174 



SCIENCE, 



[Vol. IV., No. 82. 



representing the cavalier instincts of English 

 royalists ; the survivals of French institutions 

 in Louisiana, and of Spanish farther west and 

 in Florida, — these, at least, must come into a 

 complete scheme ; and those of New York will 

 probably be found the most important of all, 

 so far as the genesis of American local insti- 

 tutions is concerned. 



The principal line of investigation in this 

 group of studies has been conducted by Prof. 

 H. B. Adams, the editor of the series, and has 

 been devoted to showing the organic connec- 

 tion between the town institutions of New 

 England and the corresponding institutions of 

 Old England. No less than five papers are 

 devoted to this end, — No. 2, 'The Germanic 

 origin of New-England towns ; ' No. 4, 

 ' Saxon ti thing-men in America ; ' No. 8, 

 1 Norman constables in America ; ' and Nos. 

 9 and 10, ' Village communities of Cape 

 Anne and Salem.' These five papers contain 

 a very interesting account of the corporate 

 features, and the most primitive magistracies 

 of the New-England towns. 



The corporate qualit}', the continuity of ex- 

 istence, the identity of organization and of 

 magistrates, — all these points are well brought 

 out in these papers ; but the most important 

 feature of the New-England town-system re- 

 mains 3 T et to be explained, — the town-meet- 

 ing, which John Adams placed with good right 

 as one of the four corner-stones of New-Eng- 

 land democracy. 



The New-England town-meeting is a wholly 

 unique institution. There have been popular 

 assemblies often in history ; but the New- 

 England town-meeting differs from all these by 

 radical and fundamental features. Not that it 

 possesses any attribute of real sovereignt}^, or 

 even any independent original action : it is 

 an institution of wholly subordinate character, 

 and with derived powers, as is shown by the 

 fact that its sphere of action is absolutely 

 limited b} r the specifications of the warrant. 

 No business can legalty come before the meet- 

 ing which is not definitely stated in this in- 

 strument. 



A more important characteristic — that, in- 

 deed, in which it differs essentially from every 

 other popular assembly — is what we may call 

 the parliamentary character of its procedure. 

 Just as the British parliament, representing 

 the people of Great Britain, sits in judgment 

 upon the king and ministers, who hold their 

 places by its will, and subjects them to a rigid 

 accountability, just so the people of the New- 

 England towns, assembled in March meeting, 

 supersede for the time the town magistrates. 



For that daj^ the selectmen are private citizens. 

 The first business of the meeting is ' to choose 

 a moderator ; ' and the moderator is the officer 

 of the meeting, wholly independent of the 

 selectmen, just as the speaker is the officer 

 of parliament, wholly independent of king and 

 council. The town-meeting, like parliament, 

 holds the strings of the purse, and not merely 

 votes taxes, but appropriates them to definite 

 objects of expenditure. 



This is a feature peculiar to the New-Eng- 

 land popular assembly : it is not English, it is 

 not even Teutonic. The English court-leet 

 and folk-mote, the Frank mal, as well as the 

 Athenian ecclesia and the Roman comitia, were 

 presided over by the magistrate who sum- 

 moned them ; and the same is true of the town- 

 meetings in most other parts of the United 

 States. It is from the effective responsibility 

 thus exercised over the town-officers by the 

 body of the citizens, that the peculiar vitality 

 and democratic character of the New-England 

 town-system, noticed by De Tocqueville and 

 others, are derived. The origin of this re- 

 markable feature seems the most interesting 

 and important question in the history of New- 

 England local institutions. 



The western states have, as a rule, modelled 

 their town-system upon that of New York 

 rather than of New England, — a system better 

 in many respects, but differing from it chiefly 

 in the absence of the town-meeting. It fol- 

 lows, as was remarked before, that the New- 

 York local institutions are historically the most 

 important of all, and that the most important 

 problem to be solved in these investigations is 

 the cause of this divergence in institutions 

 between two English communities in the same 

 latitude, and separated only by an imaginary 

 boundary-line. Maine and New Hampshire, 

 proprietary colonies, fell spontaneously into 

 the system that prevailed in the charter colonies 

 south of them ; perhaps, in part, for the 

 reason that they were, one temporarily, and the 

 other for a much longer period, annexed to 

 Massachusetts. How did it come about that 

 this group adopted this unique system of self- 

 government, while New York, their nearest 

 neighbor, developed so different a system ? 



This question finds a partial answer in Mr. 

 Gould's paper (No. 3) upon local govern- 

 ment in Pennsylvania, in which the policy of 

 the Duke of York is briefly described. This 

 ' ' was a close imitation of the English s}^stem : 

 it recognized the old municipal divisions of 

 ridings, towns, and parishes." It is just at 

 this point that we need further elucidation, 

 Mr. Gould's theme confining him to the special 



