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 western
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?

11.  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?

Section 3. The Representative Township-County System in the
West.

[Sidenote:  The town-meeting in 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 westward extension of New England.[9] 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.

[Footnote 9:  “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]

[Sidenote:  Settlement of Illinois.] The history of Illinois presents an extremely interesting example of rivalry and conflict between the town system of New England and the county system of the South.  Observe that this 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