Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1891-04-11
TOWN GOVERNMENT.
A LETTER TO YOUNG CITIZENS BY AN
ILLUsTRI0Us AUTHOR.

New England's Famous Institution and Its
Primitive German Origin-An Excellent
Training for Orators and Debaters In
Embryo-Benefits of the Town Meeting.
WRITTEN FOR THE DIsPATcH.l
John Adams is the author of the much
cited statement that American government
rests on four corner stones-the town meet
Ing. the church, the militia and tine school.
The statements philosophical and sugges-
tive. 1t should always be cited, particularly
by writers in Europe, with distinct under
standing of what we mean by the words
town, church, militia and school.
For a New England town-and it was OF
this that John Adams spoke-is not town
in the English sense. A New England
church is not an English church. The New
England militia is not the English militia.
aud the New England school is not the
English school.
The American Town Defined.
The difference rests in this-that in each
of the four cases, the New England corner
stone" represents all the people, good, bad
and indifferent. rich and poor, wise and
foolish. In England, or on the continent of
Europe, each represents one or more classes,
but not all. For instance, the English
militia is not an assemblage of all the
people in given district able to bear arms
And if we speak of an English town, we
mean, not all the people OF q certain dis
trict, but all the people who live iu houses
contiguous to each other.
The younger American writers of our own
time have been occupying themselves with
the historical question, whether in New
England the government of the State made
the towns, or whether the towns made the
State. | believe it is thought that De
TocqueYllle overstated the autocracy of the
town meeting, and that. historically, as
each modern town has derived its power to
be from the State, it has had doled out BY
the State such power to act as it has used.
l doubt. however, whether any of the
founders of towns in Massachusetts in the
seventeenth century or in the eighteenth,
would have taken much interest In such a
discussion And they would have been
amused, but not much edited, if they had
been told that the germ of their town meet
ings was to be found in German forests or in
the institutions of Alfred.
The Primeval German Origin.
Whoever reads their chronicles will find
a great deal of what their successors call
horse sense. Involving ability to deal with
practical problems. But he will find very
little analysis by themselves of the origin
of their powers.
Certain things were to be done. They
were there to do them. Their united power
represented the maximum of power for the
doing of those things. Nobody else would
help theni-no king, no parliament, no gen.
eral court. If they did not build the
bridge, make the road, or hire the school
master or the clergyman, buy the musket
or the match, nobody else would do it.
Accordingly, whether the general court
told them they might do these things or not,
they did them, if they could and wanted to.
If they did not they did not. And In gen.
eral this has been the rule till very recent
times. For instance, the city of Boston
wanted to open free baths, and it opened
them without asking leave of anybody. If
the boys need an unmolested coast on the
Common, the city builds bridges over the
coast, and asks no leave of any one. And