412 Transactions of the Canadian Institute. [Vol. VII. 



civil law, and the services of a local administration were not much in 

 request, and their want was not felt. Criminal law was more in demand 

 for the punishment of breaches of the peace, and the criminal law was 

 English. Only on one point did the first British-American settlers 

 come into direct contact with French-Canadian institutions, and that 

 was in the tenure of their lands. These were granted only on the 

 French-Canadian feudal basis, with all the obligations and restrictions 

 which that involved. This, therefore, was the burden of the first com- 

 plaints which poured in upon the Government. A little later the settlers 

 began to express a desire for those institutions of local government to 

 which they had been accustomed, and which in some sections they were 

 tentatively reproducing before there was any legal sanction for them. 



What, then, was the nature of those municipal institutions which the 

 people sought to introduce ? 



There were two quite distinct types of local government developed 

 in the American colonies. Their differences chiefly depended upon the 

 character and circumstances of the immigrants from Britain, who laid 

 the colonial foundations.^ 



The New England colonists of different migrations were almost 

 entirely drawn from the middle classes of the mother country, and 

 especially from those districts in which the Puritanic spirit had been 

 strongly developed. But Puritanism is simply a general expression for 

 a type of mind characterized by independence of thought, and conse- 

 quently of action, in the various departments of practical life, whether 

 religious, social, economic or political. Where almost the whole of the 

 social fabric was composed of such people, and especially in a new 

 country, self-government in general, and local government in particular 

 were inevitable. 



The settlers of New England, being very largely of the same social 

 class, and having few or no servants, maintained their individuality, and 

 exercised with the freedom of a new country those local rights and 

 privileges which they had introduced frorh England. 



In the southern colonies, on the other hand, of which Virginia was 

 the special type, the settlers were mainly of the middle and upper 

 classes, with less of the Puritanic strain. Moreover, they soon obtained 

 from Britain a large element of the lower class in the capacity of 

 servants. These were much inferior to their masters in moral fibre, 



I For an excellent summary of the municipal institutions of the American Colonies, see " Town and 

 County Government in the English Colonies of North America, by Edward Channing, Ph.D., Johns 

 Hopkins University Studies in History and Political Science, Second Series, Vol. X., 18S4. 



