SECTION II., 1886. PRES M Trans. Roy. Soc. CANADA. 
IL.—Zocal Government in Canada: an Historical Study. 
By JOHN GEORGE BOURINOT. 
(Presented May 27, 1886.) 
“Local assemblies of citizens constitute the strength of free nations. Municipal institutions are 
to liberty what primary schools are to science; they bring it within the people’s reach; they teach men 
how to use and how to enjoy it. A nation may establish a system of free government, but without the 
spirit of municipal institutions, it cannot have the spirit of liberty.” De Tocquevirze, Demveracy in 
America Vol. I. Ch. v. 
J.—INTRODUCTORY. 
I propose to give in this paper an historical review of the origin and growth of the 
municipal system of Canada. Such a review suggested itself to me after a careful perusal 
of the valuable series of essays that are appearing from the press of the Johns Hopkins 
University in the state of Maryland.’ These studies are remarkable for the information 
they give on a subject to which historians of the United States have hitherto devoted very 
little attention. The papers that have already been published with respect to the local 
institutions of Virginia, of Maryland, and of the New England States, enable us to follow 
step by step the progress of the people in self-government. Under the conviction that a 
similar paper on local government in Canada may be of some value to students of political 
science in the absence of any work or treatise hitherto devoted to the subject, I shall 
endeavour to evolye out of a chaos of old documents, statutes, and histories such facts as 
may give a tolerably accurate idea of the gradual development of those local institutions 
on which must always rest, in a great measure, the whole fabric of popular liberty. 
Such a subject ought to be interesting to every Canadian, but especially to the historical 
student. The former may care to learn something of the history of those institutions 
which perform so important a part in the economy of his daily life. The latter must find 
a deeper attraction in tracing the origin of the municipal government of this country even 
to those ancient institutions, which, very many centuries ago, kept alive a spirit of liberty 
among our English forefathers and among the German nations.” 

‘Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science, Herbert B. Adams, editor. Three 
series have already appeared. 
-“The origin of local government in England, like that of our civil liberty, must be sought in the primitive 
but well ordered communities of our Saxon forefathers. ... . The German nations, as described by Cæsar and 
Tacitus, were nothing but associations of self-governed villages, or larger districts, occupied by separate families, 
or clans, among whom there was not even the shadow of a common national allegiance, except for the purpose of 
war. Such was the organization of the Saxons, Jutes and Angles, when they first settled in England.” Cobden 
Club Essays, 1875, Local Government in England, by Hon. G. C. Brodrick, p. 3. 
