the existence of the Supreme Being; a smaller number require a belief in God; while Tennessee insists on a belief in a future state of rewards and punishments. Idaho declares persons who are disfranchised, as bigamists or polygamists, ineligible to office, and also disqualified to sit as jurors. Formerly office-holding was limited by property qualifications. The only remaining vestiges of this usage are in Delaware, where a senator must be the owner of a free-hold of 200 acres of land, or a personal or real estate of not less than £1,000 value, and in Massachusets, where the governor must be seized of a free-hold, in his own right, within the Commonwealth, of the value of £1,000. CHAPTER VII. LOCAL GOVERNMENT. Attention has been drawn to the fact that the National Constitution and laws form but one-half of the American government, and that we must resort to the State constitutions and laws for the other half. But the State governments, properly so-called, by no means exercise all the remaining powers that are necessary to the peace and good order of society. A multitude of legislative and executive acts can be named that the General Assembly and the State Executive never touch. Besides, these are the very acts in which the average citizen is the most interested. The State constitutions and laws do indeed provide for their performance, but only in an indirect way. These facts bring us to the study of the most characteristic political ideas and institutions, not only of the United States, but also of the English-speaking race. To show this, as well as to explain the American government, we must glance at the origin of local government in England. (1) THE ORIGIN OF LOCAL GOVERNMENT IN ENGLAND. 711. THE TOWNSHIP.-The unit of political organization in England is the township. Its original must be sought in the village community and mark of Germany; the community being a social organization occupying the mark, as its home was called. The original bond was blood-relationship. "As they fought side by side on the field," says Mr. Green, "so they dwelt side by side on the soil. Harling abode by Har 1 ling, and Billing by Billing, and each 'wick' and 'ham' and 'stead' and 'ton' took its name from the kinsmen who dwelt in it. In this way, the house or 'ham' of the Billings was Billingham, and the town or township of the Harlings was Harlington. In the course of time, considerable changes were made in this primitive society. As a factor in the feudal system, it became the manor, subject to a lord; as a factor in the Church system, the parish, presided over by a priest. But with all these changes, it never ceased to be the primary unit of the English Constitution. Mr. Green thus describes the Saxon township government: "The life, the sovereignty, of the settlement was solely in the body of the freemen whose holdings lay round the moot-hill, or the sacred tree, where the community met from time to time to order its own industry and to make its own laws. Here new settlers were admitted to the freedom of the township, and by-laws framed and head-men and tithing-men chosen for its governors, plough-land and meadow-land were shared in due lot among all the villagers, and field and homestead passed from man to man by the delivery of a turf cut from its soil. Here strife of farmer with farmer was settled according to the customs of the township as its eldermen stated them, and four men were chosen to follow headman or elderman to hundred-court or war."? Here 712. THE HUNDRED.-In Saxon England, as in ancient Germany, the townships were incorporated into hundreds. The headman was the hundred-man, elder, or reeve. appeared the principle of representation, the germ of republican government. Says Mr. Green: "The four or ten villagers who followed the reeve of each township to the general muster of the hundred, were held to represent the whole body of the township from whence they came. Their voice was its voice, their doing its doing, their pledge its pledge. The hundred moot, a moot which was made by this gathering of the representatives of the town 1 The Making of England, 182. 2 Ibid. 187, 1889. ships that lay within its bounds, thus became at once a court of appeal from the moots of each separate village, as well as of arbitration in dispute between township and township." Although the hundred fell out of place in England, the name appears in the history of several of the American colonies. 713. THE SHIRE OR COUNTY.-This was an aggregation of hundreds. The head-man of the shire was styled at first the elderman or alderman. Afterwards the shire-reeve, or the sheriff, appeared, as the special representative of the king. The shire-moot was rather a judicial than a political body. Mr. Green thus describes the later form of the shire-moot: "The local knighthood, the yeomanry, the husbandmen of the county, were all represented in the crowd that gathered round the sheriff, as, guarded by his liveried followers, he published the king's writs, announced his demands of aids, received the presentment of criminals and the inquest of the local jurors, assessed the taxation of each district, or listened solemnly to appeals for justice, civil and criminal, from all who held themselves oppressed in the lesser courts of the hundred or the soke. . . In all cases of civil or criminal justice the twelve sworn assessors of the sheriff, as members of a class, though not formally deputed for that purpose, practically represented the judicial opinion of the county at large. From every hundred came groups of twelve sworn deputies, the jurors through whom the presentments of the district were made to the royal officer, and with whom the assessment of its share in the general taxation was arranged."1 714. THE KINGDOM OF ENGLAND. This consisted of the shires, and was formed by a process of aggregation. It was governed by the king and his council, originally called the Witenagemot, or the meeting of the wise men. This was a representative assembly, consisting of the king, the aldermen, the bishops, whose dioceses at first coincided with the counties, and the king's thegns, or the nobles whom he had created. In course of time, the king and the council separated more widely, 1 History of the English People, I., 14. the one becoming the law-executing and the other the lawmaking authority. At first, too, the king and the council decided certain judicial cases that arose; but later this function was entrusted exclusively to courts of law. 715. THE ENGLISH SYSTEM DEMOCRATIC.-Thus the government that the Saxons established in England was carried on in part by the freemen themselves, and in part by their representatives. The system was both democratic and republi can. Time wrought important changes, but the essential features of the Saxon constitution were never lost. We are now to explain how this system of local government, with minor changes necessitated by new conditions, was reproduced in the United States. 716. THE THREE TYPES.-The forty-four States present a considerable variety of local institutions. The elements are few and simple, but they are variously combined. Fortunately, omitting minor features of organization, all the States can be referred to three plainly marked types: The Town System, the County System, and the Mixed System. (2) THE TOWN SYSTEM. 717. THE PURITAN IDEAS. -The English Puritans desired to diminish the consequence of the higher clergy in church government, and to increase that of the local pastors and of the church membership. They also desired to add to the importance of the plain people in all matters of government. To carry out these ideas was the main object sought by the Puritans who came to New England. Furthermore, the first to come came as church societies accompanied by their favorite ministers, not as individuals. Moreover, they mainly belonged to the English middle class, which tended to foster a feeling of equality and to render society homogeneous. |