180 WISCONSIN STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY . 
affairs, but that the rights of the rural districts are better pro- 
tected. 
VIII.—COUNTY GOVERNMENTS, 
Come next in the ascending grade; but this division of our 
government has had less important functions assigned it than we 
might have anticipated. In New England, the townships were 
the original form, and still absorb nearly all the local public bu¬ 
siness. In New York and our western states, where a countv 
legislature, in the shape of a board of supervisors, is made a part 
of the township system, the county becomes a better defined part 
of the body politic, but still has less legislative power than either 
township or state. 
In the Southern, and a few of the Middle and Western States, 
the county system was the original, and even the present practice. 
It came of large plantations, a sparse population, slavery and the 
lack of an educated and intelligent yeomanry. There is some¬ 
thing pathetic in the struggles of Jefferson to rid old Virginia of 
slavery, and to introduce the free schools and towns of New En¬ 
gland into his own commonwealth. Speaking of the impotence 
of counties against the towns in the time of the embargo, he said : 
“ What would the unwieldy counties of the Middle, the South, 
and the West do? Call a county meeting, and the drunken 
loungers at and about the court houses would have collected, the 
distance being too great for the good people and the industrious 
generally to attend. The character of those who really met, 
would have been the measure of the weight they would have had 
in the scales of public opinion.” 
IS. IN THE STATE, 
I 
We find a very important and well compacted part of our gov¬ 
ernmental machinery, for to the state is left a large part of the 
legislation affecting the citizen. Of this, the powers of taxation, 
eminent domain and police, are of most general interest, although 
of less fundamental importance than protection of personal lib¬ 
erty, property and the liberty of the press and religion. Direct 
taxation is of special importance to the rural districts, because the 
property there is generally visible. Lands and houses are gen- 
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