IV. County and township or school district taxes are direct taxes, there being no octroi in America, and are collected along with State taxes in the smallest tax-gathering area, i.e. the township, where townships exist. Local rates are not, however, as in England, levied on immovable property only, but also on personal property, according to the valuation made by the assessors. Much the larger part of taxable personalty escapes because its owners conceal it, and there may be no means of ascertaining what they possess. Lands and houses are often assessed far below their true value, because the township assessors have an interest in diminishing the share of the county tax which will fall upon their township; and similarly the county assessors have an interest in diminishing the share of the State tax to be borne by their county. Real property is taxed in the place where it is situate; personalty only in the place where the owner resides. But the suffrage, in local as well as in State and National elections, is irrespective of property, and no citizen can vote in more than one place. A man may have a dozen houses or farms in as many cities, counties, or townships: he will vote, even for local purposes, only in the spot where he is held to reside.

The great bulk of local expenditure is borne by local taxes. But in some States a portion of the county taxes is allotted to the aid of school districts, so as to make the wealthier districts relieve the burden of the poorer, and often a similar subvention is made from State revenues. The public schools, which are everywhere and in all grades gratuitous, absorb a very large part of the whole revenue locally raised, and in addition to what taxation provides they receive a large revenue from the lands which, under Federal or State legislation, have been set apart for educational purposes. On the whole, the burden of taxation in 1 As to this and the Boards of Equalization see Chapter XLIII. ante.

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2 Of course what is really the same property may be taxed in more than one place, e.g. a mining company may be taxed as a company in Montana, and the shares held by individual proprietors be possibly also taxed in the several States in which these shareholders reside.

3 The total expenditure on public schools in the United States is stated by the U.S. Commissioner of Education (Report for 1885-86) at $111,304,927 (£22,260,000). The National government has no authority over educational matters, but has, since 1867, had a Bureau which collects statistics from the States and issues valuable reports.

The student of economic science may be interested to hear that in some of the States which have the largest permanent school fund the effect on the efficiency of the schools, and on the interest of the people in them, has been pernicious. In

rural districts is not heavy, nor is the expenditure often wasteful, because the inhabitants, especially under the Town meeting system, look closely after it.

V. It is noteworthy that the Americans, who are supposed to be especially fond of representative assemblies, have made very little use of representation in their local government. The township is governed either by a primary assembly of all citizens or else, as in such States as Ohio and Iowa, by a very small board, not exceeding three, with, in both sets of cases, several purely executive officers. In the county there is seldom or never a county board possessing legislative functions; usually only three commissioners or supervisors with some few executive or judicial officers. Local legislation (except in so far as it appears in the petty bye-laws of the Town meeting) is discouraged. The people seem jealous of their county officials, electing them for short terms, and restricting each to a special range of duties. This is perhaps only another way of saying that the county, even in the South, has continued to be an artificial entity, and has drawn to itself no great part of the interest and affections of the citizens. Over five-sixths of the Union each county presents a square figure on the map, with nothing distinctive about it, nothing "natural" about it, in the sense in which such English counties as Kent or Cornwall are natural entities. It is too large for the personal interest of the citizens: that goes to the township. It is too small to have traditions which command the respect or touch the affections of its inhabitants: these belong to the State.2

VI. The chief functions local government has to discharge in the United States are the following:

Making and repairing roads and bridges.-These prime necessities of rural life are provided for by the township, county, or State, according to the class to which a road or bridge belongs. That the roads of America are proverbially ill-built and ill-kept is due partly to the climate, with its alternations of severe frost, occasional torrential rains (in the middle and southern States), and long droughts; partly to the hasty habits of the people, who are too busy with other things, and too eager to use their capital in education, as well as in eleemosynary and ecclesiastical matters, endowments would seem to be a very doubtful benefit.

1 In New York, however, there is said to be some tendency in this direction. 2 In Virginia there used to be in old days a sort of county feeling resembling that of England, but this has vanished in the social revolution that has transformed the South.

private enterprises to be willing to spend freely on highways; partly also to the thinness of population, which is, except in a few manufacturing districts, much less dense than in western Europe. In many districts railways have come before roads, so roads have been the less used and cared for.

The administration of justice was one of the first needs which caused the formation of the county: and matters connected with it still form a large part of county business. The voters elect a judge or judges, and the local prosecuting officer, called the district attorney, and the chief executive officer, the sheriff.1 Prisons are a matter of county concern. Police is always locally regulated, but in the northern States more usually by the township than by the county. However, this branch of government, so momentous in continental Europe, is in America comparatively unimportant outside the cities. The rural districts get on nearly everywhere with no guardians of the peace, beyond the township constable; nor does the State government, except, of course, through statutes, exercise any control over local police administration. In the rural parts of the eastern and middle States property is as safe as anywhere in the world. In such parts of the West as are disturbed by dacoits, or by solitary highwaymen, travellers defend themselves, and, if the sheriff is distant or slack, lynch law may usefully be invoked. The care of the poor is thrown almost everywhere upon local and not upon State authorities, and defrayed out of local funds, sometimes by the county, sometimes by the township. The poor laws of the several States differ in so many particulars that it is impossible to give even an outline of them here. Little out-door relief is given, though in most States the relieving authority may, at his or their discretion, bestow it; and pauperism is not, and has never been, a serious malady, except in some five or six great cities, where it is now vigorously combated by volunteer organizations largely composed of ladies. The total number of persons returned as

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1 The American sheriff remains something like what the English sheriff was before his wings were clipped by legislation some seventy years ago. Even then he mostly acted by deputy. The justices and the county police have since that legislation largely superseded his action.

2 Or, in States where there are no townships, some corresponding officer.

3 Michigan is now (1888) said to be instituting a sort of State police for the enforcement of her anti-liquor legislation.

4 In some States there are State poor-law superintendents, and frequently certain State institutions for the benefit of particular classes of paupers, e.g. pauper lunatics.

paupers in the whole Union in 1880 was 88,665, of whom 67,067 were inmates of alms-houses, and 21,598 in receipt of out-door relief. This was only 1 to 565 of the whole population.1 In England and Wales in 1881 there were 803,126 paupers, to a population of 25,974,439, or 1 to 32 of population.

Sanitation, which has become so important a department of English local administration, plays a small part in the rural districts of America, because their population is so much more thinly spread over the surface that the need for drainage and the removal of nuisances is less pressing; moreover, as the humbler classes are better off, unhealthy dwellings are far less common. Public health officers and sanitary inspectors would, over the larger part of the county, have little occupation.2

Education, on the other hand, has hitherto been not only a more distinctively local matter, but one relatively far more important than in England, France, or Italy. And there is usually a special administrative body, often a special administrative area, created for its purposes-the school committee and the school district.3 The vast sum expended on public instruction has been already mentioned. Though primarily dealt with by the smallest local circumscription, there is a growing tendency for both the county and the State to interest themselves in the work of instruction by way of inspection, and to some extent of pecuniary subventions. Not only does the county often appoint a county superintendent, but there are in some States county high schools and (in most) county boards of education, besides a State Board of Commissioners.4 I need hardly add that the schools of all grades are more numerous and efficient in the northern and western than in the southern States.5 In old colonial days, when the English Commissioners for Foreign Plantations asked for information on the subject of education

1 New York had 15,217 paupers (of whom 2810 were out-door), Colorado 47 (1 out-door), Arizona 4. Louisiana makes no return of indoor paupers, because the parishes (=counties) provide for the maintenance of their poor in private institutions.

2 Sanitation, however, has occupied much attention in the cities. Cleveland on Lake Erie claims to have the lowest death rate of any large city in the world.

3 Though the school district frequently coincides with the township, it has generally (outside of New England) administrative officers distinct from those of the township, and when it coincides it is often subdivided into lesser districts.

4 In some States provision is made for the combination of several school districts to maintain a superior school at a central spot.

5 The differences between the school arrangements of different States are so numerous that I cannot attempt to describe them.

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from the governors of Virginia and Connecticut, the former replied, "I thank God there are no free schools or printing presses, and I hope we shall not have any these hundred years ;"' and the latter, "One-fourth of the annual revenue of the colony is laid out in maintaining free schools for the education of our children." The disparity was prolonged and intensified in the South by the existence of slavery. Now that slavery has gone, the South makes rapid advances; but the proportion of illiteracy, especially of course among the negroes, is still high.2

It will be observed that of the general functions of local government above described, three, viz. police, sanitation, and poor relief, are simpler and less costly than in England, and indeed in most parts of western and central Europe. It has therefore proved easier to vest the management of all in the same local authority, and to get on with a smaller number of special executive officers. Education is indeed almost the only matter which has been deemed to demand a special body to handle it. Nevertheless, even in America the increasing complexity of civilization, and the growing tendency to invoke governmental aid for the satisfaction of wants which were not previously felt, or if felt, were met by voluntary action, tend to enlarge the sphere and multiply the functions of local government.

VII. How far has the spirit of political party permeated rural local government? I have myself asked this question a hundred times in travelling through America, yet I find it hard to give any general answer, because there are great diversities in this regard not only between different States, but between different

1 Governor Sir William Berkeley, however, was among the Virginians who in 1660 subscribed for the erection in Virginia of "a colledge of students of the liberal arts and sciences." As to elementary instruction he said that Virginia pursued "the same course that is taken in England out of towns, every man according to his ability instructing his children. We have forty-eight parishes, and our ministry are well paid, and, by consent, should be better if they would pray oftener and preach less."-The College of William and Mary, by Dr. H. B. Adams.

2 The percentage of persons unable to read to the whole population of the United States was, in 1880, 134; it was lowest in Iowa (24), highest in South Carolina (48.2) and Louisiana (458). The percentage of persons unable to write was in the whole United States, 17; lowest in Nebraska (36), highest in South Carolina (55·4) and Alabama (50·9).

It has recently been proposed in Congress to reduce the surplus in the U.S. treasury by distributing sums among the States in aid of education, in proportion to the need which exists for schools, i.e. to their illiteracy. The objections on the score of economic policy, as well as of constitutional law, are so obvious as to have stimulated a warm resistance to the bill.