2IO DAVIS 



City of Washington remained to the end substantially as the act 

 of 1848 left it. There were thus for some years side by side in 

 the District three separate municipal governments, the Corpor- 

 ation of Washington, the Corporation of Georgetown and the 

 Levy Court. Each of these governments had and exercised 

 the power of making* ordinances and laws, and there accordingly 

 existed at the same time one set of such ordinances or laws for 

 Washington, another set for Georgetown and a third set for the 

 county. Perhaps no greater anomal}^ than this can be presented 

 for a territory of sixty-four square miles, especially when it is 

 considered that this territory is the seat of Time's latest and best 

 offspring in the way of government ; and I am constrained to 

 wonder what the Puritan forebears of sturdy New England would 

 have thought could they have come to life so lately as within 

 the past quarter of a century to find that the same act committed 

 on the same Sunday would have met with one punishment in 

 Georgetown, another in the county and none at all in Washing- 

 ton. Yet this very fact, for fact it is, is the highest possible 

 testimonial to the conservatism which characterizes the origin 

 and growth of law and institutions in our English system : the 

 conservatism which has made us and our kin beyond the sea 

 the foremost in the universal brotherhood now happily becoming 

 so generally recognized. 



In the growth and administration of these three municipalities, 

 helped along by the oversight of the Federal power, there of 

 course came into being as occasion required the needful detail 

 agencies of government : courts greater and smaller, judicial 

 and fiscal officers, surveyors, school officials, boards of health, 

 constabularies, and the like. And although our institutions 

 were thus growing and being added to in strict conformity to 

 the principles of the distinction between Federal and local govern- 

 ment which underlies the whole American system, there was at 

 the same time coming more and more into play the other seem- 

 ingly inevitable principle, so far as result is concerned, that the 

 national must and will to a great extent override the local, and 

 the general must and will supplant the particular. 



This was first manifested in the establishment of courts and 

 judicial officers and general laws, of jurisdiction and authority 



