were the township ship for purposes of education has already most profoundly influenced the development of local In this resergovernment in our western states, and in the vation there near future its effects are likely to become germs of still deeper and wider. To mark out a town- government. ship on the map may mean very little, but when once you create in that township some institution that needs to be cared for, you have made a long stride toward inaugurating township government. When a state, as for instance Illinois, grows up after the method just described, what can be more natural than for it to make the township a body corporate for school purposes, and to authorize its inhabitants to elect school officers and tax themselves, so far as may be necessary, for the support of the schools? But the school-house, in the centre of the township, is soon found to be useful for many purposes. It is convenient to go there to vote for state officers or for congressmen and president, and so the school township becomes an election district. Having once established such a centre, it is almost inevitable that it should sooner or later be made to serve sundry other purposes, and become an area for the election of con stables, justices of the peace, highway surveyors, and overseers of the poor. In this way a vigorous township government tends to grow up about the schoolhouse as a nucleus, somewhat as in early New England it grew up about the church. This tendency may be observed in almost all the western states and territories, even to the Pacific coast. When the western country was first settled, representative county government prevailed almost At first the everywhere. This was partly because the county sysearliest settlers of the West came in much greater numbers from the middle and southern states tem prevailed. than from New England. It was also partly because, so long as the country was thinly settled, the number of people in a township was very small, and it was not easy to have a government smaller than that of the county. It was something, however, that the little squares on the map, by grouping which the counties were made, were already called townships. There is much in a name. It was still more important that these townships were only six miles square; for that made it sure that, in due course of time, when population should have become dense enough, they would be convenient areas for establishing township govern ment. QUESTIONS ON THE TEXT. 1. What feature is conspicuous in the westward movement of population in the United States? 2. What looseness characterized early surveys in Kentucky? 3. What led to the passage of the land ordinance of 1785? 4. Give the leading features of the government survey of western lands: a. The principal meridians. b. The range lines. c. The base lines. d. The township lines. 5. Illustrate the application of the system in the case of a town. 6. Contrast in shape western townships and counties with corresponding divisions in Massachusetts and Virginia. 7. Contrast them in convenience and in picturesqueness. 8. What had the convenience of the government system to do with the settlement of the West? 9. What were the divisions of the township, and what disposi tion was made of them? 10. What important reservations were made in the townships? II. Show how these reservations involved a kind of taxation. 12. What profound influence has the reservation for schools exerted upon local government? 13. Why did the county system prevail at first? + § 3. The Representative Township-County System in the West. The town Michigan. The first western state to adopt the town-meeting was Michigan, where the great majority of the settlers had come from New England, or from central New York, which was a kind of west- meeting in ward extension of New England.1 Counties were established in Michigan Territory in 1805, and townships were first incorporated in 1825. This was twelve years before Michigan became a state. At first the powers of the town-meeting were narrowly limited. It elected the town and county officers, but its power of appropriating money seems to have been restricted to the purpose of extirpating noxious animals and weeds. In 1827, however, it was authorized to raise money for the support of schools, and since then its powers have steadily increased, until now they approach those of the town-meeting in Massachusetts. The history of Illinois presents an extremely interesting example of rivalry and conflict between the town system of New England and the county Settlement system of the South. Observe that this of Illinois. great state is so long that, while the parallel of latitude starting from its northern boundary runs through Marblehead in Massachusetts, the parallel through its southernmost point, at Cairo, runs a little south of Petersburg in Virginia. In 1818, when Illinois framed its state government and was admitted to the Union, its population was chiefly in the southern half, 1 "Of the 496 members of the Michigan Pioneer Association in 1881, 407 are from these sections" [New England and New York]. Bemis, Local Government in Michigan and the Northwest, J. H. U. Studies, I., v and composed for the most part of pioneers from Virginia and Virginia's daughter-state Kentucky. These men brought with them the old Virginia county system, but with the very great difference that the county officers were not appointed by the governor, or allowed to be a self-perpetuating board, but were elected by the people of the county. This was a true advance in the democratic direction, but an essential defect of the southern system remained in the absence of any kind of local meeting for the discussion of public affairs and the enactment of local laws. Effects of the Ordinance of 1787. By the famous Ordinance of 1787, to which we shall again have occasion to refer, negro slavery had been forever prohibited to the north of the Ohio river, so that, in spite of the wishes of her early settlers, Illinois was obliged to enter the Union as a free state. But in 1820 Missouri was admitted as a slave state, and this turned the stream of southern migration aside from Illinois to Missouri. These emigrants, to whom slaveholding was a mark of social distinction, preferred to go where they could own slaves. About the same time settlers from New England and New York, moving along the southern border of Michigan and the northern borders of Ohio and Indiana, began pouring into the northern part of Illinois. These new-comers did not find the representative county system adequate for their needs, and they demanded township government. A memorable political struggle ensued between the northern and southern halves of the state, ending in 1848 with the adoption of a new constitution. It was provided "that the legislature should enact a general law for the political organization of townships, under which any county might act whenever a majority of its voters should so determine." 1 This was introducing the 1 Shaw, Local Government in Illinois, J. H. U. Studies, I., iii. principle of local option, and in accordance therewith township governments with town-meetings were at once introduced in the northern counties of the state, while the southern counties kept on in the old way. Now comes the most interesting part of the story. The two systems being thus brought into immediate contact in the same state, with free choice between them left to the people, the northern system has slowly but steadily supplanted the southern system, until at the present day only one fifth part of the counties in Illinois remain without township government. Intense vi township This example shows the intense vitality of the township system. It is the kind of government that people are sure to prefer when they have once tried it under favourable conditions. tality of the In the West the hostile conditions against system. which it has to contend are either the recent existence of negro slavery and the ingrained prejudice in favour of the Virginia method, as in Missouri; or simply the sparseness of population, as in Nebraska. Time will evidently remove the latter obstacle, and probably the former also. It is very significant that in Missouri, which began so lately as 1879 to erect township gov ernments under a local option law similar to that of Illinois, the process has already extended over about one sixth part of the state; and in Nebraska, where the same process began in 1883, it has covered nearly one third of the organized counties of the state. County op and The principle of local option as to government has been carried still farther in Minnesota and Dakota. The method just described may be called county option; the question is decided by a township majority vote of the people of the county. option. But in Minnesota in 1878 it was enacted that as soon as any one of the little square townships in that state |