discuss and decide upon public matters, electing representatives to stand in their place in the legislatures of State and Union, but retaining in their own hands local government. In the County system, that of the South, the population elect officers upon whom they throw the burden of local government; there are no regular popular moots for the discussion of public affairs, citizens contenting themselves with the mere election of the county officials: the latter, if unsatisfactory, are not subject to check or guidance from any formally constituted body, but are simply dropped at the next election. In the Township-County or Compromise system, the two other systems are variously blended: this may be seen in the States of the Middle and the West. Local self Influences the town Beginning our discussion with the Town system, let us inquire whether New Englanders have preserved it in its integrity. In the immense dilution which the old stock of New England government has undergone through the foreign human land. floods which have been poured upon it, its influence has of necessity been often greatly weakened and the character of town government has been modified, seldom advantageously. While which impair multitudes of the ancient strain have for- meeting. saken the granite hills, their places have been supplied by a Celtic race, energetic and prolific, whose teeming families throng city and village, threatening to outnumber the Yankee element, depleted as it has been by the emigration of so many of its most vigorous children. To these new-comers must be added now the French Canadians, who, following the track of their warlike ancestors down the river-valleys, hare some by thousands into the manteaming towns and into the woods, in industers but memgressive race. good hands in the nis and marvellously dexterous at wielding the axe. Whatever may be said of the virtues of these new-comers, — and, of course, a long list eculd be made out for them. — they have not been trained to Anglo-Saxon self-government. We have seen the origin of the fis-moct far back in Teutonic antiquity. As established in New England, it is a revival of a most ancient thing. The institution is uncongenial to any but Teutonie men: the Irishman and Frenchman are not at home in it, and cannot accustom themselves to it, until, as the new generations come forward, they take on the char acteristics of the people among whom they have come to cast their lot. At present, in most old New England towns, we find an element of the population numbering hundreds, often thousands, who are some‐ times quite inert, allowing others to decide all things for them; sometimes voting in droves in an unintelligent way as some whipper-in may direct; sometimes in unreasoning partisanship, following through thick and thin a cunning demagogue, quite careless how the public welfare may suffer by his coming to the front.1 "Though the town-meeting of the New England of to-day rarely presents all the features of the townmeeting of the Revolution, yet wherever the population has remained tolerably pure from foreign admixture, and wherever the Picture of it thirty years wines. i I have embodied here some material from previous works, Johns Hopkins University Studies, 2d Series, IV, p. 16, etc., and also the Life of Mamuel Adams, Chap. XXIII. See the latter work for a detailed sketch of the town of Boston, the most interesting of New England towns in its most interesting period. 6 numbers at the same time have not become so large as to embarrass, the institution retains much of its old vigor. The writer recalls the life, as it was twenty-five years ago, of a most venerable and uncontaminated old town, whose origin dates back more than two hundred years.1 At first it realized almost perfectly the idea of the Teutonic tun.' For long it was the frontier settlement, with nothing to the west but woods until the fierce Mohawks were reached, and nothing but woods to the north until one came to the hostile French of Canada. About the houses, therefore, was drawn the protection of a palisade to enclose them (tynan) against attack. Though not without some foreign intermixture, the old stock was, thirty years ago, so far unchanged that in the various deestricks' the dialect was often unmistakably nasal; the very bobolinks in the meadowgrass, and the bumble-bees in the hollyhocks, might have been imagined to chitter and hum with a Yankee twang; and Zekle' squired Huldy' as of yore, to singing-school or apple-paring, to quilting or sugaringoff, as each season brought its appropriate festival. The same names stood for the most part on tax, voting, and parish lists that stood there in the time of Philip's war, when for a space the people were driven out by the Indian pressure; and the Fathers had handed down to the modern day, with their names and blood, the venerable methods by which they regulated their lives. On the northern boundary a factory village had sprung up about a water-power; at the south, too, five miles off, there was some rattle of mills and sound of hammers. For the most part, 6 1 Deerfield, Franklin Co., Massachusetts. owever the people were farmers, like their ancestors, A great hay-crops in June with which to fatten We stall long rows of sleek cattle for market in December; or by farmer's alchemy, transmuting the clover of the rocky hills into golden butter. "From far and near, on the first March-Monday, the men gathered to the central village, whose people made great preparations for the entertainment of the people of the outskirts. What old Yankee, wherever he may have strayed, will not remember the 'townmeeting gingerbread. and the great roasts that smoked hospitably for all comers! The sheds of the meeting-house close by were crowded with horses and sighs for in the intermediate slush, between ice hive ne pong mud, the rummer was likely to be betthe viheri. The door of the town-hall grew smpling: not in England ; a full representation New England town-meetten. On a platform |