It was Jefferson, himself a Virginian, reared in the midst of another system, aristocratical and central in its character, who said:  “These wards, called townships in New England, are the vital principle of their governments, and have proved themselves the wisest invention ever devised by the wit of man for the perfect exercise of self-government and for its preservation.”

The New England town-house, therefore, is significant of more than its predecessor in England or Germany.  While with them it means freedom in the management of local affairs, beyond them it means a relation to the State and the National government which they did not.  It means not merely a broad basis for the general government in the people, that the people are the reason and remote source of governing power, but that they are themselves the governors.  Every man who enters a New England town-house and casts his vote knows that that expression of his will is a force which reaches, or may reach, the Legislature of his State, the governor in his chair, the National Congress, and the President in the White House at Washington.  He feels an interest therefore, and a responsibility which the voter in no other land in the world feels, and the town-house is an education to him in the art of self-government which no other country affords, and because of it the town is an institution teaching how to maintain government, local, state, and general, and so bases that government in self-interest and beneficial experience, that it is a pledge of security and perpetuity as regards socialism, communism, and as it would seem every other revolutionary influence from within.  It is in strong contrast with the commune of France.  France is divided for the purposes of local government into departments; departments into arrondissements; and arrondissements into communes, the commune being the administrative unit.  The department is governed by a prefet and a conseil-general, the prefet being appointed by the central government and directly under its control, and the conseil-general an elective body.  The arrondissement is presided over by a sous-prefet and an elective council.  The commune is governed by a maire and a conseil-municipal.

The conseil-municipal is an elective body, but its duties “consist in assisting and to some extent controlling the maire, and in the management of the communal affairs,” but the maire is appointed by the central government and is liable to suspension by the prefet.

The relation of the citizen to the general government in France is therefore totally different from that of the citizen of the United States to his general government, and the town organization is a school of free citizenship which the commune is not, and so far republican institutions in America have a guaranty which in France they have not.

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Bunker hill.

By Henry B. Carrington, U.S.A., LL.D.