over these minor communities exceeding those allowed by Michigan or Illinois. I must not omit to remark that where any local area is not governed by a primary assembly of all its citizens, as in those States where there is no town-meeting, and in all States in respect to counties, a method is frequently provided for taking the judgment of the citizens of the local area, be it township or county, by popular vote at the polls upon a specific question, usually the borrowing of money or the levying of a rate beyond the regular amount. This is an extension to local divisions of the so-called "plebiscitary" or referendum method, whose application to State legislation has been discussed in a preceding chapter. It seems to work well, for by providing an exceptional method of meeting exceptional cases, it enables the ordinary powers of executive officials, whether in township or county, to be kept within narrow limits. Want of space has compelled me to omit from this sketch many details which might interest European students of local government, nor can I attempt to indicate the relations of the rural areas, townships, and counties, to the incorporated villages and cities which lie within their compass further than by observing that cities, even the smaller ones, are usually separated from the townships, that is to say, the township government is superseded by the city government, while cities of all grades remain members of the counties, bear their share in county taxation, and join in county elections. Often, however, the constitution of a State contains special provisions to meet the case of a city so large as practically to overshadow or absorb the county, as Chicago does the county of Cook, and Cincinnati the county of Hamilton, and sometimes the city is made a county by itself. CHAPTER XLIX OBSERVATIONS ON LOCAL GOVERNMENT It may serve to clear up a necessarily intricate description if I add here a few general remarks applicable to all, or nearly all, of the various systems of local government that prevail in the several States of the Union. I. Following American authorities, I have treated the New England type or system as a distinct one, and referred the North-western States to the mixed type. But the European reader may perhaps figure the three systems most vividly to his mind if he will divide the Union into three zones Northern, Middle, and Southern. In the northern, which, beginning at the Bay of Fundy, stretches west to Puget Sound, he will find a primary assembly, the Town or township meeting, in preponderant activity as the unit of local government. In the middle zone, stretching from New York to California, inclusive, along the fortieth parallel of latitude, he will find the township dividing with the county the interests and energy of the people. In some States of this zone the county is the more important organism and dwarfs the township; in some the township seems to be gaining on the county; but all are alike in this, that you cannot lose sight for a moment of either the smaller or the larger area, and that both areas are governed by elected executive officers. The third zone includes all the southern States; in which the county is the predominant organism, though here and there school districts and even townships are growing in significance. II. Both county and township are, like nearly everything else in America, English institutions which have suffered a sea change. "The Southern county is an attenuated English shire with the towns left out." 1 The Northern township is an English seventeenth-century parish, in which age the English parish was still 1 Professor Macy, Our Government, an admirable elementary sketch, for school use, of the structure and functions of the Federal and State governments. in full working order as a civil no less than an ecclesiastical organization, holding common property, and often co-extensive with a town. The town-meeting is partly perhaps the manor court, partly the English vestry; the selectmen correspond in a way to the churchwardens, or select vestrymen, called back by the conditions of colonial life into an activity fuller than they exerted in England even in the seventeenth century, and far fuller than they retained in the nineteenth. In England local self-government, except as regards the poor law, tended to decay in the smaller (i.e. parish or township) areas; the greater part of such administration as these latter needed, fell either to the justices in petty sessions or to officials appointed by the county or by the central government, until the legislation of the present century began to create new and larger districts, especially poor law and sanitary districts, for local administration. In the wider English area, the county, true self-government died out with the ancient Shire Moot, and fell into the hands of persons (the justices assembled in Quarter Sessions) nominated by the Crown, on the recommendation of the lord-lieutenant. It was only in 1888 that a system of elective councils was created by statute, only in 1894 that primary parish meetings were created in the less populous local areas, parish councils in those somewhat larger. In the American colonies the governor filled the place which the Crown held in England; but even in colonial days there was a tendency to substitute popular election for gubernatorial nomination; and county government, obeying the universal impulse, is now everywhere democratic in form; though in the South, 1 Few things in English history are better worth studying, or have exercised a more pervading influence on the progress of events, than the practical disappearance from rural England of that Commune or Gemeinde which remained so potent a factor in the economic and social as well as the political life of France and Italy, of Germany (including Germanic Austria) and of Switzerland. If Englishmen were half as active in the study of their own local institutions as Americans have begun to be in that of theirs, we should have had a copious literature upon this interesting subject. In England the primary meeting died out in the form of the parish vestry, but in 1894 a system of Parish meetings and Councils was created by statute and the primary meeting thereby restored in a new form to meet the now more democratic conditions of the country. See Chapter XXXIX., ante. 2 However, the parish constables and way-wardens in some places continued to be elected by popular vote; and the manor courts and courts leet (still surviving in places) were semi-popular institutions. In counties the coroner continued to be elected by the freeholders, but in A.D. 1888 the appointment was transferred by statute to the newly-created county councils. while slavery and the plantation system lasted, it was practically aristocratic in its spirit and working. III. In England the control of the central government that is, of Parliament is now maintained not only by statutes defining the duties and limiting the powers of the various local bodies, but also by the powers vested in sundry departments of the executive, the Local Government Board, Home Office, and Treasury, of disallowing certain acts of these bodies, and especially of supervising their expenditure and checking theirborrowing. In American States the executive departments have no similar functions. The local authorities are restrained partly by the State legislature, whose statutes of course bind them, but still more effectively, because legislatures are not always to be trusted, by the State Constitutions. These instruments usually the more recent ones I think invariably contain provisions limiting the amount which a county, township, village, school district, or other local area may borrow, and often also the amount of tax it may levy, by reference to the valuation of the property contained within its limits. They have been found valuable in checking the growth of local indebtedness, which had become, even in rural districts, a serious danger. local debt (less sinking fund) was in 1902: Counties School districts Total The total $196,564,619 $242,752,634 This sum bears a comparatively small proportion to the total debt of the several States and of the cities, which was then : $ 234,908,837 Cities, villages, townships, precincts, etc. $1,387,316,976 County and school district debts declined eight per cent between 1870 and 1880, whereas city indebtedness was then rapidly increasing. Since 1880 all three have risen, though slowly, 1 See also Chapter XLIII. on "State Finance." These provisions are of course applied to cities also, which need them even more. They vary very much in their details, and in some cases a special popular vote is allowed to extend the limit. In New York State, for instance, no county or city can incur a debt bringing its total indebtedness up to more than ten per cent of the assessed valuation of its real estate, and its taxation, beyond what is required to pay interest on the debt, shall not exceed two per cent of the assessed valuation of its real and personal estate. except the school district debt, which grew fast. The aggregate debt of counties and minor civil divisions (including cities) wes in 1902 $1,630,069,610, being $20.74 per capita, a large rise from 1890, when it was $14.79 per capita. IV. County and township or school district taxes are direct taxes, there being no octroi in America, and are collected along with State taxes in the smallest tax-gathering area, i.e. the township, where townships exist. Local rates are not, however, as in England, levied on immovable property only, but also on personal property, or rather upon so much of it as the assessors can reach. Lands and houses are often assessed far below their true value, because the township assessors have an interest in diminishing the share of the county tax which will fall upon their township similar to the interest of the county assessors in diminishing the share of the State tax to be borne by their county.2 Real property is taxed in the place where it is situate; personalty only in the place where the owner resides. But the suffrage, in local as well as in State and National elections, is irrespective of property. It goes with residence, and no citizen can vote in more than one place. A man may have a dozen houses or farms in as many cities, counties, or townships: he will vote, even for local purposes, only in the spot where he is held to reside. The great bulk of local expenditure is borne by local taxes. But in some States a portion of the county taxes is allotted to the aid of school districts, so as to make the wealthier districts relieve the burden of the poorer, and often a similar subvention is made from State rever ues. The public schools, which are everywhere and in all grades gratuitous, absorb a considerable part of the whole revenue locally raised, and in addition to what taxation provides they receive a large revenue from the lands which, under Federal or State legislation, have been set apart for educational purposes. On the whole, the burden of 5 1 Sometimes, however, they are paid at the county seat. 2 As to this and the Boards of Equalization see Chapter XLIII., ante. 3 Of course what is really the same property may be taxed in more than one place; e.g. a mining company may be taxed as a company in Montana, and the shares held by individual proprietors be possibly also taxed in the several States in which these shareholders reside. The total expenditure on public schools in the United States is stated by the United States Commissioner of Education in his annual report for 1910 as being, in 1909, $401,397,747. 5 Students of economic science will hear without surprise that in some of |