American Political Ideas Viewed from the Standpoint of Universal History | Page 8

was vested in the
TOWN-MEETING,--an institution which in its present form is said to
be peculiar to New England, but which, as we shall see, has close
analogies with local self-governing bodies in other ages and countries.
Once in each year--usually in the month of March--a meeting is held, at
which every adult male residing within the limits of the township is
expected to be present, and is at liberty to address the meeting or to
vote upon any question that may come up.
In the first years of the colonies it seems to have been attempted to hold
town-meetings every month, and to discuss all the affairs of the
community in these assemblies; but this was soon found to be a
cumbrous way of transacting public business, and as early as 1635 we
find selectmen chosen to administer the affairs of the township during
the intervals between the assemblies. As the system has perfected itself,
at each annual town-meeting there are chosen not less than three or
more than nine selectmen, according to the size of the township.
Besides these, there are chosen a town-clerk, a town-treasurer, a
school-committee, assessors of taxes, overseers of the poor, constables,
surveyors of highways, fence-viewers, and other officers. In very small
townships the selectmen themselves may act as assessors of taxes or
overseers of the poor. The selectmen may appoint police-officers if
such are required; they may act as a Board of Health; in addition to
sundry specific duties too numerous to mention here, they have the
general superintendence of all public business save such as is expressly
assigned to the other officers; and whenever circumstances may seem
to require it they are authorized to call a town-meeting. The selectmen
are thus the principal town-magistrates; and through the annual election
their responsibility to the town is maintained at the maximum. Yet in
many New England towns re-election of the same persons year after
year has very commonly prevailed. I know of an instance where the
office of town-clerk was filled by three members of one family during
one hundred and fourteen consecutive years.
Besides choosing executive officers, the town-meeting has the power of
enacting by-laws, of making appropriations of money for
town-purposes, and of providing for miscellaneous emergencies by

what might be termed special legislation. Besides the annual meeting
held in the spring for transacting all this local business, the selectmen
are required to call a meeting in the autumn of each year for the
election of state and county officers, each second year for the election
of representatives to the federal Congress, and each fourth year for the
election of the President of the United States.
It only remains to add that, as an assembly of the whole people
becomes impracticable in a large community, so when the population
of a township has grown to ten or twelve thousand, the town-meeting is
discontinued, the town is incorporated as a city, and its affairs are
managed by a mayor, a board of aldermen, and a common council,
according to the system adopted in London in the reign of Edward I. In
America, therefore, the distinction between cities and towns has
nothing to do with the presence or absence of a cathedral, but refers
solely to differences in the communal or municipal government. In the
city the common council, as a representative body, replaces (in a
certain sense) the town-meeting; a representative government is
substituted for a pure democracy. But the city officers, like the
selectmen of towns, are elected annually; and in no case (I believe) has
municipal government fallen into the hands of a self-perpetuating body,
as it has done in so many instances in England owing to the unwise
policy pursued by the Tudors and Stuarts in their grants of charters.
It is only in New England that the township system is to be found in its
completeness. In several southern and western states the administrative
unit is the county, and local affairs are managed by county
commissioners elected by the people. Elsewhere we find a mixture of
the county and township systems. In some of the western states settled
by New England people, town-meetings are held, though their powers
are somewhat less extensive than in New England. In the settlement of
Virginia it was attempted to copy directly the parishes and vestries,
boroughs and guilds of England. But in the southern states generally
the great size of the plantations and the wide dispersion of the
population hindered the growth of towns, so that it was impossible to
have an administrative unit smaller than the county. As Tocqueville
said fifty years ago, "the farther south we go the less active does the

business of the township or parish become; the population exercises a
less immediate influence on affairs; the power of the elected