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sionally borrows the forms of judicial procedure, it is only with a view to its own information,[1] or as a guarantee to the community over which it presides. But when the administration of the township is brought before it, it almost always acts as a judicial body, and in some few cases as an administrative assembly.
The first difficulty is to procure the obedience of an authority so entirely independent of the general laws of the state as the township is. We have stated that assessors are annually named by the town-meetings, to levy the taxes. If a township attempts to evade the payment of the taxes by neglecting to name its assessors, the court of sessions condemns it to a heavy penalty.[2] The fine is levied on each of the inhabitants; and the sheriff of the county, who is an officer of justice, executes the mandate. Thus it is that in the United States the authority of the government is mysteriously concealed under the forms of a judicial sentence; and its influence is at the same time fortified by that irresistible power with which men have invested the formalities of law.
These proceedings are easy to follow, and to understand. The demands made upon a township are in general plain and accurately defined; they consist in a simple fact without any complication, or in a principle without its application in detail.[3] But the difficulty increases when it is not the obedience of the township, but that of the town officers, which is to be enforced. All the reprehensible actions of which a public functionary may be guilty are reducible to the following heads:—
He may execute the law without energy or zeal;
He may neglect to execute the law;
He may do what the law enjoins him not to do.
The last tvo violations of duty can alone come under the cognizance of a tribunal; a positive and appreciable fact is the indispen-
- ↑ Thus, when a road is under consideration, almost all difficulties are disposed of by the aid of the jury.
- ↑ See the act of 20th February, 1786; laws of Massachusetts, vol. i., p. 217.
- ↑ There is an indirect method of enforcing the obedience of a township. Suppose that the funds which the law demands for the maintenance of the roads have not been voted; the town-surveyor is then authorized, ex officio, to levy the supplies. As he is personally responsible to private individuals for the state of the roads, and indictable before the court of sessions, he is sure to employ the extraordinary right which the law gives him against the township. Thus by threatening the officer, the court of sessions exacts compliance from the town. See the act of 5th March, 1787; laws of Massachusetts, vol i., p. 305.
