ISS4.]
��TJie Nciv England Town-House.
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��followed, about the same time, selecting three men " for the ordering of puljlic affairs." Boston appears to have done the same thing in 1634, and Charles- town in the following year, the latter being the first to give the name Select- men to the persons so chosen, a name which soon was generally adopted and has since remained.
The reason of this action it is easy to conjecture, but it is fully stated in the order of the inhabitants of Charles- town at the meeting in which ihe action for the government of the town by selectmen was taken : " In considera- tion of the great trouble and charge of the inhabitants of Charlestown by reason of the frequent meeting of the townsmen in general, and that, by rea- son of many men meeting, things were not so easily brought into a joint issue ; it is therefore agreed, by the said towns- men, jointly, that these eleven men . . . shall entreat of all such business as shall concern the townsmen, the choice of officers excepted ; and what they or the greater part of them shall conclude of, the rest of the town willingly to sub- mit unto as their own proper act, and these eleven to continue in this employ- ment for one year next ensuing the date hereof."
Town government, thus instituted, was recognized the next year — 1636 — by the General Court, and thereafter the towns were corporations lawfully existing and endowed with certain fixed though limited powers.
The plantations of the Plymouth Colony followed the example. In 1637, Duxbury was incorporated, and at the General Court of the colony, in 1639, deputies were in attendance from seven towns.
" Thus," says Judge Parker,* " there
- Origin, Organization, etc., of the Towns of New
England.
��grew Up a system of government embracing two jurisdictions, adminis- tered by the same people ; the Colonial government, having jurisdiction over the whole colony, administered by the great body of the freemen, through officers elected and appointed by them ; and the town governments, having limited local jurisdiction, such as was conceded to them by the Colonial government, administered by the in- habitants, through officers and agents chosen by them."
By this change, — the invention of the colonists themselves without copy or pattern, — the colonies were trans- formed from pure democracies into a congeries of democratic republics ; and each town-house, or whatever build- ing was used for such, became the State-house of a little republic. And this is what it is in every New England town to-day.
Was not, then, the New England town-house a thing of inheritance at all? Yes, so far as it was a building for the common meeting of the inhab- itants of the town, and so far as it was a place for free discussion and the ordering of purely local affairs. The colonists came from their English homes already familiar with the town- hall and its uses so far. If one will turn to any gazetteer or encyclopaedia which gives a description of Liverpool, England, he will find the town-hall described as one of the noble edifices of that town. The present structure was opened in 1754, but it was the successor of others, the first of which must have dated back somewhere near the time when King John gave the town its charter — 1207. Or he may turn to the town of Hythe in the county of Kent. In its corporation records, it is said, is the following entry,
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