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before the county, the county before the State, the State before the Union.
In New England, townships were completely and definitively constituted as early as 1650. The independence of the township was the nucleus round which the local interests, passions, rights, and duties collected and clung. It gave scope to the activity of a real political life, most thoroughly democratic and republican. The colonies still recognised the supremacy of the mother-country; monarchy was still the law of the State; but the republic was already established in every township.
The towns named their own magistrates of every kind, rated themselves, and levied their own taxes[1]. In the parish of New England the law of representation was not adopted, but the affairs of the community were discussed, as at Athens, in the marketplace, by a general assembly of the citizens.
In studying the laws which were promulgated at this first era of the American republics, it is impossible not to be struck by the remarkable acquaintance with the science of government, and the advanced theory of legislation which they display. The ideas there formed of the duties of society towards its members are evidently much loftier and more comprehensive than those of the European legislators at that time: obligations were there imposed which were elsewhere slighted. In the States of New England, from the first, the condition of
- ↑ Code of 1650, p. 80.
