England lose their self-government.  “The encroachments of the lord,” as Sir Henry Maine observes, “were in proportion to the want of certainty in the rights of the community.”  The lord’s proprietorship gave him no authority to disturb customary rights.  The old township-assembly partially survived in the Court Baron, Court Leet, and Customary Court of the Manor; and in these courts the arrangements for the common husbandry were determined.

This metamorphosis of the township into the manor, however, was but partial:  along with it went the partial metamorphosis of the township into the parish, or district assigned to a priest.  Professor Stubbs has pointed out that “the boundaries of the parish and the township or townships with which it coincides are generally the same:  in small parishes the idea and even the name of township is frequently, at the present day, sunk in that of the parish; and all the business that is not manorial is despatched in vestry-meetings, which are however primarily meetings of the township for church purposes.” [7] The parish officers, including overseers of the poor, assessors, and way-wardens, are still elected in vestry-meeting by the freemen of the township.  And while the jurisdiction of the manorial courts has been defined by charter, or by the customary law existing at the time of the manorial grant, “all matters arising outside that jurisdiction come under the management of the vestry.”

In England, therefore, the free village-community, though perhaps nowhere found in its primitive integrity, has nevertheless survived in partially transfigured forms which have played no unimportant part in the history of the English people.  In one shape or another the assembly of freemen for purposes of local legislation has always existed.  The Puritans who colonized New England, therefore, did not invent the town-meeting.  They were familiar already with the proceedings of the vestry-meeting and the manorial courts, but they were severed now from church and from aristocracy.  So they had but to discard the ecclesiastical and lordly terminology, with such limitations as they involved, and to reintegrate the separate jurisdictions into one,—­and forthwith the old assembly of the township, founded in immemorial tradition, but revivified by new thoughts and purposes gained through ages of political training, emerged into fresh life and entered upon a more glorious career.

It is not to an audience which speaks the English language that I need to argue the point that the preservation of local self-government is of the highest importance for the maintenance of a rich and powerful national life.  As we contemplate the vicissitudes of local self-government in the various portions of the Aryan world, we see the contrasted fortunes of France and England illustrating for us most forcibly the significance of this truth.  For the preservation of local self-government in England various causes may be assigned;