[Footnote 11:  Howard, Local Const.  Hist., passim.]

[Footnote 12:  Bemis, Local Government in Michigan, J. H. U. Studies, I., v.]

[Sidenote:  An excellent result of the absence of centralization in the United States.] It is one signal merit of the peaceful and untrammelled way in which American institutions have grown up, the widest possible scope being allowed to individual and local preferences, that different states adopt different methods of attaining the great end at which all are aiming in common,—­good government.  One part of our vast country can profit by the experience of other parts, and if any system or method thus comes to prevail everywhere in the long run, it is likely to be by reason of its intrinsic excellence.  Our country affords an admirable field for the study of the general principles which lie at the foundations of universal history.  Governments, large and small, are growing up all about us, and in such wise that we can watch the processes of growth, and learn lessons which, after making due allowances for difference of circumstance, are very helpful in the study of other times and countries.

The general tendency toward the spread of township government in the more recently settled parts of the United States is unmistakable, and I have already remarked upon the influence of the public school system in aiding this tendency.  The school district, as a preparation for the self-governing township, is already exerting its influence in Colorado, Nevada, California, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington.

[Sidenote:  Township government is germinating in the South.] Something similar is going on in the southern states, as already hinted in the case of South Carolina.  Local taxation for school purposes has also been established in Kentucky and Tennessee, in both Virginias, and elsewhere.  There has thus begun a most natural and wholesome movement, which might easily be checked, with disastrous results, by the injudicious appropriation of national revenue for the aid of southern schools.  It is to be hoped that throughout the southern, states, as formerly in Michigan, the self-governing school district may prepare the way for the self-governing township, with its deliberative town-meeting.  Such a growth must needs be slow, inasmuch as it requires long political training on the part of the negroes and the lower classes of white people; but it is along such a line of development that such political training can best be acquired; and in no other way is complete harmony between the two races so likely to be secured.