The New Student's Reference Work/Government

Gov′ernment, a term that may be broadly used to indicate any kind of system for the regulation of conduct, in most cases refers to state, county, township or city control over the conduct of citizens. According to Aristotle and the Greek tradition, there should be three kinds of government. It may be monarchic, resting in the hands of one individual. It may be aristocratic, and rest in the hands of the few. Or again, it may lie in the power of the many or be democratic. But modern governments are not so simple. England, for instance, is a monarchy; yet England is governed by the many. A more valuable classification of governments arises out of the distinction between the power and duty of making laws and the power and duty of carrying them out. The former is the office of the legislature, the latter of the executive. In presidential systems, like that of the United States, these are somewhat independent of one another. Both rest equally upon the sovereign state or nation. But in parliamentary systems, like that of Great Britain, the executive depends upon the body that legislates; and its members resign their offices the moment that the majority in parliament may have turned against them. It is doubtful which plan is the better.

Within the government of the state there is need of a complex system of local government to meet the needs of cities and of the smaller divisions of the country. Local governments, as in Russia, often grow up without reference to the central government. But except in the case of federations, such as the United States, Germany, Australia and Canada, the local governments have only such powers as the central government grants or permits them. The states of a federation, however, share in the supreme powers of government. In some cases, such as the United States and Australia, they retain all powers which the constitution does not specifically vest in the central government. In the Canadian type of federation, on the contrary, the powers of the states are enumerated, and all else falls within the dominion of the federal government.

State government in the United States is provided for according to Article X of the amendments to the constitution, which declares that “the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited to it by the States, are reserved to the States respectively or to the people.” The states may even decide upon their own laws and mode of government, provided only that it be republican. Within recent years almost every state has made some amendment to its own form of government. Upon the whole, in this process the state governors have gained, the state legislatures lost, power.

County government is created by the will of the legislature. In the United States there are nearly 7,000 counties, which are for the most part electoral districts. Each county has its court and often its asylum and its prison. Counties generally include several towns; but New York City reverses this system, and includes four counties.

Township government is most characteristic of New England, where it has grown up as a local institution from the time of the earliest settlements. In New England, then, the township practically takes the place of the county as the local unit. Indeed, in Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin and other states the township system has been attempted, in imitation of New England, but with no very great success. A New England township votes money yearly for the poor, the schools, the township officers, the roads, bridges and other local needs which in most states fall wholly or in part to the care of the county.

City government is, like the government of counties, dependent upon the will of the state legislature. Many cities hold their own individual charters by special enactment of the state legislature. Others govern themselves according to state enactments of a more general character, covering all cities of a given class. Sometimes the legislature provides that the charters are to be subject to the approval of a vote of the people. Because of the great wealth of the cities, there is apt to be more danger of corruption in city government than in other forms; but there is no doubt that nothing save a special municipal government is fitted to cope with the great and peculiar problems of city life.

School districts are divisions of the township, which were greatly in vogue in New England between 1800 and 1850. Indeed, the school district, in which the governing body is simply the assembly of householders or parents, is still the unit of school government in some states. Thus about half of the towns of Connecticut preserve a district system. The district government of the schools has the advantage of an extreme democracy; but the disadvantages of smallness and isolation. In Connecticut since 1866 the school districts may be consolidated by a vote of the town. It was part of the work of Horace Mann to show the deficiencies and weakness of the district system which arise from its extreme decentralization.