By owner or joint owners as tenants in common, to procure out-falls......... 268–272 Of the powers and duties of counties and county boards.......... Provisions specially applicable to the board of county commissioners in counties not under township organization............ Provisions specially applicable to the board of supervisors in counties un- der township organization.......... Special provisions applicable to the board of county commissioners of Cook TOWNSHIP ORGANIZATION;-ITS ORIGIN AND PROGRESS IN THE WESTERN STATES. (1) TOWNSHIP ORGANIZATION, so-called, is a system in government hav ing its origin in the New England States; and, as the people of those states have migrated westward, it has been carried into most of the northern and western states. It is simply a system whereby the territory of each county is divided into convenient districts, called towns, or townships, which become a species of bodies corporate, or, as they are more commonly styled, quasi corporations. The object and result of this system is to bring the local affairs of the county under the immediate control and direction of the people. In this respect it not only becomes the life and soul of a free government, but it becomes an institution for the practical education of the people in the principles of that system of governmentthe peculiar features of the system being that every voter of the township is required to assume a direct responsibility in the administration of local public affairs. No scheme, having much similarity to our present system of township organization, is found in ancient history. The municipal divisions of Athens and other ancient republics were rather into castes or social ranks, than territorial; although the "demes" of ancient Athens, the Roman and Grecian colonies, and at a later day the free cities of medieval Europe, possessed more or less of the privileges of self-government, such as election of officers, management of funds, and the like. These cases, however, are exceptions; isolated instances of the universal instinct for selfgovernment which is born with all men, but repressed under non-elective and irresponsible governments. In England, about A. D. 871, King Alfred, to prevent the rapines and disorders which prevailed in the realm, instituted a system of territorial division, which probably contains the first germ of our American idea of a township. This was a division of the kingdom into "tithings," an Anglo-Saxon term equivalent to "tenthings," or groups of ten. Each tithing was the area inhabited by ten contiguous families, who were "frankpledges," i. e., free pledges or sureties to the king for each other's good behavior, and were bound to have any offender within their district forthcoming. One of the principal inhabitants of the tithing was annually appointed to preside over it, entitled tithingman or head (1) The matter under this head is in substance that contained in a paper prepared by E. M. HAINES, and read by invitation before the American Social Science Association, at Saratoga, N. Y., Sept. 8, 1876, and published in the Penn Monthly, of Philadelphia, May, 1877. borough, being supposed the most discreet man within it. As ten families constituted a tithing, so ten tithings formed a hundred, governed by a high constable or bailiff; and an indefinite number of hundreds composed a shire or county. Tithings, towns or vills were, by the laws and customs of England, of the same signification; but the word town or vill has, it seems, by the alteration of time and language, now become, in that country, a generical term, comprehending, under it the several species of cities, boroughs and common towns. A city originally signified a town incorporated, which was, or had been, the see or seat of a bishop. A borough was understood to be a town, either corporate or not, that sent burgesses to parliament.(1) The word town, strictly speaking, applies to a collection of houses hav ing a population to that extent that the inhabitants are presumed to act as a body corporate for municipal regulations. But the word township applies to a territorial division of country, without reference to a compact condition of dwellings. The word ship, as here used, probably comes from the Dutch schip or Anglo-Saxon scyppen, to mould, form, shape, which, when added to the word town, in this connection, signifies the shape or outward boundaries which have been given to the town. Township organization, as a term, applied to a system for the regulation and management of municipal or fiscal affairs, was first employed in that sense by the Constitution of Illinois, as amended in 1848, wherein was contemplated a division of the counties of the State into smaller districts, forming bodies corporate, for the regulation and management of local affairs, denominated Township Organization. The State of Illinois being originally comprised within the territory of country belonging to the State of Virginia, received an early impress of the general features of the municipal system of that State, from which it provided for departing, as a settled policy, in the revision of the Constitution in 1848. And so, too, the influence of the parent State of Virginia in this regard was in like manner originally extended in a greater or less degree over all those States carved out of the territory northwest of the Ohio river. A learned writer on the subject of the origin of laws and government, remarks, that we are not to consider the first laws of society as the fruit of any deliberation confirmed by solemn and premeditated acts. They were naturally established by a tacit consent, a kind of engagement to which men are naturally very much inclined. Even political authority (1) In common speech, town, city and village are of the same import. A village is any small assemblage of houses occupied by artizans, laboring people and farmers. It is a defined locality, with a name. Herbert et al. v. Lavalle, 27 Íll. R., 448. Any small assemblage of houses for dwellings or business, or both, in the country, constitutes a village, whether they are situated upon regularly laid out streets and alleys or not. A place at a railroad station where there was a mill, a blacksmith's shop, a store and a grocery, with dwelling houses to accommodate those carrying on said business, was held to be a village in the common acceptation of the term. Ill. Cen. R. R. Co. v. Williams, 27 Ill. R., 48. In Illinois a village, to become incorporated, must have at least three hundred inhabitants. Rev. Stat., p. 242, § 5. A place to become incorporated as a city is required to have at least one thousand Inhabitants. Rev. Stat., p. 212, 5. Therefore, a city in Illinois is a place having a large assemblage of houses, with a population exceeding one thousand inhabitants. |