PROCEEDINGS 



OF THE 



WASHINGTON ACADEMY OF SCIENCES 



Vol. I, pp. 1S9-220. December 29, 1S99. 



THE POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE DISTRICT 

 OF COLUMBIA.^ 



By Henry E. Davis. 



Contents. 



Unique character of the District of Columbia not accidental 189 



Marj-land and Virginia [now Maryland only] sources of the District . . 191 

 Development of the District along the lines of Marj'land County Gov- 

 ernment : the Levy Court system . 197 



Establishment and growth of the corporations of Georgetown and Wash- 

 ington . . . 203 



Appearance and development of the Federal principle in the District . . 210 

 Present form of government by Commissioners, embodying both Federal 



and local principles of government . 214 



Unification of the District and its reflection in the plan and present char- 

 acter of the City of Washington .218 



The District of Columbia is unique among the social com- 

 munities of the world. The political center of a people which 

 threw into the sea the tea which must bear a tax in the levying 

 of which that people had no voice ; the capital of a nation born 

 of the declaration that taxation without representation sounds a 

 note having no place in the harmony of freedom ; the very ulti- 

 mate product of the spirit which produced among the powers of 

 the earth the one which proclaimed as its reason to be that all 

 governments derive their just powers from the consent of the 

 governed, it yet is bearing without murmur taxes the levying of 

 which it cannot affect in the slightest degree, and has no effec- 



'Read before the Washington Acarleni}' of Sciences, April 29, 1899. 



(189) 

 Proc. Wash. Acad. Sci. , December, 1899. 



