143 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters. 



England" (Vol. i, p. 82), asserts that (in Anglo-Saxon times) " tlie unit of the 

 constitutional machinery is the township, the villata or vicus." This is the 

 view which I have already presented; but a review of Stubbs' work in the 

 North Ainerican Eeview (July, 1874), understood to be by the then edi- 

 tor of the Review, Prof. Henry Adams, takes exception to the assertion, 

 saying that the township has no constitutional functions ' ' of any kind, sort 

 or description; " tha,t the unit of the constitutional machinery in England, 

 as on the continent, was the Hundred. " The one permanent Germanic in- 

 stitution," he says, "was the Hundred. The one code of Germanic law 

 was Hundi'ed law, much of which is now the common law of England. 

 The Hundred and its law survived all the storms which wrecked dynasties 

 and Witan. It was the foundation of the judicial constitution under the 

 couqueror as it had been under Cnut and Alfred." The same view is re- 

 peated in Prof. Adams' ".Essays on Anglo-Saxon Law," p. 32. 



That the hundred was the lowest political division in Germany, as Prof. 

 Adams asserts, admits of no doubt. This fundamental fact, together with 

 the non-political character of the lower territorial divisions, is perhaps best 

 formalated by Sohm,' who points out that the local governments in Ger- 

 raany were purely private corporations, having no public character or func- 

 tions. But it does not follow that what was true of Germany was necess- 

 arily true of England. England, although a Germanic country, received 

 in many respects a different development from Germany; and it is the essence 

 of Bishop Stubbs' position that this w^as the case with the territorial organ- 

 ization below the Hundred. As the word "town " {tun, tunscip) is peculiar 

 to England, so, it may be, is the thing designated by it. This distinction is 

 supported by Von Maurer, the writer of highest authority upon the genesis 

 of local institutions, who, in liis Einleitung zur Geschichte der Mark, Hof, 

 Dorf und Stadtverfassung (§ 145, p. 332), asserts that the English institu- 

 tions differed fundamentally from the German in this respect. When, 

 therefore. Prof. Adams says that such an institution as the one in question 

 " would be quite at variance with all that we know of German law," he ap- 

 pears to stretch the argument from analogy further than is warranted. The 

 very question at issue is whether the development of English institutions 

 did not upon this point depart from German analogy. 



I shall speak first of the territorial character of the English towns , and 

 then of their political character; and shall try to show that we are to seek 



1 The following passage expresses Sohm's theory with great fulness: -Zwrn grossen Nach- 

 theil der Gesammtauffassung nicht bios der Verluiltnisse des frdnkishen Seiches, sondern 

 der gesaniniten mittel-alterlichen Entwickelung wird die Thatsache in der Regel iibersehen, 

 dass, der Reichsverfassung der frdnkischen wie der deutschen, eine Ortsgemeindeverfassimg 

 unbekannt ist. Die Reichsverfassung kennt keine weiteren Zioecke ausser denjenigen, deren 

 Realisirung in Gau und Hundertschaft vor sich geht . . . Die Ortsgemeindeverjassung ist aus 

 keineni anderen Grunde local fiirjede Ortsgemeinde verschieden, als iveil die Ortsgemein- 

 deverfassung aus der autonomen Entwickelung der einzelnen Gemeinden hervorgegangen 

 ist. Die Ortsgenieindeverfassung ist Verfassung nur kraft Corporationsi'echts, nicht 

 kraft Reichsrechts. Sohm, (Altdeutsche Reichs und Gerichtsverfassung, I, p. 231). 



