Town, Township and Tithing. 141 



TOWi^, TOWNSHIP AND TITHING. 



By Prof. AVM. F. ALLEN. 



The town is in many respects the most characteristic institution of the 

 pohtical system of tlie northern states of the American Union, and of the 

 primitive constitution of the EngHsh people. It may be defined as a terri- 

 torial district, the inhabitants of which compose a body politic, smaU 

 enough to allow the immediate participation of aU its citizens in the gov- 

 ernment of its local concerns, and forming an organic part of the structure 

 of the state. Its powers of local self-government, are not original and in- 

 herent, but derived from the larger body of which it forms apart; they are 

 nevertheless substantial and permanent, in this respect diifering from 

 those of the school districts or wards into which the town or city is divided. 

 The City under our system is only a larger and specially organized Town; 

 the Incorporated Village of New York and the West is a pecuhar addition 

 to the Town system, not forming structurally a part of it. 



The Town, as thus defined, is peculiar to England and the United States, 

 and, in its complete development, to the New England States. In aU the 

 other Germanic countries the territorial division corresponding to the Town 

 stopped short of an independent pohtical Ufe, being, from the point of view 

 of tlie State, nothing but a private corporation for economical purposes, 

 with only inchoate functions as a body politic. In all these countries the 

 Hundred was the smallest district of a iDubhc character; just as in our 

 southern states the Cotmty is the agent of local self-government. But the 

 County and the Hundi-ed are too large to allow the immediate participation 

 of aU the citizens in the transaction of pubUc business. The communities 

 in which these large districts are the only agent of local self-government 

 are necessarily aristocratic in their political character. It was the growth 

 of Feudalism, or the establishment of centralized monarchies, in the Ger- 

 manic countries of the continent, that checked the development of an in- 

 stitution corresponding to the English To\vn. In England the growth of a 

 landed aristocracy and of a centraUzed monarchical power were not early 

 or rapid enough to kill the germs of local self-government, although they 

 seriously interfered with its development. 



The political fimctions of the English towns were so largely obscured 

 during the middle ages by the manorial or feudal organizations to wliich they 

 were subjected, that there have arisen some doubts as to their extent, and 

 even then- existence. Bishop Stubbs, in his "Constitutional History of 



