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? II. What are the objections to a suffrage restricted by property and intellectual qualifications? To a suffrage unre stricted 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 in 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. § 1. VARIOUS LOCAL SYSTEMS.-J. H. U. 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. § 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. § 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 further illustration of one set of institutions supervening upon another, see also V., v.-vi., J. G. Bourinot, Local Government in Canada; VIII., iii., D. E. Spencer, Local Government in Wisconsin. CHAPTER V. THE CITY. § 1. Direct and Indirect Government. IN the foregoing survey of local institutions and their growth, we have had occasion to compare and sometimes to contrast two different methods Summary of results. of government as exemplified on the one foregoing hand in the township and on the other hand in the county. In the former we have direct governnent 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, 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. 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 elec. tions, 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. Direct gov possible in a 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, ernment im- and for this purpose the county system, an county. 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 Pæstum 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. ing 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, The Boston it becomes physically impossible to have town-ineettown-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 select |