98 The Evolution of the State. 



live hundred years for its full recognition." Prof. Howard, 

 in his recent book on the Local Constitutional History of 

 the United States, has pointed out that " the revival of the 

 primitive village community in the New England towns 

 was a revival of organs and functions on the recurrence of 

 the primitive environment," and that " the selectmen of the 

 town were the lowest representative government " ; and it 

 is obvious that the moment our early communities began 

 to prosper and extend their conquest over nature, the act 

 of government had to be delegated. Townsmen were 

 therefore chosen in New Haven, as long ago as 1651, in 

 order that, in the words of their quaint resokition, "the 

 town meetings which spend the town much time, may not 

 bee so often," and, ten years before, voting by proxy had 

 been established in Massachusetts. 



More than one hundred years thereafter, the first written 

 constitution known to history, adopted by the people, was 

 put in practice in Virginia; and thirteen years after this 

 event, the Constitution under which we live, which Glad- 

 stone has pronounced one of the greatest products of the 

 human intellect, went into eifect as the express charter 

 of the State. Representative governments, then, had made 

 possible the founding of our own State ; and this, the first 

 of rigid constitutions, was absolutely representative in all 

 its parts. The sovereignty of the States was represented 

 in its Senate. The people were directly represented in its 

 House of Representatives, and, for the first time in the 

 history of government, the department of Justice was 

 given power to pass upon the validity of laws passed by 

 these representative bodies. 



Clearly, the State which we are now describing had 

 evolved from all the attempts at government in the past; 

 and the one law of growth which is apparent in any broad 

 survey of its evolution is that the State became effective in 

 exact proportion as it recognized the individual dignity of 

 its citizenship. The one inseparable accompaniment and 

 evidence of the evolution of the State has been the con- 

 tinual uplifting and expansion of manhood as a type. This 

 has been and is the supreme result and test of State 

 growth. "A government is to be judged," says John 

 Stuart Mill, "by its tendency to improve tlie people, and 

 by the goodness or badness of the work it performs for 

 them." By manhood as a type, I mean the average being 



