61
present compose the American Union, all present the same features as far as regards the external aspect of their institutions. Their political or administrative existence is centred in three foci of action, which may not inaptly be compared to the different nervous centres which convey motion to the human body. The township is the lowest in order, then the county, and lastly the state; and I propose to devote the following chapter to the examination of these three divisions.
THE AMERICAN SYSTEM OF TOWNSHIPS AND MUNICIPAL BODIES.[1]
Why the Author begins the Examination of the political Institutions with the Township.—Its existence in all Nations.—Difficulty of establishing and preserving Independence.—Its Importance.—Why the Author has selected the township System of New England as the main Object of his Inquiry.
It is not undesignedly that I begin this subject with the township. The village or township is the only association which is so perfectly natural, that wherever a number of men are collected, it seems to constitute itself.
The town, or tithing, as the smallest division of a community, must necessarily exist in all nations, whatever their laws and customs may be: if man makes monarchies, and establishes republics, the first association of mankind seems constituted by the hand of God. But although the existence of the township is coeval with
- ↑ [It is by this periphrasis that I attempt to render the French expressions “Commune” and “Systeme Communal.” I am not aware that any English word precisely corresponds to the general term of the original. In France every association of human dwellings forms a commune, and every commune is governed by a maire and a conseil municipal. In other words, the mancipium or municipal privilege, which belongs in England to chartered corporations alone, is alike extended to every commune into which the cantons and departments of France were divided at the revolution. Thence the different application of the expression, which is general in one country and restricted in the other. In America, the counties of the northern states are divided into townships, those of the southern into parishes; beside which, municipal bodies, bearing the name of corporations, exist in the cities. I shall apply these several expressions to render the term commune. The word “parish,” now commonly used in England, belongs exclusively to the ecclesiastical division; it denotes the limits over which a parson's (persona ecclesia or perhaps parochianus) rights extend.—Translator's Note.]
