Civil Government in the United States Considered with Some Reference to Its Origins

by John Fiske

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 everywhere in the long run, it is likely to be by reason of its intrinsic excellence. Our country affords an admirable field for the study of the general principles which lie at the foundations of universal history. Governments, large and small, are growing up all about us, and in such wise that we can watch the processes of growth, and learn lessons which, after making due allowances for difference of circumstance, are very helpful in the study of other times and countries.

The general tendency toward the spread of township government in the more recently settled parts of the United States is unmistakable, and I have already remarked upon the influence of the public school system in aiding this tendency. The school district, as a preparation for the self-governing township, is already exerting its influence in Colorado, Nevada, California, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington.

[Sidenote: Township government is germinating in the South.] Something similar is going on in the southern states, as already hinted in the case of South Carolina. Local taxation for school purposes has also been established in Kentucky and Tennessee, in both Virginias, and elsewhere. There has thus begun a most natural and wholesome movement, which might easily be checked, with disastrous results, by the injudicious appropriation of national revenue for the aid of southern schools. It is to be hoped that throughout the southern, states, as formerly in Michigan, the self-governing school district may prepare the way for the self-governing township, with its deliberative town-meeting. Such a growth must needs be slow, inasmuch as it requires long political training on the part of the negroes and the lower classes of white people; but it is along such a line of development that such political training can best be acquired; and in no other way is complete harmony between the two races so likely to be secured.

[Sidenote: woman suffrage.] Dr. Edward Bemis, who in a profoundly interesting essay[13] has called attention to this function of the school district as a stage in the evolution of the township, remarks also upon the fact that "it is in the local government of the school district that woman suffrage is being tried." In several states women may vote for school committees, or may be elected to school committees, or to sundry administrative school offices. At present (1894) there are not less than twenty-one states in which women have school suffrage. In Colorado and Wyoming women have full suffrage, voting at municipal, state, and national elections. In Kansas they have municipal suffrage, and a constitutional amendment granting them full suffrage is now awaiting ratification. In England, it may be observed, unmarried women and widows who pay taxes vote not only on school matters, but generally in the local elections of vestries, boroughs, and poor-law unions. In the new Parish Councils Bill this municipal suffrage is extended to married women. In the Isle of Man women vote for members of Parliament. In Australia they have long had municipal suffrage, and in 1893 they were endowed with full rights of suffrage in New Zealand.

[Footnote 13: Local Government in Michigan and the Northwest, J.H.U.
Studies, I., v.]

The historical reason why the suffrage has so generally been restricted to men is perhaps to be sought in the conditions under which voting originated. In primeval times voting was probably adopted as a substitute for fighting. The smaller and presumably weaker party yielded to the larger without an actual trial of physical strength; heads were counted instead of being broken. Accordingly it was only the warriors who became voters. The restriction of political activity to men has also probably been emphasized by the fact that all the higher civilizations have passed through a well-defined patriarchal stage of society in which each household was represented by its oldest warrior. From present indications it would seem that under the conditions of modern industrial society the arrangements that have so long subsisted are likely to be very essentially altered.

QUESTIONS ON THE TEXT.

1. Describe the origin and development of the town-meeting in Michigan.

2. Describe the settling of southern Illinois.

3. Describe the settling of northern Illinois.

4. What difference in thought and feeling existed between these sections?

5. What systems of local government came into rivalry in Illinois, and why?

6. What compromise between them was put into the state constitution?

7. Which system, the town or the county, has shown the greater vitality, and why?

8. What obstacles has the town system to work against?

9. Show how the principle of local option in government has been applied in Missouri, Nebraska, Minnesota, and Dakota.

10. What two grades of town government exist west of the Alleghanies?

11. What objection exists to large county boards of government?

12. Why is our country an excellent field for the study of the principles of government?

13. What unmistakable tendency in the ease of township government is noticeable?

14. Speak of township government in the South.

15. What part have women in the affairs of the school district in many states?

16. What is the historical reason why suffrage has been restricted to men?

SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS AND DIRECTIONS.

It may need to be repeated (see page 12) that it is not expected that each pupil shall answer all the miscellaneous questions put, or respond to all the suggestions made in this book. Indeed, the teacher may be pardoned if now and then he finds it difficult himself to answer a question,—particularly if it is framed to provoke thought rather than lead to a conclusion, or if it is better fitted for some other community or part of the country than that in which he lives. Let him therefore divide the questions among his pupils, or assign to them selected questions. In cases that call for special knowledge, let the topics go to pupils who may have exceptional facilities for information at home.

The important point is not so much the settlement of all the questions proposed as it is the encouragement of the inquiring and thinking spirit on the part of the pupil.

1. What impression do you get from this chapter about the hold of town government upon popular favour?

2. What do you regard as the best features of town government?

3. Is there any tendency anywhere to divide towns into smaller towns? If it exists, illustrate and explain it.

4. Is there any tendency anywhere to unite towns into larger towns or into cities? If it exists, illustrate and explain it.

5. In every town-meeting there are leaders,—usually men of character, ability, and means. Do you understand that these men practically have their own way in town affairs,—that the voters as a whole do but little more than fall in with the wishes and plans of their leaders? Or is there considerable independence in thought and action on the side of the voters?

6. Can a town do what it pleases, or is it limited in its action? If limited, by whom or by what is it restricted, and where are the restrictions recorded? (Consult the Statutes.)

7. Why should the majority rule in town-meeting? Suggest, if possible, a better way.

8. Is it, on the whole, wise that the vote of the poor man shall count as much as that of the rich, the vote of the ignorant as much as that of the intelligent, the vote of the unprincipled as much as that of the high-toned?

9. Have the poor, the ignorant, or the unprincipled any interests to be regarded in government?

10. Is the single vote a man casts the full measure of his influence and power in the town-meeting?

11. What are the objections to a suffrage restricted by property and intellectual qualifications? To a suffrage unrestricted by such qualifications?

12. Do women vote in your town? If so, give some account of their voting and of the success or popularity of the plan.

13. Is lynch law ever justifiable?

14. Ought those who resort to lynch law to be punished? If so, for what?

15. Compare the condition or government of a community where lynch law is resorted to with the condition or government of a community where it is unknown.

16. May the citizen who is not an officer of the law interfere (1) to stop the fighting of boys in the public streets, (2) to capture a thief who is plying his trade, (3) to defend a person who is brutally assaulted? Is there anything like lynch law i.e. such interference? Where does the citizen's duty begin and end In such cases?

17. How came the United States to own the public domain or any part of it? (Consult my Critical Period of Amer. Hist., pp. 187-207.)

18. How does this domain get into the possession of individuals?

19. Is it right for the United States to give any part of it away? If right, under what conditions is it right? If wrong, under what conditions is It wrong?

20. What is the "homestead act" of the United States, and what is its object?

21. Can perfect squares of the same size be laid out with the range and township lines of the public surveys? Are all the sections of a township of the same size? Explain.