[Sidenote:  Educational value of the town-meeting.] In the kind of discussion which it provokes, in the necessity of facing argument with argument and of keeping one’s temper under control, the town-meeting is the best political training school in existence.  Its educational value is far higher than that of the newspaper, which, in spite of its many merits as a diffuser of information, is very apt to do its best to bemuddle and sophisticate plain facts.  The period when town-meetings ware most important from the wide scope of their transactions was the period of earnest and sometimes stormy discussion that ushered in our Revolutionary war.  Country towns were then of more importance relatively than now; one country town—­Boston—­was at the same time a great political centre; and its meetings were presided over and addressed by men of commanding ability, among whom Samuel Adams, “the man of the town-meeting,” was foremost[3].  In those days great principles of government were discussed with a wealth of knowledge and stated with masterly skill in town-meeting.

[Footnote 3:  The phrase is Professor Hosmer’s:  see his Samuel Adams, the Man of the Town Meeting, in “Johns Hopkins Univ.  Studies,” vol.  II. no. iv.; also his Samuel Adams, in “American Statesmen” series; Boston, 1885.]

[Sidenote:  By-laws.] The town-meeting is to a very limited extent a legislative body; it can make sundry regulations for the management of its local affairs.  Such regulations are known by a very ancient name, “by-laws.” By is an Old Norse word meaning “town,” and it appears in the names of such towns as Derby and Whitby in the part of England overrun by the Danes in the ninth and tenth centuries.  By-laws are town laws[4].

[Footnote 4:  In modern usage the roles and regulations of clubs, learned societies, and other associations, are also called by-laws.]

[Sidenote:  Power and responsibility.] In the selectmen and various special officers the town has an executive department; and here let us observe that, while these officials are kept strictly accountable to the people, they are entrusted with very considerable authority.  Things are not so arranged that an officer can plead that he has failed in his duty from lack of power.  There is ample power, joined with complete responsibility.  This is especially to be noticed in the case of the selectmen.  They must often be called upon to exercise a wide discretion in what they do, yet this excites no serious popular distrust or jealousy.  The annual election affords an easy means of dropping an unsatisfactory officer.  But in practice nothing has been more common than for the same persons to be reelected as selectmen or constables or town-clerks for year after year, as long as they are able or willing to serve.  The notion that there is anything peculiarly American or democratic in what is known as “rotation in office” is therefore not sustained by the practice of the New England town, which is the most complete democracy in the world.  It is the most perfect exhibition of what President Lincoln called “government of the people by the people and for the people.”