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.


BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE.

Section 1. VARIOUS LOCAL SYSTEMS.--_J.H.V. Studies_, I., vi.,
Edward Ingle, _Parish Institutions of Maryland_; I., vii., John
Johnson, _Old Maryland Manors_; I., xii., B.J. Ramage, _Local
Government and Free Schools in South Carolina_; III., v.-vii., L.

W. Wilhelm, _Local Institutions of Maryland_; IV., i., Irving
Elting, _Dutch Village Communities on the Hudson River_.

Section 2. SETTLEMENT OF THE PUBLIC DOMAIN.--_J. H. U. Studies_,
III., i. H. B. Adams, _Maryland's Influence upon Land Cessions to
the United States_; IV., vii.-ix., Shoshuke Sato, _History of the
Land Question in the United States_.

Section 3. THE REPRESENTATIVE TOWNSHIP-COUNTY SYSTEM.--_J H. U.
Studies_, I., iii., Albert Shaw, _Local Government in Illinois_; I., v.,
Edward Bemis, _Local Government in Michigan and the Northwest_; II.,
vii., Jesse Macy, _Institutional Beginnings in a Western State (Iowa)_.
For farther illustration of one set of institutions supervening upon
another, see also V., v.-vi., J. G. Bourinot, _Local Government in
Canada_; VIII., in., D. E. Spencer, _Local Government in Wisconsin_.




CHAPTER V.

THE CITY.


Section 1. _Direct and Indirect Government_.

[Sidenote: Summary of foregoing results.]
In the foregoing survey of local institutions and their growth, we
have had occasion to compare and sometimes to contrast two different
methods of government as exemplified on the one hand in the township
and on the other hand in the county. In the former we have direct
government by a primary assembly,[1] the town-meeting; in the latter
we have indirect government by a representative board. If the county
board, as in colonial Virginia, perpetuates itself, or is appointed
otherwise than by popular vote, it is not strictly a representative
board, in the modern sense of the phrase; the government is a kind of
oligarchy. If, as in colonial Pennsylvania, and in the United States
generally to-day, the county board consists of officers elected by
the people, the county government is a representative democracy. The
township government, on the other hand, as exemplified in New England
and in the northwestern states which have adopted it, is a pure
democracy. The latter, as we have observed, has one signal advantage
over all other kinds of government, in so far as it tends to make
every man feel that the business of government is part of his own
business, and that where he has a stake in the management of public
affairs he has also a voice. When people have got into the habit of
leaving local affairs to be managed by representative boards, their
active interest in local affairs is liable to be somewhat weakened, as
all energies in this world are weakened, from want of exercise. When
some fit subject of complaint is brought up, the individual is too apt
to feel that it is none of his business to furnish a remedy, let the
proper officers look after it. He can vote at elections, which is a
power; he can perhaps make a stir in the newspapers, which is also a
power; but personal participation in town-meeting is likewise a
power, the necessary loss of which, as we pass to wider spheres of
government, is unquestionably to be regretted.

[Footnote 1: A primary assembly is one in which the members attend of
their own right, without having been elected to it; a representative
assembly is composed of elected delegates.]

[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.]