offered by committees for the reform of the government of Boston, assisted by amendments to the town system which were from time to time made by special statute. The love for the familiar local forms of government in Massachusetts was so strong that no city government could have been created until the people became convinced of its necessity. When this time had come, they copied none of the charters of the large cities of other States, as they granted too arbitrary powers to the city officials and admitted the State authorities as partners in the local government; but passing by these, they drew up a charter of incorporation, having for its mainspring the Massachusetts town system of gov ernment, while correcting the long-felt need of a stronger executive officer.

We can distinguish the town meeting in the meeting of the representatives of the wards sitting as a common-council, and we can see the selectmen with their chairman, whose powers have been enlarged, sitting as mayor and aldermen. The great change which was made from the old town system, in the erection of the first city charter of Boston, was in giving the selectmen or aldermen concurrent power with the common-council in legislative affairs. Is not this, the only radical change from the town system, at the root of many of the evils which exist in our city government to-day? If the common-council were given the sole power of appropriating money, and the aldermen the sole power of expending it through legitimate channels under the supervision of the mayor, the responsibility would no longer be divided, and each board could be held strictly to account for the performance of its duties, and we should have a satisfactory city government, which would be the exact reproduction on a broader and representative scale of that wonderful littlerepublic-The Massachusetts Town.

MORNING SESSION.

WEDNESDAY, April 28, 1886..

The Association convened for its second session on Wednesday, April 28th, and was promptly called to order at ten

o'clock by Mr. Bancroft, who presided throughout the entire morning exercises, as he had done on the previous day. The first paper was read by Edward G. Mason, Esq., of Chicago, on "The March of the Spaniards across Illinois." The paper was printed in full in the May number, 1886, of the Magazine of American History.

Abstract of Mr. Mason's Paper.

During the American Revolution, after Spain had been induced to take part in the war against Great Britain, she made herself mistress of the English posts at Baton Rouge, Natchez, and Mobile. On these conquests she based a claim to the region east of the Mississippi, at least as far as the river Ohio, and at the period now in question was preparing to strengthen her pretensions and to include in them what we know as the Northwest.

The Spanish capital of Upper Louisiana was the little village of St. Louis, founded as a trading post by the French in 1764. Its governor in 1781 was Don Francisco Cruvat, and in January of that year, from his garrison went forth the expedition whose fortunes we are to follow. Don Eugenio Pourré, the commander, ranked as captain in the Spanish line, and Don Carlos Tayon, the second in command, was a lieutenant in the same service. Their little band comprised sixty-five militiamen and sixty Indians. They set forth on no ordinary journey. Four hundred miles or more, in the depth of winter, they were to toil through forests and over prairies to reach their destination.

The goal of this strange and toilsome march was the English Fort St. Joseph, situated within the limits of the present State of Michigan. It was the head-quarters of the Indian traders for the region about the sources of the Illinois River, and was at this time the nearest fortification to St. Louis which flew the English flag. This was the place which the government of Spain, now vigorously engaged in the war against Great Britain, had resolved to capture, and to this end this march across what is now the State of Illinois was made.

The weather was unusually severe and their supplies but scanty. But these hardy warriors pushed boldly on, and found the few English traders and soldiers within the stockade totally unprepared for the sudden dash which made them prisoners and transferred Fort St. Joseph to the king of Spain. Don Eugenio Pourré took possession in the name of his sovereign of the fort and its dependencies, and of the river of the Illinois, and lowered the English flag, and raised in its place the standard of his Most Catholic Majesty.

The real object of this remarkable undertaking must be found in the wily schemes of the Spanish court, and if we change the scene to the other side of the Atlantic, new light will be thrown upon it. John Jay was our representative at Madrid, and, soon after his arrival there, became satisfied that the Spaniards were seeking to possess themselves of the entire valley of the Mississippi. Writing to our Secretary for Foreign Affairs under date of April 28, 1782, he sends the account published in Madrid of the capture of St. Joseph and adds: "When you consider the ostensible object of this expedition, the distance of it, the formalities with which the place, the country, and the river were taken possession of in the name of his Catholic Majesty, I am persuaded that it will not be necessary for me to swell this letter with remarks that would occur to a reader of far less penetration than yourself." This information reached France about the same time, and wise old Benjamin Franklin, our Minister to Versailles, was quick to see its meaning. He writes to Livingston: "I see by the newspapers that the Spaniards, having taken a little post called St. Joseph, pretend to have made a conquest of the Illinois country. what light does this proceeding appear to Congress? Are they to be suffered to encroach on our bounds, and shut us up within the Appalachian Mountains? I begin to fear they have some such project."

In

Jay was transferred to Paris, there to negotiate, with Franklin and Adams, the treaty of peace with Great Britain. It became clear to them that France and Spain were plotting

to despoil us, leaving the latter free to exact from the United States the whole Mississippi valley. By a master stroke, disregarding their instructions, which directed them to consult the French court throughout, they entered into the secret negotiation with Great Britain which ended in the Treaty of Versailles in 1783. The recognition by Great Britain of the boundaries insisted upon by the American Commissioners practically settled that question, and France acquiesced at once, and Spain ultimately.

The policy and aims of Spain during the revolution, and the use which was made of the expedition to St. Joseph in support of the same, make it reasonably certain that the expedition which we have described was inspired and directed from Madrid, and for a weighty purpose. No official accounts exist in print, and the information relating to it is but meagre, and must be gleaned from short and scattered notices in various works. It has seemed not altogether a waste of time to recall it from the forgotten past and bring it into view once more. If only for the romance and picturesqueness of that daring winter journey, it might have a claim to have its story told. And as an illustration of that crafty diplomacy which sought to control both the Old World and the New, it may repay study. But above all, when we consider how much was staked upon this expedition, and by what a narrow chance the policy of which it was the consummation failed of changing perhaps the whole future of the Northwest, there may appear to be reason sufficient for the permanent remembrance of The March of the Spaniards across Illinois.

Abstract of Dr. Andrews' Paper.

The next communication was by Dr. Israel W. Andrews, of Marietta College, Ohio, on "The North-West Territory, Its Ordinance and Its Government." This paper also has been printed in the Magazine of American History, August, 1886, but the following abstract is presented here:

The near approach of the centennial of the first colony planted on the national domain gives interest to the region

itself, the ordinance enacted for its government in 1787, and the settlement at Marietta, April 7, 1788. The region stretching from the Ohio to the lakes, from Pennsylvania to the Mississippi, became the undisputed property of the nation by the treaty of peace with Great Britain in 1783, and by the cessions of the individual States that claimed it in whole or in part. Great Britain insisted on the Ohio River as the south boundary of Canada, and was supported in this by both France and Spain. Had these three powers refused to yield, there might have been no need of the ordinance of 1787. Our people hardly realize their obligations to the American commissioners who negotiated that treaty. Unless, too, New York and Virginia, Massachusetts and Connecticut, had relinquished their claims, the nation might have been broken into fragments even before the ratification of the Articles of Confederation. Where the merit belongs of preserving the Union, or where the blame would have rested, had that Union been severed, it may be difficult to say. We should be thankful that the two great dangers, the external and the internal, were both safely passed.

The plan of General Rufus Putnam and other revolutionary officers to locate their bounty lands between the Ohio and Lake Erie, which failed at first but was revived in another form a few years later, was traced from its beginning in 1783 to the purchase in 1787 and the actual settlement in 1788. The paper sketched the various attempts to form a plan for the temporary government of this western territory, from the resolution adopted in 1784 to the proposal of the Ohio Associates to purchase in 1787. That proposal from the same army veterans who had wished to establish a colony some years before, changed the face of affairs. It at once attracted general attention. Public men spoke of it in their correspondence. The French minister gave it prominence in his dispatches. An ordinance which had been ordered to its third reading in Congress was dropped. A new committee was appointed, and in four days the great ordinance was passed-passed by the unani