required. But in all Congress may exercise without stint its power to override the statutes passed by a Territorial legislature.

The judiciary consists of three or more judges of a Supreme Court, appointed for four years by the President, with the consent of the Senate (salary $3000), together with a United States district attorney and a United States marshal. The law they administer is partly Federal, all Federal statutes being construed to take effect, where properly applicable, in the Territories, partly local, created in each Territory by its own statutes; and appeals, where the sum in dispute is above a certain value, go to the Supreme Federal Court. Although these courts are created by Congress in pursuance of its general sovereignty- they do not fall within the provisions of the Constitution for a Federal judiciary-the Territorial legislat ure is allowed to regulate their practice and procedure. The expenses of Territorial governments are borne by the Federal Treasury.

The Territories send neither senators nor representatives to Congress, nor do they take part in presidential elections. The House of Representatives, under a statute, admits a delegate from each of them to sit and speak, but of course not to vote, because the right of voting in Congress depends on the Federal Constitution. The position of a citizen in a Territory is therefore a peculiar one. What may be called his private or passive citizenship is complete: he has all the immunities and benefits which any other American citizen enjoys. But the public or active side is wanting, so far as the National government is concerned, although complete for local purposes. It may seem inconsistent with principle that citizens should be taxed by a government in whose legislature they are not represented; but the practical objections to giving the full rights of States to these comparatively rude communities outweigh any such theoretical difficulties.

It must moreover be remembered that a Territory, which may be called an inchoate or rudimentary State, looks forward to become a complete State. When its population becomes equal to that of an average congressional district, its claim to be admitted as a State is strong, and in the absence of specific objections will be granted. Congress, however, has absolute

discretion in the matter, and often uses its discretion under the influence of partisan motives. Nevada was admitted to be a State when its population was only about 20,000, mainly for the sake of getting its vote for the thirteenth constitutional amendment. It subsequently rose to 62,266, but has now declined to 45,761. When Congress resolves to turn a Territory into a State, it either (as happened in the cases of Idaho and Wyoming) passes an act accepting and ratifying a constitution already made for themselves by the people, and forthwith admitting the community as a State, or else passes what is called an Enabling Act, under which the inhabitants elect a constitutional convention, empowered to frame a draft constitution. When this constitution has been submitted to and accepted by the voters of the Territory, the act of Congress takes effect: the Territory is transformed into a State, and proceeds to send its senators and representatives to Congress in the usual way. The Enabling Act may prescribe conditions to be fulfilled. by the State Constitution, but has not usually attempted to narrow the right which the citizens of the newly formed State will enjoy of subsequently modifying that instrument in any way not inconsistent with the provisions of the Federal Constitution. However, in the case of the Dakotas, Montana, Washington, Idaho, and Wyoming, the Enabling Act required the conventions to make "by ordinance irrevocable without the consent of the United States and the people of the said States" certain provisions, including one for perfect religious toleration and another for the maintenance of public schools free from sectarian control. This the six States have done accordingly. But whether this requirement of the consent of Congress would be held binding if the people of the State should hereafter repeal the ordinance, may be doubted.

The arrangements above described seem to work well. Selfgovernment is practically enjoyed by the Territories, despite the supreme authority of Congress, just as it is enjoyed by Canada and the Australasian colonies of Great Britain despite the legal right of the British Parliament to legislate for every part of the Queen's dominions. The want of a voice in Congress and in presidential elections, and the fact that the governor is set over them by an external power, are not felt to be practical grievances, partly of course because these young com

munities are too small and too much absorbed in the work of developing their natural resources to be keenly interested in National politics. Their local political life much resembles that of the newer Western States. Both Democrats and Republicans have their regular party organizations, but the business of a Territorial legislature gives little opportunity for any real political controversies, though abundant opportunities for local jobbing.

CHAPTER XLVII

LOCAL GOVERNMENT

EVERY State in the Union has its own system of local areas and authorities, created and worked under its own laws; and though these systems agree in many points, they differ in so many others, that a whole volume would be needed to give even a summary view of their peculiarities. All I can here attempt is to distinguish the leading types of local government to be found in the United States, to describe the prominent features of each type, and to explain the influence which the large scope and popular character of local administration exercise upon the general life and well-being of the American. people.

Three types of rural local government are discernible in America. The first is characterized by its unit, the town or township, and exists in the six New England States. The second is characterized by a much larger unit, the county, and prevails in the Southern States. The third combines some features of the first with some of the second, and may be called the mixed system. It is found, under a considerable variety of forms, in the Middle and North-western States. The differences of these three types are interesting, not only because of the practical instruction they afford, but also because they spring from original differences in the character of the colonists who settled along the American coast, and in the conditions under which the communities there founded were developed.

The first New England settlers were Puritans in religion, and sometimes inclined to republicanism in politics. They were largely townsfolk, accustomed to municipal life and to vestry meetings. They planted their tiny communities along the seashore and the banks of rivers, enclosing them with stockades for protection against the warlike Indians. Each

was obliged to be self-sufficing, because divided by rocks and woods from the others. Each had its common pasture on which the inhabitants turned out their cattle, and which officers were elected to manage. Each was a religious as well as a civil body politic, gathered round the church as its centre; and the equality which prevailed in the congregation prevailed also in civil affairs, the whole community meeting under a president or moderator to discuss affairs of common interest. Each such settlement was called a town, or township, and was in fact a miniature commonwealth, exercising a practical sovereignty over the property and persons of its members — for there was as yet no State, and the distant home government scarcely cared to interfere- but exercising it on thoroughly democratic principles. Its centre was a group of dwellings, often surrounded by a fence or wall, but it included a rural area of several square miles, over which farmhouses and clusters of houses began to spring up when the Indians retired. The name "town" covered the whole of this area, which was never too large for all the inhabitants to come together to a central place of meeting. This town organization remained strong and close, the colonists being men of narrow means, and held together in each settlement by the needs of defence. And though presently the towns became aggregated into counties, and the legislature and governor, first of the whole colony, and, after 1776, of the State, began to exert their superior authority, the towns held their ground, and are to this day the true units of political life in New England, the solid foundation of that well-compacted structure of self-government which European philosophers have admired and the new States of the West have sought to reproduce. Till 1821 the towns were the only political corporate bodies in Massachusetts, and till 1857 they formed, as they still form in Connecticut, the basis of representation in her Assembly, each town, however small, returning at least one member. Not a little of that robust, if somewhat narrow, localism which characterizes the representative system of America is due to this originally distinct and self-sufficing corporate life of the seventeenth century towns.

Very different were the circumstances of the Southern colonies. The men who went to Virginia and the Carolinas were