August 29, 1884.] 



SCIENCE. 



175 



forms of local government developed under 

 the proprietary government of Pennsylvania. 

 4 Towns and parishes,' — these are in English 

 institutions, as a rule, identical ; the parish be- 

 ing the ecclesiastical organization of the town- 

 ship, as the manor is its feudal form. Now, 

 it is a significant fact, that south of Mason and 

 Dixon's line the manor was the form adopted, 

 in which the popular assembly was the court- 

 leet. One of the most interesting and valuable 

 papers of the whole series is that of Mr. 

 Johnson (No. 7) , upon old Maryland manors, 

 with the records of a court-leet and a court- 

 baron ; which records ' ' are the first of their 

 kind that have been utilized by students of 

 Maryland history." But the parish, primarily 

 ecclesiastical, though also used for civil pur- 

 poses, existed by the side of the manor, as 

 shown by Mr. Ingle, in his paper (No. 6) on 

 parish institutions of Maryland, and by Mr. 

 Ramage, in his paper (No. 12) on local gov- 

 ernment in South Carolina. The parish, in 

 the beginning regularly conterminous with the 

 town, was also found in New England, where 

 the Congregational Church was established by 

 law, as the Episcopal was in Maryland and 

 South Carolina. 



Now, it is an important fact, in connection 

 with this inquiry, that it was just in the period 

 before the planting of the English colonies in 

 America, probably as a result of the Reforma- 

 tion, that the parish became the regular organ 

 of local self-government in England. Its ves- 

 try was an assembly of all inhabitants of the 

 parish, not for church concerns alone, but for 

 all matters of public interest, thus taking the 

 place of the old court-leet, or popular court of 

 the township. It is probably from this vestry 

 that the New-England town-meeting was de- 

 rived, with considerable modifications and 

 enlargement of powers. It was, it must be 

 noticed, fully as ecclesiastical in character as 

 the vestry, none but church-members being 

 allowed to take part in it ; and, a significant 

 fact, the name of its elected president, ' mod- 

 erator,' appears to have been taken from the 

 usage of the Scotch church assemblies. The 

 English vestry was regularly presided over by 

 the rector. 



It appears probable, therefore, that, while 

 the New-England ' town ' was a direct descend- 

 ant of the English town, its assembly, or town- 

 meeting, was not derived directly from the 

 court-leet, or primitive popular assembly, which 

 had become feudalized, and brought under the 

 authority of the lord of the manor, but from 

 the vestry, — the form of public assembly which 

 alone possessed vitality and a certain demo- 



cratic character at the close of the sixteenth 

 century. It may be inferred from Mr. Gould's 

 statement, that the New-York town-system had 

 the same origin ; but for some reason its assem- 

 bly never received the remarkable develop- 

 ment of that of New England, and the town 

 itself was reduced to comparative insignificance 

 by the establishment of a county-system of a 

 character intermediate between that of the 

 south, where the county is the principal civil 

 division, and that of New England, where it 

 is hardly more than a group of towns. 1 The 

 system thus created, the relation between coun- 

 ty and town established in New- York, with 

 the distinctive town-system which exists in 

 connection with it, may fairly be called the 

 American system. It has spread in the west 

 to the exclusion of the New-England system ; 

 and, as is shown in Mr. Shaw's interesting paper 

 (No. 3), on local government in Illinois, it is 

 driving out the southern system, even where 

 the latter had the start. It should be noticed, 

 at the same time, that the Illinois town-meet- 

 ing, differing from that of most of the states 

 of the north-west, is shown by Mr. Shaw to 

 have been modelled upon that of New Eng- 

 land. 



The admirable work done in the first series 

 of these papers needs, therefore, to be supple- 

 mented in two directions in particular. First, 

 the Virginia county-system, that which appears 

 to have controlled local institutions generally 

 in the south-west, should be described. Sec- 

 ond, it needs to be shown how the New- York 

 county and town system, which at present 

 exercises a controlling influence throughout 

 the north-west, and is successfully rivalling the 

 Virginia system, even on its own ground, came 

 into existence. 



There remain several interesting subjects, 

 discussed in these papers, into which we have 

 not space to enter. It will be only necessary 

 to mention Mr. Johnston's ' Genesis of a New- 

 England state' (No. 11), in which the town 

 principle is shown to have had a peculiar and 

 remarkable career in Connecticut ; Mr. Bemis, 

 upon local government in Michigan and the 

 north-west (No. 5) ; and Professor Adams's 

 illustrations (already mentioned) of land com- 

 munities in Massachusetts. This subject, it 

 ma} 7 be stated, has been examined with the aid 

 of original documents, and with considerable 

 fulness of detail, bv Mr. Melville E°'le$ton. in 



1 [In Rhode Island the towns have some of the functions 

 which counties have in Massachusetts, and the power of the 

 county becomes far less important. For instance : in Massachu- 

 setts the county lays out highways; in Rhode Island this is the 

 function of the town, and it sometimes happens that roads on 

 opposite sides of a town-line do not connect. — Ed.] 



