THE VILLAGE COMMUNITY, 65 



cally, re-allotted. In course of time some of the " towns " grew so 

 large as to be unwieldy under the general-assembly system, and 

 administration of town affairs by " select-men " filled up the interval 

 between the yearly meetings of the general assembly. At the time 

 of the Revolution, Boston, with 50,000 of a population, was still an 

 old-fashioned town, the leading spirit in its turbulent role at that 

 time being " Sam Adams, the man of the Boston town-meeting." 

 The transition from town-meeting to representative municipal govern- 

 ment was, with a people remarkable for their ingenuity, natural and 

 obvious, and municipal institutions thus organized spread rapidly 

 over the middle and western states, being carried everywhere in 

 embryo by the migrating New Englander, as the seeds of plants are 

 carried by a variety of unconscious agencies. Nearly half a centuiy 

 ago they came into Canada also, and fi-om that time to the present 

 we have been developing this survival of the Aryan village, seldom 

 taking a thought of the antiquity of its origin. Our public nomina- 

 tion of mayor in the municipal election is a " town-meeting," and 

 our submission of money by-laws to a vote of the taxpayers is a relic 

 of the practice of voting the appropriations for the year in a general 

 assembly of the " town " house-holders. 



In other ways modern Canadian institutions have been affected by 

 the village community. The Mennonites who took up their abode a 

 dozen years ago on the Manitoba plains brought with them their 

 primitive village oi'ganization, and they have shown themselves 

 reluctant to abandon it. A few years later, when the Manitoba 

 legislature created a system of municipal government for that 

 Province, the Mennonites would have nothing to do with it. Instead 

 of each owner building a homestead on his own farm the dwellings 

 wei'e erected in groups, while the land, owned individually, was 

 nevertheless farmed in common.* During the lifetime of the present 

 generation, if not for a longer period, the Canadian student of com- 

 parative politics will be able to ii^vestigate the " village community " 

 in a very primitive stage of development without leaving his own 

 country. 



When the French colonists settled in Quebec they brought with 



' The community system seems to have received a fatal blow through a gross breach of faith 

 on the part of one of the owners, on whose lot several people had built their homesteads. He 

 lately claimed all their houses as his because thej' were on his land, and whether he succeeds 

 in holding them or not each owner is liltely to build hereafter on his own property. While the 

 dishonesty is regrettable the impulse given to individualism is not. 

 6 



