local option law similar to that of Illinois, the process has already extended over about one sixth part of the state; and in Nebraska, where the same process began in 1883, it has covered nearly one third of the organized counties of the state.

The principle of local option as to govern

tion and

township

ment has been carried still farther in Minnesota and Dakota. The method just described may be called county option; the ques- County option is decided by a majority vote of the people of the county. But in option Minnesota in 1878 it was enacted that as soon as any one of the little square townships in that state should contain as many as twenty-five legal voters, it might petition the board of county commissioners and obtain a township organization, even though the adjacent townships in the same county should remain under county government only. Five years later the same provision was adopted by Dakota, and under it township government is steadily spreading.

Two distinct grades of township govern

ment are to be observed in the states west of the Alleghanies; the one has the town-meeting for deliberative purposes, the other has

Grades of

not. In Ohio and Indiana, which township derived their local institutions largely government from Pennsylvania, there is no such town-meeting, the administrative offices are more or less

concentrated in a board of trustees, and the town is quite subordinate to the county. The principal features of this system have been reproduced in Iowa, Missouri, and Kansas.

The other system was that which we have seen beginning in Michigan, under the influence of New York and New England. Here the town-meeting, with legislative powers, is always present. The most noticeable feature of the Michigan system is the relation between township and county, which was taken from New York. The county board is composed of the supervisors of the several townships, and thus represents the townships. It is the same in Illinois. It is held by some writers that this is the most perfect form of local government,1 but on the other hand the objection is made that county boards thus constituted are too large. We have seen that in the states in question there are not less than 16, and sometimes more than 20, townships in each county. In a board of 16 or 20 members it is hard to fasten responsibility upon anybody in particular; and thus it becomes possible to have "combinations," and to indulge in that exchange of favours known as "log-rolling," which is one of the besetting sins of all large representative bodies. Re

1 Howard, Local Const. Hist., passim.

2 Bemis, Local Government in Michigan, Johns Hopkins Univ. Studies, I., v.

sponsibility is more concentrated in the smaller county boards of Massachusetts, Wisconsin, and Minnesota.

part

of our

An excellent

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 result of the which all are aiming in common,— good government. One 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 prepara

tion for the self-governing township, is already exerting its influence in Colorado, Nevada, California, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington.

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.

Dr. Edward Bemis, who in a profoundly interesting essay has called attention to this

1

1 Local Government in Michigan and the Northwest, Johns Hopkins Univ. Studies, I., v.

function of the school district as a stage in the evolution of the township, remarks also upon the fact that "it is in the local government of the school district that woman suf- Woman frage is being tried." In several states suffrage women may vote for school committees, or may be elected to school committees, or to sundry administrative school offices. At present (1898) there are not less than twenty-two states in which women have school suffrage. In Utah, Idaho, Colorado, and Wyoming women have full suffrage, voting at municipal, state, and national elections. In Kansas they have municipal suffrage, in Iowa bond suffrage, and in Louisiana tax-paying women can vote on questions submitted to tax-payers as such. In England, it may be observed, unmarried women and widows who pay taxes vote not only on school matters, but generally in the local elections of vestries, boroughs, and poor-law unions. In the new Parish Councils Bill this municipal suffrage is extended to married women. In the Isle of Man women vote for members of Parliament. In South Australia they have full suffrage, and in 1893 they were endowed with full rights of suffrage in New Zealand.

The historical reason why the suffrage has so generally been restricted to men is perhaps to be sought in the conditions under which voting originated. In primeval times voting was prob