[Sidenote: Direct government impossible in a county.] Nevertheless the loss is inevitable. A primary assembly of all the inhabitants of a county, for purposes of local government, is out of the question. There must be representative government, for this purpose the county system, an inheritance from the ancient English shire, has furnished the needful machinery. Our county government is near enough to the people to be kept in general from gross abuses of power. There are many points which can be much better decided in small representative bodies than in large miscellaneous meetings. The responsibility of our local boards has been fairly well preserved. The county system has had no mean share in keeping alive the spirit of local independence and self-government among our people. As regards efficiency of administration, it has achieved commendable success, except in the matter of rural highways; and if our roads are worse than those of any other civilized country, that is due not so much to imperfect administrative methods as to other causes,—such as the sparseness of population, the fierce extremes of sunshine and frost, and the fact that since this huge country began to be reclaimed from the wilderness, the average voter, who has not travelled in Europe, knows no more about good roads than he knows about the temples of Paestum or the pictures of Tintoretto, and therefore does not realize what demands he may reasonably make.
This last consideration applies in some degree, no doubt, to the ill-paved and filthy streets which are the first things to arrest one's attention in most of our great cities. It is time for us now to consider briefly our general system of city government, in its origin and in some of its most important features.
[Sidenote: The Boston town-meeting in 1820.] Representative government in counties is necessitated by the extent of territory covered; in cities it is necessitated by the multitude of people. When the town comes to have a very large population, it becomes physically impossible to have town-meetings. No way could be devised by which all the taxpayers of the city of New York could be assembled for discussion. In 1820 the population of Boston was about 40,000, of whom rather more than 7,000 were voters qualified to attend the town-meetings. Consequently when a town-meeting was held on any exciting subject in Faneuil Hall, those only who obtained places near the moderator could even hear the discussion. A few busy or interested individuals easily obtained the management of the most important affairs in an assembly in which the greater number could have neither voice nor hearing. When the subject was not generally exciting, town-meetings were usually composed of the selectmen, the town officers, and thirty or forty inhabitants. Those who thus came were for the most part drawn to it from some official duty or private interest, which, when performed or attained, they generally troubled themselves but little, or not at all, about the other business of the meeting.[2]
[Footnote 2: Quincy's Municipal History of Boston, p. 28.]
Under these circumstances it was found necessary in 1822 to drop the town-meeting altogether and devise a new form of government for Boston. After various plans had been suggested and discussed, it was decided that the new government should be vested in a Mayor; a select council of eight persons to be called the Board of Aldermen; and a Common Council of forty-eight persons, four from each of twelve wards into which the city was to be divided. All these officials were to be elected by the people. At the same time the official name "Town of Boston" was changed to "City of Boston."
[Sidenote: Distinctions between towns and cities.] There is more or less of history involved in these offices and designations, to which we may devote a few words of explanation. In New England local usage there is an ambiguity in the word "town." As an official designation it means the inhabitants of a township considered as a community or corporate body. In common parlance it often means the patch of land constituting the township on the map, as when we say that Squire Brown's elm is "the biggest tree in town." But it still oftener means a collection of streets, houses, and families too large to be called a village, but without the municipal government that characterizes a city. Sometimes it is used par excellence for a city, as when an inhabitant of Cambridge, itself a large suburban city, speaks of going to Boston as going "into town." But such cases are of course mere survivals from the time when the suburb was a village. In American usage generally the town is something between village and city, a kind of inferior or incomplete city. The image which it calls up in the mind is of something urban and not rural. This agrees substantially with the usage in European history, where "town" ordinarily means a walled town or city as contrasted with a village. In England the word is used either in this general sense, or more specifically as signifying an inferior city, as in America. But the thing which the town lacks, as compared with the complete city, is very different in America from what it is in England. In America it is municipal government—with mayor, aldermen, and common council—which must be added to the town in order to make it a city. In England the town may (and usually does) have this municipal government; but it is not distinguished by the Latin name "city" unless it has a cathedral and a bishop. Or in other words the English city is, or has been, the capital of a diocese. Other towns in England are distinguished as "boroughs," an old Teutonic word which was originally applied to towns as fortified places.[3] The voting inhabitants of an English city are called "citizens;" those of a borough are called "burgesses." Thus the official corporate designation of Cambridge is "the mayor, aldermen, and burgesses of Cambridge;" but Oxford is the seat of a bishopric, and its corporate designation is "the mayor, aldermen, and citizens of Oxford."
[Footnote 3: The word appears in many town names, such as Edinburgh, Scarborough, Canterbury, Bury St. Edmunds; and on the Continent, as Hamburg, Cherbourg, Burgos, etc. In Connecticut, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Minnesota, the name "borough" is applied to a certain class of municipalities with some of the powers of cities.]
QUESTIONS ON THE TEXT.
1. What is the essential difference between township government and county government?
2. What is the distinct advantage of the former?