Civil Government in the United States Considered with by John Fiske

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CIVIL GOVERNMENT
IN THE UNITED STATES
CONSIDERED WITH SOME REFERENCE
TO ITS ORIGINS

BY

JOHN FISKE

[Greek: Aissomai pai Zaevos Heleutheroiu,
Imeran eurnsthene amphipolei, Soteira Tucha
tiv gar en ponto kubernontai thoai
naes, en cherso te laipsaeroi polemoi
kagorai boulaphoroi.]

PINDAR, _Olymp_. xii.

Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State!
Sail on, O Union, strong and great!...
Our hearts, our hopes, are all with thee.
Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears,
Our faith triumphant o'er our fears,
Are all with thee,--are all with thee!

LONGFELLOW.

1890

BY JOHN FISKE.

_Dedication_

This little book is dedicated, with the author's best wishes and
sincere regard, to the many hundreds of young friends whom he has
found it so pleasant to meet in years past, and also to those whom he
looks forward to meeting in years to come, in studies and readings
upon the rich and fruitful history of our beloved country.

PREFACE.

Some time ago, my friends, Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., requested
me to write a small book on Civil Government in the United States,
which might be useful as a text-book, and at the same time serviceable
and suggestive to the general reader interested in American history.
In preparing the book certain points have been kept especially in
view, and deserve some mention here.

It seemed desirable to adopt a historical method of exposition, not
simply describing our political institutions in their present shape,
but pointing out their origin, indicating some of the processes
through which they have acquired that present shape, and thus keeping
before the student's mind the fact that government is perpetually
undergoing modifications in adapting itself to new conditions.
Inasmuch as such gradual changes in government do not make themselves,
but are made by men--and made either for better or for worse--it is
obvious that the history of political institutions has serious lessons
to teach us. The student should as soon as possible come to understand
that every institution is the outgrowth of experiences. One probably
gets but little benefit from abstract definitions and axioms
concerning the rights of men and the nature of civil society, such as
we often find at the beginning of books on government. Metaphysical
generalizations are well enough in their place, but to start with such
things--as the French philosophers of the eighteenth century were fond
of doing--is to get the cart before the horse. It is better to have
our story first, and thus find out what government in its concrete
reality has been, and is. Then we may finish up with the metaphysics,
or do as I have done--leave it for somebody else.

I was advised to avoid the extremely systematic, intrusively
symmetrical, style of exposition, which is sometimes deemed
indispensable in a book of this sort. It was thought that students
would be more likely to become interested in the subject if it were
treated in the same informal manner into which one naturally falls in
giving lectures to young people. I have endeavoured to bear this in
mind without sacrificing that lucidity in the arrangement of topics
which is always the supreme consideration. For many years I have been
in the habit of lecturing on history to college students in different
parts of the United States, to young ladies in private schools, and
occasionally to the pupils in high and normal schools, and in writing
this little book I have imagined an audience of these earnest and
intelligent young friends gathered before me.

I was especially advised--by my friend, Mr. James MacAlister,
superintendent of schools in Philadelphia, for whose judgment I have
the highest respect--to make it a _little_ book, less than three
hundred pages in length, if possible. Teachers and pupils do not have
time enough to deal properly with large treatises. Brevity, therefore,
is golden. A concise manual is the desideratum, touching lightly upon
the various points, bringing out their relationships distinctly, and
referring to more elaborate treatises, monographs, and documents, for
the use of those who wish to pursue the study at greater length.

Within limits thus restricted, it will probably seem strange to
some that so much space is given to the treatment of local
institutions,--comprising the governments of town, county, and city.
It may be observed, by the way, that some persons apparently conceive
of the state also as a "local institution." In a recent review of
Professor Howard's admirable "Local Constitutional History of the
United States," we read, the first volume, which is all that is yet
published, treats of the development of the township, hundred, and
shire; the second volume, we suppose, being designed to treat of
the State Constitutions. The reviewer forgets that there is such a
subject as the "development of the city and local magistracies" (which
is to be the subject of that second volume), and lets us see that in
his apprehension the American state is an institution of the same
order as the town and county. We can thus readily assent when we
are told that many youth have grown to manhood with so little
appreciation of the political importance of the state as to believe
it nothing more than a geographical division.[1] In its historic
genesis, the American state is not an institution of the same order
as the town and county, nor has it as yet become depressed or
"mediatized" to that degree. The state, while it does not possess such
attributes of sovereignty as were by our Federal Constitution granted
to the United States, does, nevertheless, possess many very important
and essential characteristics of a sovereign body, as is here
pointed out on pages 172-177. The study of our state governments is
inextricably wrapped up with the study of our national government,
in such wise that both are parts of one subject, which cannot be
understood unless both parts are studied. Whether in the course of our
country's future development we shall ever arrive at a stage in which
this is not the case, must be left for future events to determine.
But, if we ever do arrive at such a stage, "American institutions"
will present a very different aspect from those with which we are now
familiar, and which we have always been accustomed (even, perhaps,
without always understanding them) to admire.

[Footnote 1: Young's _Government Class Book_, p. iv.]

The study of local government properly includes town, county, and
city. To this part of the subject I have devoted about half of my
limited space, quite unheedful of the warning which I find in the
preface of a certain popular text-book, that "to learn the duties of
town, city, and county officers, has nothing whatever to do with the
grand and noble subject of Civil Government," and that "to attempt
class drill on petty town and county offices, would be simply
burlesque of the whole subject." But, suppose one were to say, with
an air of ineffable scorn, that petty experiments on terrestrial
gravitation and radiant heat, such as can be made with commonplace
pendulums and tea-kettles, have nothing whatever to do with the grand
and noble subject of Physical Astronomy! Science would not have got
very far on that plan, I fancy. The truth is, that science, while it
is perpetually dealing with questions of magnitude, and knows very
well what is large and what is small, knows nothing whatever of any
such distinction as that between things that are "grand" and things
that are "petty." When we try to study things in a scientific spirit,
to learn their modes of genesis and their present aspects, in order
that we may foresee their tendencies, and make our volitions count
for something in modifying them, there is nothing which we may safely
disregard as trivial. This is true of whatever we can study; it is
eminently true of the history of institutions. Government is not a
royal mystery, to be shut off, like old Deiokes,[2] by a sevenfold
wall from the ordinary business of life. Questions of civil government
are practical business questions, the principles of which are as often
and as forcibly illustrated in a city council or a county board of
supervisors, as in the House of Representatives at Washington. It is
partly because too many of our citizens fail to realize that local
government is a worthy study, that we find it making so much trouble
for us. The "bummers" and "boodlers" do not find the subject beneath
their notice; the Master who inspires them is wide awake and--for a
creature that divides the hoof--extremely intelligent.

[Footnote 2: Herodotus, i. 98.]

It is, moreover, the mental training gained through contact with
local government that enables the people of a community to conduct
successfully, through their representatives, the government of the
state and the nation. And so it makes a great deal of difference
whether the government of a town or county is of one sort or another.
If the average character of our local governments for the past quarter
of a century had been _quite_ as high as that of the Boston
town-meeting or the Virginia boards of county magistrates, in the days
of Samuel Adams and Patrick Henry, who can doubt that many an airy
demagogue, who, through session after session, has played his pranks
at the national capital, would long ago have been abruptly recalled to
his native heath, a sadder if not a wiser man? We cannot expect the
nature of the aggregate to be much better than the average natures
of its units. One may hear people gravely discussing the difference
between Frenchmen and Englishmen in political efficiency, and
resorting to assumed ethnological causes to explain it, when, very
likely, to save their lives they could not describe the difference
between a French commune and an English parish. To comprehend the
interesting contrasts between Gambetta in the Chamber of Deputies, and
Gladstone in the House of Commons, one should begin with a historical
inquiry into the causes, operating through forty generations, which
have frittered away self-government in the rural districts and small
towns of France, until there is very little left. If things in America
ever come to such a pass that the city council of Cambridge must ask
Congress each year how much money it can be allowed to spend for
municipal purposes, while the mayor of Cambridge holds his office
subject to removal by the President of the United States, we may
safely predict further extensive changes in the character of the
American people and their government. It was not for nothing that our
profoundest political thinker, Thomas Jefferson, attached so much
importance to the study of the township.

In determining the order of exposition, I have placed local government
first, beginning with the township as the simplest unit. It is well to
try to understand what is near and simple, before dealing with what is
remote and complex. In teaching geography with maps, it is wise to get
the pupil interested in the streets of his own town, the country roads
running out of it, and the neighbouring hills and streams, before
burdening his attention with the topographical details of Borrioboola
Gha. To study grand generalizations about government, before attending
to such of its features as come most directly before us, is to run the
risk of achieving a result like that attained by the New Hampshire
school-boy, who had studied geology in a text-book, but was not aware
that he had ever set eyes upon an igneous rock.

After the township, naturally comes the county. The city, as is here
shown, is not simply a larger town, but is much more complex in
organization. Historically, many cities have been, or still are,
equivalent to counties; and the development of the county must be
studied before we can understand that of the city. It has been briefly
indicated how these forms of local government grew up in England, and
how they have become variously modified in adapting themselves to
different social conditions in different parts of the United States.

Next in order come the general governments, those which possess and
exert, in one way or another, attributes of sovereignty. First, the
various colonial governments have been considered, and some features
of their metamorphosis into our modern state governments have been
described. In the course of this study, our attention is called to
the most original and striking feature of the development of civil
government upon American soil,--the written constitution, with the
accompanying power of the courts in certain cases to annul the acts
of the legislature. This is not only the most original feature of our
government, but it is in some respects the most important. Without the
Supreme Court, it is not likely that the Federal Union could have been
held together, since Congress has now and then passed an act which the
people in some of the states have regarded as unconstitutional and
tyrannical; and in the absence of a judicial method of settling such
questions, the only available remedy would have been nullification. I
have devoted a brief chapter to the origin and development of written
constitutions, and the connection of our colonial charters therewith.

Lastly, we come to the completed structure, the Federal Union; and by
this time we have examined so many points in the general theory
of American government, that our Federal Constitution can be more
concisely described, and (I believe) more quickly understood, than if
we had made it the subject of the first chapter instead of the last.
In conclusion, there have been added a few brief hints and suggestions
with reference to our political history. These remarks have been
intentionally limited. It is no part of the purpose of this book
to give an account of the doings of political parties under the
Constitution. But its study may fitly be supplemented by that of
Professor Alexander Johnston's "History of American Politics."

This arrangement not only proceeds from the simpler forms of
government to the more complex, but it follows the historical order of
development. From time immemorial, and down into the lowest strata
of savagery that have come within our ken, there have been clans and
tribes; and, as is here shown, a township was originally a stationary
clan, and a county was originally a stationary tribe. There were
townships and counties (or equivalent forms of organization) before
there were cities. In like manner there were townships, counties, and
cities long before there was anything in the world that could properly
be called a state. I have remarked below upon the way in which English
shires coalesced into little states, and in course of time the English
nation was formed by the union of such little states, which lost their
statehood (_i.e._, their functions of sovereignty, though not
their self-government within certain limits) in the process. Finally,
in America, we see an enormous nationality formed by the federation
of states which partially retain their statehood; and some of these
states are themselves of national dimensions, as, for example, New
York, which is nearly equal in area, quite equal in population, and
far superior in wealth, to Shakespeare's England.

In studying the local institutions of our different states, I have been
greatly helped by the "Johns Hopkins University Studies in History and
Politics," of which the eighth annual series is now in course of
publication. In the course of the pages below I have frequent occasion
to acknowledge my indebtedness to these learned and sometimes profoundly
suggestive monographs; but I cannot leave the subject without a special
word of gratitude to my friend, Dr. Herbert Adams, the editor of the
series, for the noble work which he is doing in promoting the study of
American history. It had always seemed to me that the mere existence of
printed questions in text-books proves that the publishers must have
rather a poor opinion of the average intelligence of teachers; and it
also seemed as if the practical effect of such questions must often be
to make the exercise of recitation more mechanical for both teachers and
pupils, and to encourage the besetting sin of "learning by heart."
Nevertheless, there are usually two sides to a case; and, in deference
to the prevailing custom, for which, no doubt, there is much to be said,
full sets of questions have been appended to each chapter and section.
It seemed desirable that such questions should be prepared by some one
especially familiar with the use of school-books; and for these I have
to thank Mr. F.A. Hill, Head Master of the Cambridge English High
School. I confess that Mr. Hill's questions have considerably modified
my opinion as to the merits of such apparatus. They seem to add very
materially to the usefulness of the book.

It will be observed that there are two sets of these questions,
entirely distinct in character and purpose. The first set--"Questions
on the Text"--is appended to each _section_, so as to be as near
the text as possible. These questions furnish an excellent topical
analysis of the text.[3] In a certain sense they ask "what the book
says," but the teacher is advised emphatically to discourage any such
thing as committing the text to memory. The tendency to rote-learning
is very strong. I had to contend with it in teaching history to
seniors at Harvard twenty years ago, but much has since been done
to check it through the development of the modern German seminary
methods. (For an explanation of these methods, see Dr. Herbert
Adams on "Seminary Libraries and University Extension," _J.H.U.
Studies_, V., xi.) With younger students the tendency is of course
stronger. It is only through much exercise that the mind learns how
to let itself--as Matthew Arnold used to say--"play freely about the
facts."

[Footnote 3: "This," says Mr. Hill, "will please those who prefer the
topical method, while it does not forbid the easy transformation
of topics to questions, which others may demand." In the table of
contents I have made a pretty full topical analysis of the book, which
may prove useful for comparison with Mr. Hill's.]

In order to supply the pupil with some wholesome exercise of this
sort, Mr. Hill has added, at the end of each _chapter_, a set of
"Suggestive Questions and Directions." Here he has thoroughly divined
the purpose of the book and done much to further it.

Problems or cases are suggested for the student to consider, and
questions are asked which cannot be disposed of by a direct appeal to
the text. Sometimes the questions go quite outside of the text, and
relate to topics concerning which it provides no information whatever.
This has been done with a purpose. The pupil should learn how to go
outside of the book and gather from scattered sources information
concerning questions that the book suggests. In other words, he should
begin to learn _how to make researches_, for that is coming to be
one of the useful arts, not merely for scholars, but for men and
women in many sorts of avocations. It is always useful, as well as
ennobling, to be able to trace knowledge to its sources. Work of this
sort involves more or less conference and discussion among classmates,
and calls for active aid from the teacher; and if the teacher does not
at first feel at home in these methods, practice will nevertheless
bring familiarity, and will prove most wholesome training. For the aid
of teachers and pupils, as well as of the general reader who wishes to
pursue the subject, I have added a bibliographical note at the end of
each chapter, immediately after Mr. Hill's "Suggestive Questions and
Directions."

This particular purpose in my book must be carefully borne in mind.
It explains the omission of many details which some text-books on the
same subject would be sure to include. To make a manual complete and
self-sufficing is precisely what I have not intended. The book is
designed to be suggestive and stimulating, to leave the reader with
scant information on some points, to make him (as Mr. Samuel Weller
says) "vish there wos more," and to show him how to go on by himself.
I am well aware that, in making an experiment in this somewhat new
direction, nothing is easier than to fall into errors of judgment. I
can hardly suppose that this book is free from such errors; but if in
spite thereof it shall turn out to be in any way helpful in bringing
the knowledge and use of the German seminary method into our higher
schools, I shall be more than satisfied.

Just here, let me say to young people in all parts of our country:--If
you have not already done so, it would be well worth while for you
to organize a debating society in your town or village, for the
discussion of such historical and practical questions relating to the
government of the United States as are suggested in the course of this
book. Once started, there need be no end of interesting and profitable
subjects for discussion. As a further guide to the books you need
in studying such subjects, use Mr. W.E. Foster's "References to the
Constitution of the United States," the invaluable pamphlet mentioned
below on page 277. If you cannot afford to buy the books, get the
public library of your town or village to buy them; or, perhaps,
organize a small special library for your society or club. Librarians
will naturally feel interested in such a matter, and will often
be able to help with advice. A few hours every week spent in such
wholesome studies cannot fail to do much toward the political
education of the local community, and thus toward the general
improvement of the American people. For the amelioration of things
will doubtless continue to be effected in the future, as it has been
effected in the past, not by ambitious schemes of sudden and universal
reform (which the sagacious man always suspects, just as he
suspects all schemes for returning a fabulously large interest upon
investments), but by the gradual and cumulative efforts of innumerable
individuals, each doing something to help or instruct those to whom
his influence extends. He who makes two clear ideas grow where there
was only one hazy one before, is the true benefactor of his species.

In conclusion, I must express my sincere thanks to Mr. Thomas Emerson,
superintendent of schools in Newton, for the very kind interest he has
shown in my work, in discussing its plan with me at the outset, in
reading the completed manuscript, and in offering valuable criticisms.

CAMBRIDGE, _August_ 5, 1890.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.

TAXATION AND GOVERNMENT.

"Too much taxes".

What is taxation?

Taxation and eminent domain.

What is government?

The "ship of state".

"The government".

Whatever else it may be, "the government" is the power which imposes
taxes.

Difference between taxation and robbery.

Sometimes taxation is robbery.

The study of history is full of practical lessons, and helpful to
those who would be good citizens.

Perpetual vigilance is the price of liberty.

QUESTIONS ON THE TEXT.

SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS AND DIRECTIONS.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE.

CHAPTER II.

THE TOWNSHIP.

Section 1. _The New England Township_.

The most ancient and simple form of government.

New England settled by church congregations.

Policy of the early Massachusetts government as to land grants.

Smallness of the farms

Township and village

Social position of the settlers

The town-meeting

Selectmen; town-clerk

Town-treasurer; constables; assessors of taxes and overseers of the
poor

Act of 1647 establishing public schools

School committees

Field-drivers and pound-keepers; fence-viewers; other town officers

Calling the town-meeting

Town, county, and state taxes

Poll-tax

Taxes on real-estate; taxes on personal property

When and where taxes are assessed

Tax-lists

Cheating the government

The rate of taxation

Undervaluation; the burden of taxation

The "magic-fund" delusion

Educational value of the town-meeting

By-laws

Power and responsibility

There is nothing especially American, democratic, or meritorious about
"rotation in office"

QUESTIONS ON THE TEXT

Section 2. _Origin of the Township_.

Town-meetings in ancient Greece and Rome

Clans; the _mark_ and the _tun_

The Old-English township, the manor, and the parish

The vestry-meeting

Parish and vestry clerks; beadles, waywardens, haywards,
common-drivers, churchwardens, etc.

Transition from the English parish to the New England township

Building of states out of smaller political units

Representation; shire-motes; Earl Simon's Parliament

The township as the "unit of representation" in the shire-mote and in
the General Court

Contrast with the Russian village-community which is not represented
in the general government

QUESTIONS ON THE TEXT SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS AND DIRECTIONS
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

CHAPTER III.

THE COUNTY.

Section 1. _The County in its Beginnings_.

Why do we have counties?

Clans and tribes

The English nation, like the American, grew out of the union of small
states

Ealdorman and sheriff; shire-mote and county court

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