Civil Government in the United States | Page 2

greater length.

Within limits thus restricted, it will probably seem strange to some that
so much space is given to the treatment of local
institutions,--comprising the governments of town, county, and city. It
may be observed, by the way, that some persons apparently conceive of
the state also as a "local institution." In a recent review of Professor
Howard's admirable "Local Constitutional History of the United
States," we read, the first volume, which is all that is yet published,
treats of the development of the township, hundred, and shire; the
second volume, we suppose, being designed to treat of the State
Constitutions. The reviewer forgets that there is such a subject as the
"development of the city and local magistracies" (which is to be the
subject of that second volume), and lets us see that in his apprehension
the American state is an institution of the same order as the town and
county. We can thus readily assent when we are told that many youth
have grown to manhood with so little appreciation of the political
importance of the state as to believe it nothing more than a
geographical division.[1] In its historic genesis, the American state is
not an institution of the same order as the town and county, nor has it as
yet become depressed or "mediatized" to that degree. The state, while it
does not possess such attributes of sovereignty as were by our Federal
Constitution granted to the United States, does, nevertheless, possess
many very important and essential characteristics of a sovereign body,
as is here pointed out on pages 172-177. The study of our state
governments is inextricably wrapped up with the study of our national
government, in such wise that both are parts of one subject, which
cannot be understood unless both parts are studied. Whether in the
course of our country's future development we shall ever arrive at a
stage in which this is not the case, must be left for future events to
determine. But, if we ever do arrive at such a stage, "American
institutions" will present a very different aspect from those with which
we are now familiar, and which we have always been accustomed
(even, perhaps, without always understanding them) to admire.
[Footnote 1: Young's Government Class Book, p. iv.]
The study of local government properly includes town, county, and city.
To this part of the subject I have devoted about half of my limited

space, quite unheedful of the warning which I find in the preface of a
certain popular text-book, that "to learn the duties of town, city, and
county officers, has nothing whatever to do with the grand and noble
subject of Civil Government," and that "to attempt class drill on petty
town and county offices, would be simply burlesque of the whole
subject." But, suppose one were to say, with an air of ineffable scorn,
that petty experiments on terrestrial gravitation and radiant heat, such
as can be made with commonplace pendulums and tea-kettles, have
nothing whatever to do with the grand and noble subject of Physical
Astronomy! Science would not have got very far on that plan, I fancy.
The truth is, that science, while it is perpetually dealing with questions
of magnitude, and knows very well what is large and what is small,
knows nothing whatever of any such distinction as that between things
that are "grand" and things that are "petty." When we try to study things
in a scientific spirit, to learn their modes of genesis and their present
aspects, in order that we may foresee their tendencies, and make our
volitions count for something in modifying them, there is nothing
which we may safely disregard as trivial. This is true of whatever we
can study; it is eminently true of the history of institutions. Government
is not a royal mystery, to be shut off, like old Deiokes,[2] by a
sevenfold wall from the ordinary business of life. Questions of civil
government are practical business questions, the principles of which are
as often and as forcibly illustrated in a city council or a county board of
supervisors, as in the House of Representatives at Washington. It is
partly because too many of our citizens fail to realize that local
government is a worthy study, that we find it making so much trouble
for us. The "bummers" and "boodlers" do not find the subject beneath
their notice; the Master who inspires them is wide awake and--for a
creature that divides the hoof--extremely intelligent.
[Footnote 2: Herodotus, i. 98.]
It is, moreover, the mental training gained through contact with local
government that enables the people of a community to conduct
successfully, through their representatives, the government of the state
and the nation. And so it makes a great deal of difference whether the
government of