each side of the base line are
drawn subordinate parallels called _township lines_, six miles apart,
and numbered north and south from their base line. By these range lines
and township lines the whole land is thus divided into townships just
six miles square, and the townships are all numbered. Take, for example,
the township of Deerfield in Michigan. That is the fourth township north
of the base line, and it is in the fifth range east of the first
principal meridian. It would be called township number 4 north range 5
east, and was so called before it was settled and received a name.
Evidently one must go 24 miles from the principal meridian, or 18 miles
from the base line, in order to enter this township. It is all as simple
as the numbering of streets in Philadelphia.[7]
[Footnote 6: The following is a diagram of the first principal meridian,
and of the base line running across southern Michigan. A B is the
principal meridian; C D is the base line. The figures on the base line
mark the range lines; the figures on the principal meridian mark the
township lines. E is township 4 north in range 5 east; F is township 5
south in range 4 west; G is township 3 north in range 3 west.
[Illustration] As the intervals between meridians diminish as we go
northward, it is sometimes necessary to introduce a correction line, the
nature of which will be seen from the following diagram:--
[Illustration: DIAGRAM OF CORRECTION LINE.]]
[Footnote 7: In Philadelphia the streets for the most part cross each
other at right angles and at equal distances, so that the city is laid
out like a checkerboard. The parallel streets running in one direction
have names, often taken from trees. Market Street is the central
street from which the others are reckoned in both directions according
to the couplet
"Market, Arch, Race, and Vine,
Chestnut, Walnut, Spruce, and Pine," etc.
The cross streets are not named but numbered, as First, Second, etc.
The houses on one side of the street have odd numbers and on the other
side even numbers, as is the general custom in the United States. With
each new block a new century of numbers begins, although there are
seldom more than forty real numbers in a block. For example, the
corner house on Market Street, just above Fifteenth, is 1501 Market
Street. At somewhere about 1535 or 1539 you come to Sixteenth Street;
then there is a break in the numbering, and the next corner house is
1601. So in going along a numbered street, say Fifteenth, from Market,
the first number will be 1; after passing Arch, 101; after passing
Race, 201, etc. With this system a very slight familiarity with the
city enables one to find his way to any house, and to estimate the
length of time needful for reaching it. St. Louis and some other large
cities have adopted the Philadelphia plan, the convenience of which
is as great as its monotony. In Washington the streets running in
one direction are lettered A, B, C, etc., and the cross streets are
numbered; and upon the checkerboard plan is superposed another plan in
which broad avenues radiate in various directions from the Capitol,
and a few other centres. These avenues cut through the square system
of streets in all directions, so that instead of the dull checkerboard
monotony there is an almost endless variety of magnificent vistas.]
[Sidenote: and of Western counties.]
If now we look at Livingston County, in which, this township of Deerfield
is situated, we observe that the county is made up of sixteen townships,
in four rows of four; and the next county, Washtenaw, is made up of
twenty townships, in five rows of four. Maps of our Western states
are thus apt to have somewhat of a checkerboard aspect, not unlike
the wonderful country which Alice visited after she had gone through
the looking-glass. Square townships are apt to make square or
rectangular counties, and the state, too, is likely to acquire a more
symmetrical shape.
Nothing could be more unlike the jagged, irregular shape of counties
in Virginia or townships in Massachusetts, which grew up just as it
happened. The contrast is similar to that between Chicago, with its
straight streets crossing at right angles, and Boston, or London, with
their labyrinths of crooked lanes. For picturesqueness the advantage
is entirely with the irregular city, but for practical convenience it
is quite the other way. So with our western lands the simplicity and
regularity of the system have made it a marvel of convenience for the
settlers, and doubtless have had much to do with the rapidity with
which civil governments have been built up in the West. "This fact,"
says a recent writer, "will be appreciated by those who know from
experience the ease and certainty with which the pioneer on the
great plains of Kansas, Nebraska, or Dakota is enabled to select his
homestead or 'locate his claim' unaided by the expensive skill of the
surveyor." [8]
[Footnote 8: Howard, _Local Const. Hist. of U. S._, vol. i. p.
139.]
[Sidenote: Some effects of the system.]
There was more in it than this, however. There was a germ of
organization planted in these western townships, which must be noted
as of great importance. Each township, being six miles in length and
six miles in breadth, was divided into thirty-six numbered sections,
each containing just one square mile, or 640 acres. Each section,
moreover, was divided into 16 tracts of 40 acres each, and sales to
settlers were and are generally made by tracts at the rate of a dollar
and a quarter per acre. For fifty dollars a man may buy forty acres of
unsettled land, provided he will actually go and settle upon it, and
this has proved to be a very effective inducement for enterprising
young men to "go West." Many a tract thus bought for fifty dollars has
turned out to be a soil upon which princely fortunes have grown. A
tract of forty acres represents to-day in Chicago or Minneapolis an
amount of wealth difficult for the imagination to grasp.
[Sidenote: The reservation for public schools.]
[Sidenote: In this reservation there were the germs of township
government.]
But in each of these townships there was at least one section which
was set apart for a special purpose. This was usually the sixteenth
section, nearly in the centre of the township; and sometimes the
thirty-sixth section, in the southeast corner, was also reserved.
These reservations were for the support of public schools. Whatever
money was earned, by selling the land or otherwise, in these sections,
was to be devoted to school purposes. This was a most remarkable
provision. No other nation has ever made a gift for schools on so
magnificent a scale. We have good reason for taking pride in such a
liberal provision. But we ought not to forget that all national
gifts really involve taxation, and this is no exception to the rule,
although in this case it is not a taking of money, but a keeping of it
back. The national government says to the local government, whatever
revenues may come from that section of 640 acres, be they great or
small, be it a spot in a rural grazing district, or a spot in some
crowded city, are not to go into the pockets of individual men and
women, but are to be reserved for public purposes. This is a case of
disguised taxation, and may serve to remind us of what was said some
time ago, that a government _cannot_ give anything without in one
way or another depriving individuals of its equivalent. No man can sit
on a camp-stool and by any amount of tugging at that camp-stool lift
himself over a fence. Whatever is given comes from somewhere,
and whatever is given by governments comes from the people. This
reservation of one square mile in every township for purposes of
education has already most profoundly influenced the development of
local government in our western states, and in the near future its
effects are likely to become still deeper and wider. To mark out a
township on the map may mean very little, but when once you create in
that township some institution that needs to be cared for, you have
made a long stride toward inaugurating township government. When
a state, as for instance Illinois, grows up after the method just
described, what can be more natural than for it to make the township a
body corporate for school purposes, and to authorize its inhabitants
to elect school officers and tax themselves, so far as may be
necessary, for the support of the schools? But the school-house,
in the centre of the township, is soon found to be useful for many
purposes. It is convenient to go there to vote for state officers or
for congressmen and president, and so the school township becomes an
election district. Having once established such a centre, it is almost
inevitable that it should sooner or later be made to serve sundry
other purposes, and become an area for the election of constables,
justices of the peace, highway surveyors, and overseers of the poor.
In this way a vigorous township government tends to grow up about the
school-house as a nucleus, somewhat as in early New England it grew up
about the church.
[Sidenote: At first the county system prevailed.]
This tendency may be observed in almost all the western states and
territories, even to the Pacific coast. When the western country was
first settled, representative county government prevailed almost
everywhere. This was partly because the earliest settlers of the West
came in much greater numbers from the middle and southern states than
from New England. It was also partly because, so long as the country
was thinly settled, the number of people in a township was very small,
and it was not easy to have a government smaller than that of the
county. It was something, however, that the little squares on the
map, by grouping which the counties were made, were already called
townships. There is much in a name. It was still more important that
these townships were only six miles square; for that made it sure
that, in due course of time, when population should have become dense
enough, they would be convenient areas for establishing township
government.
QUESTIONS ON THE TEXT.
1. What feature is conspicuous in the westward movement of population
in the United States?
2. What looseness characterized early surveys in Kentucky?
3. What led to the passage of the land ordinance of 1785?
4. Give the leading features of the government survey of western
lands:--_a_. The principal meridians.
b. The range lines,
c. The base lines.
d. The township lines.
5. Illustrate the application of the system in the case of a town.
6. Contrast in shape western townships and counties with corresponding
divisions in Massachusetts and Virginia.
7. Contrast them in convenience and in picturesqueness.
8. What had the convenience of the government system to do with the
settlement of the West?
9. What were the divisions of the township, and what disposition was
made of them?
10. What important reservations were made in the townships?
11. Show how these reservations involved a kind of taxation.
12. What profound influence has the reservation for schools exerted
upon local government?
13. Why did the county system prevail at first?
Section 3. _The Representative Township-County System in the
West_.
[Sidenote: The town-meeting in Michigan.] The first western state to
adopt the town-meeting was Michigan, where the great majority of the
settlers had come from New England, or from central New York, which
was a kind of westward extension of New England.[9] Counties were
established in Michigan Territory in 1805, and townships were first
incorporated in 1825. This was twelve years before Michigan became a
state. At first the powers of the town-meeting were narrowly
limited. It elected the town and county officers, but its power of
appropriating money seems to have been restricted to the purpose
of extirpating noxious animals and weeds. In 1827, however, it was
authorized to raise money for the support of schools, and since then
its powers have steadily increased, until now they approach those of
the town-meeting in Massachusetts.
[Footnote 9: "Of the 496 members of the Michigan Pioneer Association
in 1881, 407 are from these sections" [New England and New York].
Bemis, _Local Government in Michigan and the Northwest_, J. H. U.
Studies, I., v]
[Sidenote: Settlement of Illinois.]
The history of Illinois presents an extremely interesting example of
rivalry and conflict between the town system of New England and the
county system of the South. Observe that this great state is so long
that, while the parallel of latitude starting from its northern
boundary runs through Marblehead in Massachusetts, the parallel
through its southernmost point, at Cairo, runs a little south of
Petersburg in Virginia. In 1818, when Illinois framed its state
government and was admitted to the Union, its population was chiefly
in the southern half, and composed for the most part of pioneers from
Virginia and Virginia's daughter-state Kentucky. These men brought
with them the old Virginia county system, but with the very great
difference that the county officers were not appointed by the
governor, or allowed to be a self-perpetuating board, but were elected
by the people of the county. This was a true advance in the democratic
direction, but an essential defect of the southern system remained in
the absence of any kind of local meeting for the discussion of public
affairs and the enactment of local laws.
[Sidenote: Effects of the Ordinance of 1787.]
By the famous Ordinance of 1787, to which we shall again have occasion
to refer, negro slavery had been forever prohibited to the north of
the Ohio river, so that, in spite of the wishes of her early settlers,
Illinois was obliged to enter the Union as a free state. But in 1820
Missouri was admitted as a slave state, and this turned the stream of
southern migration aside from Illinois to Missouri. These emigrants,
to whom slaveholding was a mark of social distinction, preferred to
go where they could own slaves. About the same time settlers from New
England and New York, moving along the southern border of Michigan
and the northern borders of Ohio and Indiana, began pouring into
the northern part of Illinois. These new-comers did not find the
representative county system adequate for their needs, and they
demanded township government. A memorable political struggle ensued
between the northern and southern halves of the state, ending in 1848
with the adoption of a new constitution. It was provided that the
legislature should enact a general law for the political organization
of townships, under which any county might act whenever a majority of
its voters should so determine.[10] This was introducing the principle
of local option, and in accordance therewith township governments with
town-meetings were at once introduced in the northern counties of the
state, while the southern counties kept on in the old way. Now comes
the most interesting part of the story. The two systems being thus
brought into immediate contact in the same state, with free choice
between them left to the people, the northern system has slowly but
steadily supplanted the southern system, until at the present day only
one fifth part of the counties in Illinois remain without township
government.
[Footnote 10: Shaw, _Local Government if Illinois_, J. H. U.
Studies, I., iii.]
[Sidenote: Intense vitality of the township system.]
This example shows the intense vitality of the township system. It is
the kind of government that people are sure to prefer when they
have tried it under favourable conditions. In the West the hostile
conditions against which it has to contend are either the recent
existence of negro slavery and the ingrained prejudice in favour of
the Virginia method, as in Missouri; or simply the sparseness of
population, as in Nebraska. Time will evidently remove the latter
obstacle, and probably the former also. It is very significant that in
Missouri, which began so lately as 1879 to erect township governments
under a local option law similar to that of Illinois, the process
has already extended over about one sixth part of the state; and in
Nebraska, where the same process began in 1883, it has covered nearly
one third of the organized counties of the state.
[Sidenote: County option and township option.]
The principle of local option as to government has been carried still
farther in Minnesota and Dakota. The method just described may be
called county option; the question is decided by a majority vote of
the people of the county. But in Minnesota in 1878 it was enacted that
as soon as any one of the little square townships in that state should
contain as many as twenty-five legal voters, it might petition the
board of county commissioners and obtain a township organization, even
though, the adjacent townships in the same county should remain under
county government only. Five years later the same provision was
adopted by Dakota, and under it township government is steadily
spreading.
[Sidenote: Grades of township government.]
Two distinct grades of township government are to be observed in the
states west of the Alleghanies; the one has the town-meeting for
deliberative purposes, the other has not. In Ohio and Indiana, which
derived their local institutions largely from Pennsylvania, there is
no such town-meeting, the administrative offices are more or less
concentrated in a board of trustees, and the town is quite subordinate
to the county. The principal features of this system have been
reproduced in Iowa, Missouri, and Kansas.
The other system, was that which we have seen beginning in
Michigan, under the influence of New York and New England. Here the
town-meeting, with legislative powers, is always present. The most
noticeable feature of the Michigan system is the relation between
township and county, which was taken from New York. The county board
is composed of the supervisors of the several townships, and thus
represents the townships. It is the same in Illinois. It is held
by some writers that this is the most perfect form of local
government,[11] but on the other hand the objection is made that county
boards thus constituted are too large.[12] We have seen that in the
states in question there are not less than 16, and sometimes more than
20, townships in each county. In a board of 16 or 20 members it is
hard to fasten responsibility upon anybody in particular; and thus
it becomes possible to have "combinations," and to indulge in that
exchange of favours known as "log-rolling," which is one of the
besetting sins of all large representative bodies. Responsibility
is more concentrated in the smaller county boards of Massachusetts,
Wisconsin, and Minnesota.
[Footnote 11: Howard, _Local Const. Hist._, passim.]
[Footnote 12: Bemis, _Local Government in Michigan_, J. H. U.
Studies, I., v.]
[Sidenote: An excellent result of the absence of centralization in the
United States.]
It is one signal merit of the peaceful and untrammelled way in which
American institutions have grown up, the widest possible scope being
allowed to individual and local preferences, that different states
adopt different methods of attaining the great end at which all are
aiming in common,--good government. One part of our vast country can
profit by the experience of other parts, and if any system or method
thus comes to prevail everywher
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