In the selectmen and various special officers the town has an executive department; and here let us observe that, while these officials are kept strictly accountable to the people, they are intrusted with very considerable authority. Things are not so arranged Power and ity. that an officer can plead that he has failed responsibil in his duty from lack of power. There is ample power, joined with complete responsibility. This is especially to be noticed in the case of the selectmen. They must often be called upon to exercise a wide discretion in what they do, yet this excites no serious popular distrust or jealousy. The annual election affords an easy means of dropping an unsatisfactory officer. But in practice nothing has been more common than for the same persons to be reëlected as selectmen or constables or town-clerks for year after year, as long as they are able or willing to serve. The notion that there is anything peculiarly American or democratic in what is known as 66 rotation in office" is therefore not sustained by the practice of the New England town, which is the most complete democracy in the world. It is the most perfect exhibition of what President Lincoln called "government of the people by the people and for the people." QUESTIONS ON THE TEXT. 1. What reason exists for beginning the study of government with that of the New England township? 2. Give the origin of the township in New England according to the following analysis : a. Settlement in groups. b. The chief reason for coming to New England. c. The leaders of the groups. d. The favouring action of the Massachusetts government. e. Small farms. f. Defence against the Indians. g. The limits of a township. h. The village within the township. 3. What was the social standing of the first settlers? 6. Give an account of the town-meeting in accordance with the following analysis : a. The name of the meeting. b. The time for holding it. c. The place for holding it. d. The persons who take part in it. e. The sort of business done in it. 7. Give an account of the selectmen : a. Their number. b. The reason for an odd number. c. Their duties. 8. When public schools were established by Massachusetts in 1647, what reasons were assigned for the law? 9. What classes or grades of schools were then established? 10. What are the duties of the Massachusetts school committee? II. What is the term of service of teachers in that state? 12. What are the duties of the following officers ? a. Field-drivers. b. Pound-keepers. c. Fence-viewers. d. Surveyors of lumber. e. Measurers of wood. f. Sealers of weights and measures. 13. What are the duties of the following officers? a. The town-clerk. b. The treasurer. c. Constables. d. Assessors. e. Overseers of the poor. 14. Describe a warrant for a town-meeting. 15. For what other purposes than those of the town are taxes raised? 16. Explain the following: a. The poll-tax. b. The tax on personal property. c. The tax on real estate. 17. What kinds of real estate are exempted from taxation, and why? 18. What kinds of personal property are exempted, and why? 19. Where must the several kinds of taxes be assessed and paid? Illustrate. 20. If a person changes his residence from one town in the state to another before May 1, what consequences about taxes might follow ? 21. How do the assessors ascertain the property for which one should be taxed? 22. What difficulties beset the taxation of personal property? 23. Mention a common practice in assigning values to property. What is the effect on the tax-rate ? Illustrate. 24. How do high taxes operate as a burden? 25. Describe a delusion from which people who directly govern themselves are practically free. 26. What is the educational value of the town-meeting? 27. What are by-laws? Explain the phrase. 28. What of the power and responsibility of selectmen ? Town-meet ings in Rome. § 2. Origin of the Township. It was said above that government by town-meeting is in principle the oldest form of government known in the world. The student of ancient Greece and history is familiar with the comitia of the Romans and the ecclesia of the Greeks, These were popular assemblies, held in those soft climates in the open air, usually in the market-place, the Roman forum, the Greek agora. The government carried on in them was a more or less qualified democracy. In the palmy days of Athens it was a pure democracy. The assemblies which in the Athenian market-place declared war against Syracuse, or condemned Socrates to death, were quite like New England town-meetings, except that they exercised greater powers because there was no state government above them. The principle of the town-meeting, however, is older than Athens or Rome. Long before streets were built or fields fenced in, men wandered about the Clans. earth hunting for food in family parties, somewhat as lions do in South Africa. Such family groups were what we call clans, and so far as is known they were the earliest form in which civil society appeared on the earth. Among all wandering or partially settled tribes the clan is to be found, and there are ample opportunities for studying it among our Indians in North America. The clan usually has a chief or head-man, useful mainly as a leader in wartime; its civil government, crude and disorderly enough, is in principle a pure democracy. When our ancestors first became acquainted with American Indians, the most advanced tribes lived partly by hunting and fishing, but partly also by raising Indian corn and pumpkins. They had begun to live in wigwams grouped together in small villages and surrounded by strong rows of palisades for defence. Now what these red men were doing our own fair-haired ancestors in northern and central Europe had been doing some twenty centuries earlier. The Scandinavians and Germans, when first known in history, had made considerable progress in exchanging a wandering for a settled mode of life. When the clan, instead of moving from place to place, fixed upon some spot for a permanent residence, a village grew up there, surrounded by a belt of waste land, or somewhat later by a stockaded wall. The belt of land was called a mark, and the wall was called a tun. Afterwards the inclosed space came to and the be known sometimes as the mark, sometimes as the tun or town. In England the latter name prevailed. The inhabitants of a mark or town were a stationary clan. It was customary to call them by the clan name, as for example "the Beorings" or "the 1 Pronounced "toon." The mark tun. Cressings;" then the town would be called Barrington, "town of the Beorings," or Cressingham, "home of the Cressings." Town names of this sort, with which the map of England is thickly studded, point us back to a time when the town was supposed to be the stationary home of a clan. The Old The Old English town had its tungemot, or townmeeting, in which "by-laws" were made and other important business transacted. The principal officers were the " reeve' or head-man, the "beadle" or messenger, and the "tithing-man ” township. or petty constable. These officers seem at first to have been elected by the people, but after a while, as great lordships grew up, usurping jurisdiction over the land, the lord's steward and bailiff came to supersede the reeve and beadle. After the Norman Conquest the townships, thus brought under the sway of great lords, came to be generally known by the French name of manors or "dwelling places.' Much might be said about this change, but here it is enough for us to bear in mind that a manor was essentially a township in which the chief executive officers were directly responsible to the lord rather than The manor. to the people. It would be wrong, however, to suppose that the manors entirely lost their selfgovernment. Even the ancient town-meeting survived in them, in a fragmentary way, in several interesting assemblies, of which the most interesting were the court leet, for the election of certain officers and the trial of petty offences, and the court baron, which was much like a town-meeting. Still more of the old self-government would doubtless have survived in the institutions of the manor if it had not been provided for in The parish was older than the manor. The parish. another way. |