now that the earliest New England towns were founded by church congregations, led by their pastors, we can see how town government in New England originated.  It was simply the English parish government brought into a new country and adapted to the new situation.  Part of this new situation consisted in the fact that the lords of the manor were left behind.  There was no longer any occasion to distinguish between the township as a manor and the township as a parish; and so, as the three names had all lived on together, side by side, in England, it was now the oldest and most generally descriptive name, “township,” that survived, and has come into use throughout a great part of the United States.  The townsfolk went on making by-laws, voting supplies of public money, and electing their magistrates in America, after the fashion with which they had for ages been familiar in England.  Some of their offices and customs were of hoary antiquity.  If age gives respectability, the office of constable may vie with that of king; and if the annual town-meeting is usually held in the month of March, it is because in days of old, long before Magna Charta was thought of, the rules and regulations for the village husbandry were discussed and adopted in time for the spring planting.

[Sidenote:  Building up states.] To complete our sketch of the origin of the New England town, one point should here be briefly mentioned in anticipation of what will have to be said hereafter; but it is a point of so much importance that we need not mind a little repetition in stating it.

[Sidenote:  Representation.] We have seen what a great part taxation plays in the business of government, and we shall presently have to treat of county, state, and federal governments, all of them wider in their sphere than the town government.  In the course of history, as nations have gradually been built up, these wider governments have been apt to absorb or supplant and crush the narrower governments, such as the parish or township; and this process has too often been destructive to political freedom.  Such a result is, of course, disastrous to everybody; and if it were unavoidable, it would be better that great national governments need never be formed.  But it is not unavoidable.  There is one way of escaping it, and that is to give the little government of the town some real share in making up the great government of the state.  That is not an easy thing to do, as is shown by the fact that most peoples have failed in the attempt.  The people who speak the English language have been the most successful, and the device by which they have overcome the difficulty is REPRESENTATION.  The town sends to the wider government a delegation of persons who can represent the town and its people.  They can speak for the town, and have a voice in the framing of laws and imposition of taxes by the wider government.