Government and Administration of the United States | Page 5

be delegated to the city or to the state, or shall it be left to
the chance performance of individuals or corporations? These are some
of the many questions of supreme importance that meet us at every
point, and the better we understand the true nature and structure of our
government, the better shall we be able to give intelligent answers.
Among the many functions of government, there are many so
obviously necessary to the existence of a nation, however organized,
that there is no discussion concerning the expediency of their exercise
by the state. We may, therefore, group governmental duties under two
heads: the necessary, and the optionable; or, as Professor Wilson has
named them, the Constituent and the Ministrant.[1] Under the first head
is embraced all those functions which must exist under every form of
government; and under the second title those "undertaken, not by way
of governing, but by way of advancing the general interests of society."
The following is Professor Wilson's classification:
#I. The Necessary or Constituent Functions.#--
(1). The keeping of order and providing for the protection of persons
and property from violence and robbery. (2). The fixing of the legal

relations between man and wife, and between parents and children.
(3). The regulation of the holding, transmission, and interchange of
property, and determination of its liabilities for debt or for crime.
(4). The determination of contract rights between individuals.
(5). The definition and punishment of crime.
(6). The administration of justice in civil causes.
(7). The determination of the political duties, privileges, and relations
of citizens.
(8). Dealings of the state with foreign powers; the preservation of the
state from external danger or encroachment, and the advancement of its
intellectual interests.
#II. Optional or Ministrant Functions.#
(1). The regulation of trade and industry. Under this head we must
include the coinage of money, and the establishment of standard
weights and measures, laws against forestalling, engrossing, the
licensing of trades, etc., as well as the great matters of tariffs,
navigation laws, and the like.
(2). The regulation of labor.
(3). The maintenance of thoroughfares, including state management of
railways, and that great group of undertakings which we embrace
within the comprehensive terms 'Internal Improvements,' or 'The
Development of the Country.'
(4). The maintenance of postal and telegraph systems, which is very
similar in principle to (3).
(5). The manufacture and distribution of gas, the maintenance of
water-works, &c.

(6). Sanitation, including the regulation of trades for sanitary purposes.
(7). Education.
(8). Care of the poor and incapable. (9). Care and cultivation of forests
and like matters, such as stocking of rivers with fish.
(10). Sumptuary laws, such as 'prohibition' laws.
Under this second head have been included by no means all of the
functions whose exercise by the government has been attempted or
proposed, but they show the principal ones, and serve to indicate the
nature of the optional field of governmental activity.
[Footnote 1: Wilson, The State, Section 1232.]
CHAPTER IV.
Colonial Governments; Their Relation to Each Other, and to England.
To understand clearly the early history of our country; to appreciate the
reasons for the grievances of the colonists against their mother country;
and to gain an intelligent idea of the events of that most critical period
of our history, when the colonies, then free, were in doubt as to the
nature of the federal government they should adopt; properly to
understand all these facts, it is of essential importance that we should
gain a correct knowledge of the condition of the colonies during those
times, their relations to one another, their governmental connection
with and attitude towards England.
The thirteen American colonies, which in 1775 dared defy the might of
Great Britain, and which in a stubborn struggle were able to win their
independence, were settled at various times, and by colonists actuated
by widely different motives. At the time of the beginning of their
resistance to the oppressive acts of their mother country, they were, in
their governments, entirely separate from and independent of each
other. "Though the colonies had a common origin, and owed a common
allegiance to England, and the inhabitants of each were British subjects,

they had no direct political connection with each other. Each in a
limited sense, was sovereign within its own territory.... The assembly
of one province could not make laws for another.... As colonists they
were also excluded from all connection with foreign states. They were
known only as dependencies. They followed the fate of their mother
country both in peace and war.... They could not form any treaty, even
among themselves, without the consent of England."[1]
[Footnote 1: Story's Commentaries on the Constitution, Vol. I, p. 163.]
All the colonies did not bear the same relation to the English
government. Owing to the different manner in