Town^ Township and Tithing. 145 



It will be noticed that in these extracts the words " town " and " town- 

 ship " are used interchangeably. This was the case also in the early history 

 of New England. For example: in the Massachusetts Body of Liberties 

 (l641) we find "town" in Articles 16, 50, 51, 57, 62 and 85; " township" in 

 Articles 66, 68 and 84, used with no apparent distinction of meaning. Ar- 

 ticle 74 couples them together: "the freemen of every town or township." 

 We can perhaps trace a disposition to use the word " town" when si^eak- 

 ing of the corporate body, and "township" for territory, e. g.. Article 78, 

 where it is forbidden to expend "any town treasure but by the freemen of 

 that township." At present I beheve the word " township " is not in use in 

 New England, except occasionally to designate the town from the point 

 of view of the territorial area; never as a body pohtic. Curiously enough, 

 it is this word, fastened upon by De Tocqueville, that is regularly used by 

 foreign writers to describe the New England town system. The term 

 " fojriis/ujj system" is properly used in this country only for the six-mile 

 square divisions of the pubhc lands, laid out by the government surveys. 

 The states erected out of these public lands have a town system of their 

 own, parallel with the national township system, and generally coinciding- 

 with it in respect to division lines, but not always. For example, tlie town 

 of Trempealeau, Wis. , contains the whole of Township 19, N. , Range 9, 

 W., and parts of Townships 17 and 18, Range 9, and 18 and 19, Range 10. 

 In the primitive Anglo-Saxon usage the word "township," tunscip, a.^- 

 pears to have been regularly used to designate the town as a municipality 

 while "town," tun, was the settled portion — what in New England is 

 caUed the " village " or the " middle of the town." 



This distinction is quite in accordance with the etymology of the word. 

 It is well known that "town," tun, is the same word with the German 

 zaun, hedge or fence. But while the Germans never used the word zaun 

 to designate the enclosed (fenced-in) area; the Anglo-Saxons, on the othei 

 hand, never used the word tun except to designate this enclosed area; the 

 primitive meaning of enclosing body having been entirely lost. Now the 

 thing fenced in was the village, or group of houses, which was accordingly 

 the tun; and the tunscip, or township, was the area of land which be- 

 longed with the village as a municipal organization. As a consequence, 

 the word tun was popularly applied to any place of collective residence; as 

 where the Saxon Clironicle (Land Ms. An., 584), says: CeaicUn manige 

 tunas genam — " Cesiwlin took many towns." In the course of time the 

 word town appears to have crowded out the more strictly correct word 

 tomiship, in the sense of designating the territorial area as a municipality; 

 and in this sense the word was brought to New England by the colonists 

 of the seventeenth century. In this country the meaning of the word is 

 precisely that of Fortescue's time. In England, on tlie other hand, the 

 modern use appears to be a sm-vival of the loose and popular early usage, 

 as applying to any i^lace of collective residence; being hmited in England 

 at the present day to large places. 

 J 



