Civil Government in the United States Considered with Some Reference to Its Origins Part 4

b. The time for holding it.

c. The place for holding it.

d. The persons who take part in it.

e. The sort of business done in it.

7. Give an account of the selectmen:--

a. Their number.

b. The reason for an odd number.

c. Their duties.

8. When public schools were established by Ma.s.sachusetts in 1647, what reasons were a.s.signed for the law?

9. What cla.s.ses or grades of schools were then established?

10. What are the duties of the Ma.s.sachusetts school committee?

11. What is the term of service of teachers in that state?

12. What are the duties of the following officers?--

a. Field-drivers.

b. Pound-keepers.

c. Fence-viewers.

d. Surveyors of lumber.

e. Measurers of wood.

f. Sealers of weights and measures.

13. What are the duties of the following officers?--

a. The town-clerk.

b. The treasurer.

c. Constables.

d. a.s.sessors.

e. Overseers of the poor.

14. Describe a warrant for a town-meeting.

15. For what other purposes than those of the town are taxes raised?

16. Explain the following:--

a. The poll-tax.

b. The tax on personal property, c. The tax on real estate.

17. What kinds of real estate are exempted from taxation, and why?

18. What kinds of personal property are exempted, and why?

19. Where must the several kinds of taxes be a.s.sessed and paid?

Ill.u.s.trate.

20. If a person changes his residence from one town in the state to another before May 1, what consequences about taxes might follow?

21. How do the a.s.sessors ascertain the property for which one should be taxed?

22. What difficulties beset the taxation of personal property?

23. Mention a common practice in a.s.signing values to property.

What is the effect on the tax-rate? Ill.u.s.trate.

24. How do high taxes operate as a burden?

25. Describe a delusion from which people who directly govern themselves are practically free.

26. What is the educational value of the town-meeting?

27. What are by-laws? Explain the phrase.

28. What of the power and responsibility of selectmen?

Section 2. _Origin of the Towns.h.i.+p_.

[Sidenote: Town-meetings in Greece and Rome.]

It was said above that government by town-meeting is in principle the oldest form of government known in the world. The student of ancient history is familiar with the _comitia_ of the Romans and the _ecclesia_ of the Greeks. These were popular a.s.semblies, held in those soft climates in the open air, usually in the market-place,--the Roman _forum_, the Greek _agora_. The government carried on in them was a more or less qualified democracy. In the palmy days of Athens it was a pure democracy. The a.s.semblies which in the Athenian market-place declared war against Syracuse, or condemned Socrates to death, were quite like New England town-meetings, except that they exercised greater powers because there was no state government above them.

[Sidenote: Clans.]

The principle of the town-meeting, however, is older than Athens or Rome. Long before streets were built or fields fenced in, men wandered about the earth hunting for food in family parties, somewhat as lions do in South Africa. Such family groups were what we call _clans_, and so far as is known they were the earliest form in which civil society appeared on the earth. Among all wandering or partially settled tribes the clan is to be found, and there are ample opportunities for studying it among our Indians in North America. The clan usually has a chief or head-man, useful mainly as a leader in wartime; its civil government, crude and disorderly enough, is in principle a pure democracy.

[Sidenote: The _mark_ and the _tun_.]

When our ancestors first became acquainted with American Indians, the most advanced tribes lived partly by hunting and fis.h.i.+ng, but partly also by raising Indian corn and pumpkins. They had begun to live in wigwams grouped together in small villages and surrounded by strong rows of palisades for defence. Now what these red men were doing our own fair-haired ancestors in northern and central Europe had been doing some twenty centuries earlier. The Scandinavians and Germans, when first known in history, had made considerable progress in exchanging a wandering for a settled mode of life. When the clan, instead of moving from place to place, fixed upon some spot for a permanent residence, a village grew up there, surrounded by a belt of waste land, or somewhat later by a stockaded wall. The belt of land was called a _mark_, and the wall was called a _tun_.[5] Afterwards the enclosed s.p.a.ce came to be known sometimes as the _mark_, sometimes as the _tun_ or _town_. In England the latter name prevailed. The inhabitants of a mark or town were a stationary clan. It was customary to call them by the clan name, as for example "the Beorings" or "the Crossings;" then the town would be called _Barrington_, "town of the Beorings," or _Cressingham_, "home of the Cressings." Town names of this sort, with which the map of England is thickly studded, point us back to a time when the town was supposed to be the stationary home of a clan.

[Footnote 1: p.r.o.nounced "toon."]

[Sidenote: The Old English towns.h.i.+p.]

[Sidenote: The manor.]

The Old English town had its _tungemot_, or town-meeting, in which "by-laws" were made and other important business transacted.

The princ.i.p.al officers were the "reeve" or head-man, the "beadle" or messenger, and the "t.i.thing-man" or petty constable. These officers seem at first to have been elected by the people, but after a while, as great lords.h.i.+ps grew up, usurping jurisdiction over the land, the lord's steward and bailiff came to supersede the reeve and beadle.

After the Norman Conquest the towns.h.i.+ps, thus brought under the sway of great lords, came to be generally known by the French name of manors or "dwelling places." Much might be said about this change, but here it is enough for us to bear in mind that a manor was essentially a towns.h.i.+p in which the chief executive officers were directly responsible to the lord rather than to the people. It would be wrong, however, to suppose that the manors entirely lost their self-government. Even the ancient town-meeting survived in them, in a fragmentary way, in several interesting a.s.semblies, of which the most interesting were the _court leet_, for the election of certain officers and the trial of petty offences, and the _court baron_, which was much like a town-meeting.

[Sidenote: The parish.]

Still more of the old self-government would doubtless have survived in the inst.i.tutions of the manor if it had not been provided for in another way. The _parish_ was older than the manor. After the English had been converted to Christianity local churches were gradually set up all over the country, and districts called parishes were a.s.signed for the ministrations of the priests. Now a parish generally coincided in area with a towns.h.i.+p, or sometimes with a group of two or three towns.h.i.+ps. In the old heathen times each town seems to have had its sacred place or shrine consecrated to some local deity, and it was a favourite policy with the Roman missionary priests to purify the old shrine and turn it into a church. In this way the towns.h.i.+p at the same time naturally became the parish.

[Sidenote: Towns.h.i.+p, manor, and parish.]

[Sidenote: The vestry-meeting.]

As we find it in later times, both before and since the founding of English colonies in North America, the towns.h.i.+p in England is likely to be both a manor and a parish. For some purposes it is the one, for some purposes it is the other. The townsfolk may be regarded as a group of tenants of the lord's manor, or as a group of paris.h.i.+oners of the local church. In the latter aspect the parish retained much of the self-government of the ancient town. The business with which the lord was ent.i.tled to meddle was strictly limited, and all other business was transacted in the "vestry-meeting," which was practically the old town-meeting under a new name. In the course of the thirteenth century we find that the parish had acquired the right of taxing itself for church purposes. Money needed for the church was supplied in the form of "church-rates" voted by the ratepayers themselves in the vestry-meeting, so called because it was originally held in a room of the church in which vestments were kept.

[Sidenote: Parish officers.]