be a soil upon which princely fortunes have grown. A tract of forty acres represents to-day in Chicago or Minneapolis an amount of wealth difficult for the imagination to grasp. The reserva lic schools. But in each of these townships there was at least one section which was set apart for a special purpose. This was usually the sixteenth section, nearly in the centre of the township; and sometimes the tion for pub- thirty-sixth section, in the southeast corner, was also reserved. These reservations were for the support of public schools. Whatever money was earned, by selling the land or otherwise, in these sections, was to be devoted to school purposes. This was a most remarkable provision. No other nation has ever made a gift for schools on so magnificent a scale. We have good reason for taking pride in such a liberal provision. But we ought not to forget that all national gifts really involve taxation, and this is no exception to the rule, although in this case it is not a taking of money, but a keeping of it back. The national government says to the local government, whatever revenues may come from that section of 640 acres, be they great or small, be it a spot in a rural grazing district, or a spot in some crowded city, are not to go into the pockets of individual men and women, but are to be reserved for public purposes. This is a case of disguised taxation, and may serve to remind us of what was said some time ago, that a government cannot give anything without in one way or another depriving individuals of its equivalent. No man can sit on a camp-stool and by any amount of tugging at that camp-stool lift himself over a fence. Whatever is given comes from somewhere, and what ever is given by governments comes from the people. This reservation of one square mile in every town In this reservation there were the township ship for purposes of education has already most profoundly influenced the development of local government in our western states, and in the near future its effects are likely to become germs of still deeper and wider. To mark out a town- government. ship on the map may mean very little, but when once you create in that township some institution that needs to be cared for, you have made a long stride toward inaugurating township government. When a state, as for instance Illinois, grows up after the method just described, what can be more natural than for it to make the township a body corporate for school purposes, and to authorize its inhabitants to elect school officers and tax themselves, so far as may be necessary, for the support of the schools? But the school-house, in the centre of the township, is soon found to be useful for many purposes. It is convenient to go there to vote for state officers or for congressmen and president, and so the school township becomes an election district. Having once established such a centre, it is almost inevitable that it should sooner or later be made to serve sundry other purposes, and become an area for the election of con stables, justices of the peace, highway surveyors, and overseers of the poor. In this way a vigorous township government tends to grow up about the schoolhouse as a nucleus, somewhat as in early New England it grew up about the church. This tendency may be observed in almost all the western states and territories, even to the Pacific coast. When the western country was first settled, representative county government prevailed almost At first the everywhere. This was partly because the county sysearliest settlers of the West came in much greater numbers from the middle and southern states tem prevailed. than from New England. It was also partly because, so long as the country was thinly settled, the number of people in a township was very small, and it was not easy to have a government smaller than that of the county. It was something, however, that the little squares on the map, by grouping which the counties were made, were already called townships. There is much in a name. It was still more important that these townships were only six miles square; for that made it sure that, in due course of time, when population should have become dense enough, they would be convenient areas for establishing township govern ment. QUESTIONS ON THE TEXT. 1. What feature is conspicuous in the westward movement of population in the United States ? 2. What looseness characterized early surveys in Kentucky? 3. What led to the passage of the land ordinance of 1785 ? 4. Give the leading features of the government survey of west ern lands: a. The principal meridians. b. The range lines. c. The base lines. d. The township lines. 5. Illustrate the application of the system in the case of a town. 6. Contrast in shape western townships and counties with corresponding divisions in Massachusetts and Virginia. 7. Contrast them in convenience and in picturesqueness. 8. What had the convenience of the government system to do with the settlement of the West? 9. What were the divisions of the township, and what disposition was made of them? 10. What important reservations were made in the townships? II. Show how these reservations involved a kind of taxation. 12. What profound influence has the reservation for schools exerted upon local government? 13. Why did the county system prevail at first? § 3. The Representative Township-County System in the West. The town Michigan. The first western state to adopt the town-meeting was Michigan, where the great majority of the settlers had come from New England, or from central New York, which was a kind of west- meeting in ward extension of New England.1 Counties were established in Michigan Territory in 1805, and townships were first incorporated in 1825. This was twelve years before Michigan became a state. At first the powers of the town-meeting were narrowly limited. It elected the town and county officers, but its power of appropriating money seems to have been restricted to the purpose of extirpating noxious animals and weeds. In 1827, however, it was authorized to raise money for the support of schools, and since then its powers have steadily increased, until now they approach those of the town-meeting in Massachusetts. The history of Illinois presents an extremely interesting example of rivalry and conflict between the town system of New England and the county Settlement system of the South. Observe that this of Illinois. great state is so long that, while the parallel of latitude starting from its northern boundary runs through Marblehead in Massachusetts, the parallel through its southernmost point, at Cairo, runs a little south of Petersburg in Virginia. In 1818, when Illinois framed its state government and was admitted to the Union, its population was chiefly in the southern half, 1 "Of the 496 members of the Michigan Pioneer Association in 1881, 407 are from these sections" [New England and New York]. Bemis, Local Government in Michigan and the Northwest, J. H. U. Studies, I., v. and composed for the most part of pioneers from Virginia and Virginia's daughter-state Kentucky. These men brought with them the old Virginia county system, but with the very great difference that the county officers were not appointed by the governor, or allowed to be a self-perpetuating board, but were elected by the people of the county. This was a true advance in the democratic direction, but an essential defect of the southern system remained in the absence of any kind of local meeting for the discussion of public affairs and the enactment of local laws. Effects of the Ordinance of 1787. By the famous Ordinance of 1787, to which we shall again have occasion to refer, negro slavery had been forever prohibited to the north of the Ohio river, so that, in spite of the wishes of her early settlers, Illinois was obliged to enter the Union as a free state. But in 1820 Missouri was admitted as a slave state, and this turned the stream of southern migration aside from Illinois to Missouri. These emigrants, to whom slaveholding was a mark of social distinction, preferred to go where they could own slaves. About the same time settlers from New England and New York, moving along the southern border of Michigan and the northern borders of Ohio and Indiana, began pouring into the northern part of Illinois. These new-comers did not find the representative county system adequate for their needs, and they demanded township government. A memorable political struggle ensued between the northern and southern halves of the state, ending in 1848 with the adoption of a new constitution. It was provided "that the legislature should enact a general law for the political organization of townships, under which any county might act whenever a majority of its voters should so determine." 1 This was introducing the 1 Shaw, Local Government in Illinois, J. H. U. Studies, I., iii. |