The Colonies, 1492-1750

by Reuben Gold Thwaites

They had been trained in self-government, and were sticklers for healthy political precedents. They were the heirs of grim and sturdy Teutonic ancestors who knew no rule but that imposed by "the armed assembly of the whole people." The germs of modern English free and representative institutions are to be plainly traced in the forest councils of the Germanic tribes. In the succeeding ages these institutions had grown irregularly, but it was a growth founded on the irresistible will of the people; |and their free institutions.| they had descended to the men of the seventeenth century as the sacred heirlooms of generations which had freely spent blood and treasure for the rights of all Englishmen to come. The principle and habit of self-government were deep rooted in the heart of every English commoner; it was a part of his nature. And this principle, this habit, he brought with him to America. English institutions were merely transplanted to the New World, where they developed with perhaps greater rapidity than at home,—certainly on somewhat different and characteristic lines; but they were and still are English institutions.

24. Local Government in the Colonies.

The English town

The primary local body in the England which these first colonists to America knew, was the parish, or town, which had both an ecclesiastical and a temporal jurisdiction. Next above the parishes was the territorial division known as the county, with an independent magistracy and a judicial and military organization adapted to the needs of a large rural area. In making independent settlements on the American coast, the English commercial companies and proprietors were not establishing states; what they planted were but the germs of states. |and county.| Each detached colony had a distinct life, and it was natural that, despite the general rules of government established by the companies, the people should proceed at once to govern themselves in their local affairs upon either the town or the county plan, according to circumstances. The flexibility of English representative institutions has never elsewhere been so well illustrated as in the different forms they took on in the American colonies, without once departing from the integrity of historic models.

The county the political unit in the Southern colonies;

In the Southern colonies the country was traversed by deep, broad river highways, leading far inland; the climate was genial, the savages proved comparatively friendly, and the introduction of slavery tended to foster an aristocratic class of landed proprietors,—large plantations, therefore, were the rule. There were a few small trading villages, but the bulk of the people were isolated, and township governments were impracticable. The settlers therefore adopted a primary government akin to the English rural county, having jurisdiction over a wide tract of country, with a commander of militia, appointed by the governor and styled a lieutenant, whose duties and authority were similar to those of the lords-lieutenant at home; judicial powers being exercised by eight or more gentlemen, also appointed by the governor, serving as a county court. It should be remembered that the Southern county was not, as in England, a group of towns,—it was itself the primary organization. The parish was sometimes, in newly settled portions, co-extensive with the county; but more often the latter was, for religious purposes, divided into parishes, the vestries of which had authority in some civil matters. Again, for the purposes of tax levy and collection, the county was divided into precincts; and in some districts conditions were such—among them the hostility of the savages—that the people of each plantation or small neighborhood assembled for worship by themselves, and thus became recognized as a separate community, in some matters self-governed. These differences in local organization account for the terms "plantation," "congregation," and "hundred," often met with in early Southern records. The tendency of the Southern political and social system was to concentrate power in the hands of a few men, in sharp distinction to the New England plan, where the people governed themselves in small primary assemblies, only delegating the conduct of details to their agents, the town officers.

and the town in New England.

In New England, the narrowness of the Atlantic slope, the shortness of the rivers, the severe climate, the hostility of the savages, the neighborhood of the French, the density of the forests, and the fact that each community was an organized religious congregation,—people belonging to one church, who had "resolved to live together,"—led to the establishment of more or less compact communities, called towns; and these were the political and ecclesiastical units. Since the conditions were changed, some features of the English parish were modified to suit the more primitive necessities of life in the wilderness. |Unconscious reversion to older Teutonic forms.| Thus we find that here and there in New England was a reversion to older Teutonic forms, although of this significant fact the colonists themselves were unaware; for the now familiar truth that the ancestry of our institutions reaches back to the beginnings of the race, had not then been discovered. Not only was the English town government practically reproduced on American soil, with such changes as were adapted to the new environment, but the titles of the town officials were, in many cases, borrowed from the mother-land. When the first town meeting was held, English local government had been successfully grafted upon the New World.

The mixed system in the middle colonies.

In the middle colonies, which partook of the climatic characteristics of both their Northern and Southern neighbors, and had a population made up of various nationalities, there were compact trading towns as well as large agricultural regions; and there we find a mixed system, of both townships and counties.