CHAPTER IV. TOWNSHIP AND COUNTY. § 1. Various Local Systems. We have now completed our outline sketch of town and county government as illustrated in New England on the one hand and in Virginia on the other. There are some important points in the early history of local government in other portions of the original thirteen states, to which we must next call attention; and then we shall be prepared to understand the manner in which our great western country has been organized under civil government. We must first say something about South Carolina and Maryland. Parishes Carolina. South Carolina was settled from half a century to a century later than Massachusetts and Virginia, and by two distinct streams of immi- in South gration. The lowlands near the coast were settled by Englishmen and by French Huguenots, but the form of government was purely English. There were parishes, as in Virginia, but popular election played a greater part in them. The vestrymen were elected yearly by all the taxpayers of the parish. The minister was also elected by his people, and after 1719 each parish sent its representatives to the colonial legislature, though in a few instances two parishes were joined together for the purpose of choosing representatives. The system was thus more demo cratic than in Virginia; and in this connection it is worth while to observe that parochial libraries and free schools were established as early as 1712, much earlier than in Virginia. The back During the first half of the eighteenth century a very different stream of immigration, coming mostly along the slope of the Alleghanies from Virginia and Pennsylvania, and consisting in great part of Germans, Scotch Highlanders, and Scotch-Irish, peopled the upland western regions of South Carolina. For some time this territory had scarcely any civil organization. It was a kind of "wild West." There were as yet no counties in the colony. There was just one sheriff for the whole colony, who “held his country. office by patent-from the crown." 1 A court sat in Charleston, but the arm of justice was hardly long enough to reach offenders in the mountains. "To punish a horse-thief or prosecute a debtor one was sometimes compelled to travel a distance of several hundred miles, and be subjected to all the dangers and delays incident to a wild country." When people cannot get justice in what in civilized countries is the regular way, they will get it in some irregular way. So these mountaineers began to form themselves into bands known as "regulators," quite like the "vigilance committees" formed for the same purposes in California a hundred years later. For thieves and murderers the "regulators" provided a speedy trial, and the nearest tree served as a gallows. In order to put a stop to this lynch law, the legislature in 1768 divided the back country into districts, each with its sheriff and court-house, and the judges were sent on circuit through these districts. The upland region with its dis The district sys tem. 1 B. J. Ramage, in Johns Hopkins Univ. Studies, I., xii. tricts was thus very differently organized from the lowland region with its parishes, and the effect was for a while almost like dividing South Carolina into two states. At first the districts were not allowed to choose their own sheriffs, but in course of time they acquired this privilege. It was difficult to apportion the representation in the state legislature so as to balance evenly the districts in the west against the parishes in the east, and accordingly there was much dissatisfaction, especially in the west which did not get its fair share. In 1786 the capital was moved from Charleston to Columbia as a concession to the back country, and in 1808 a kind of compromise was effected, in such wise that the uplands secured a permanent majority in the house of representatives, while the lowlands retained control of the senate. The two sections had each its separate state treasurer, and this kind of double government lasted until the Civil War. The mod Carolina At the close of the war" the parishes were abolished and the district system was extended to the low country." But soon afterward, by the new constitution of 1868, the districts were abol- ern South ished and the state was divided into 34 counties, each of which sends one senator to the state senate, while they send representatives in proportion to their population. In each county the people elect three county commissioners, a school commissioner, a sheriff, a judge of probate, a clerk, and a coroner. In one respect the South Carolina county is quite peculiar it has no organization for judicial purposes. "The counties, like their institutional predecessor the district, are grouped into judicial circuits, and a judge is elected by the legislature for each circuit. Trial justices are appointed by the governor for a term of two years." This system, like the simple county system everywhere, is a representative system; the people take no direct part in the management of affairs. In one respect it seems obviously to need amendment. In states where county government has grown up naturally, after the Virginia fashion, the county is apt to be much smaller than in states where it is simply a district embracing several township governments. Thus the average size of a county in Massachusetts is 557 square miles, and in Connecticut 594 square miles; but in Virginia it is only 383 and in Kentucky 307 square miles. In South Carolina, however, where the county did not grow up of itself, but has been enacted, so to speak, by a kind of afterthought, it has been made too large altogether. The average area of the county in South Carolina is about 1,000 square miles. Some counties are much larger. Colleton county in 1890 could hold the whole state of Rhode Island, with 600 square miles spare. Such an area is much too extensive for local self-government. Its different portions are too far apart to understand each other's local wants, or to act efficiently toward supplying them; and roads, bridges, and free schools suffer accordingly. An unsuccessful attempt has been made to reduce the size of the counties. But what seems perhaps more likely to happen is the practical division of the counties into school districts, and the gradual development of these school districts into something like self-governing townships. To this very interesting point we shall again have occasion to refer. The counties are too large. to We come now to Maryland. The early history of local institutions in this state is a fascinating subject of study. None of the American colonies had a more distinctive character of its own, or reproduced old English usages in a more curious fashion. There was much in colonial Maryland, with its lords of the manor, its bailiffs and seneschals, its courts baron and courts leet, to remind one of the England of the thirteenth century. But of these ancient institutions, long since extinct, there is but one that needs to be mentioned in the present connection. In Maryland the earliest form of civil community was called, not a parish or township, but a hundred. This The hundred curious designation is often met with in in Maryland. English history, and the institution which it describes, though now almost everywhere extinct, was once almost universal among men. It will be remembered that the oldest form of civil society, which is still to be found among some barbarous races, was that in which families were organized into clans and clans into tribes; and we saw that among our forefathers in England the dwelling-place of the clan became the township, and the home of the tribe became the shire or county. Now, in nearly all primitive societies that have been studied, we find a group that is larger than the clan but smaller than the tribe, or, in other words, intermediate between clan and tribe. Scholars usually call this group by its Greek name, phratry, or "brotherhood," for it was known erhoods, and long ago that in ancient Greece clans were grouped into brotherhoods and brotherhoods into tribes. Among uncivilized people all over the world we find this kind of grouping. For example, a tribe of North American Indians is regularly made up of phratries, and the phratries are made up of clans; and, strange as it might at first seem, a good many half-understood features of early Greek and Roman society have had much light thrown upon them from the study of the usages of Cherokees and Mohawks. Clans, broth tribes. |