We next come to the great middle colonies, Pennsylvania and New York. The most noteworthy feature of local government The old vania county in Pennsylvania was the general election of county officers by popular vote. The county was the unit of representation in the colonial legislature, and on election days the people of the county elected at the same time their sheriffs, coroners, assessors, and county commissioners. In this respect Pennsylvania furnished a model which has been followed by most of the states since the Revolution, as regards the county governments. It is also to be noted that before the Revolution, as Pennsylvania increased in population, the townships began to participate in the work of government, each township choosing its overseers of the poor, highway surveyors, and inspectors of elections.1 New York had from the very beginning the rudiments of an excellent system of local selfgovernment. The Dutch villages had their assemblies, which under the English rule were developed into town-meetings, though ings in New with less ample powers than those of New England. The governing body of the New York town consisted of the con Town-meet York 1 Town-meetings were not quite unknown in Pennsylvania; see W. P. Holcomb, Pennsylvania Boroughs, Johns Hopkins Univ. Studies, IV., iv. stable and eight overseers, who answered in most respects to the selectmen of New England. Four of the overseers were elected each year in town-meeting, and one of the retiring overseers was at the same time elected constable. In course of time the elective offices came to include assessors and collectors, town-clerk, highway surveyors, fence-viewers, pound-masters, and overseers of the poor. At first the townmeetings seem to have been held only for the election of officers, but they acquired to a limited extent the power of levying taxes and enacting by-laws. In 1703 a law was passed requiring each town to elect yearly an officer to be known as the "supervisor," whose duty was "to compute, ascertain, examine, board of su oversee, and allow the contingent, publick, and necessary charges" of the county.1 For this purpose the supervisors met once a year at the county town. The principle was the same as that of the levy court in Delaware. This board of supervisors was a strictly representative government, and formed a strong contrast to the close corporation by which county affairs were administered in Virginia. The New York system is of especial interest, because it has powerfully influenced the development of local institutions throughout the Northwest. 1 Howard, Local Const. Hist., i. III. The county pervisors § 2. Settlement of the Public Domain. The westward movement of population in the United States has for the most part followed the parallels of latitude. Thus Virginians and North Carolinians, crossing the Alleghanies, settled Kentucky and Tennessee; thus people from New England filled up the central and northern parts of New York, and Westward movement passed on into Michigan and Wisconof population sin; thus Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois received many settlers from New York and Pennsylvania. In the early times when Kentucky was settled, the pioneer would select a piece of land wherever he liked, and after having a rude survey made, and the limits marked by "blazing" the trees with a hatchet, the survey would be put on record in the state landoffice. So little care was taken that "half a dozen patents would sometimes be given for the same tract. Pieces of land, of all shapes and sizes, lay between the patents. . . . Such a system naturally begat no end of litigation, and there remain in Kentucky curious vestiges of it" to this day.1 In order to avoid such confusion in the settlement of the territory north of the Ohio River, Congress passed the land-ordinance of 1785, which was based chiefly upon the suggestions 1 Hinsdale, Old Northwest, p. 261. Method of surveying the public of Thomas Jefferson, and laid the foundation of our simple and excellent system for surveying national lands. According to this system as gradually perfected, the government surveyors first mark out a north and south line which is called the principal meridian. Twenty-four such meridians have been established. The first was the lands dividing line between Ohio and Indiana; the last one runs through Oregon a little to the west of Portland. On each side of the principal meridian there are marked off subordinate meridians called range lines, six miles apart, and numbered east and west from their principal.1 Then a true parallel of latitude is drawn, crossing these meridians at right angles. It is called the base line, or standard parallel. Eleven such base lines, for example, run across the great state of Oregon. Finally, on each side of the base line are drawn subordinate parallels called township lines, six miles apart, and numbered north and south from their base line. By these range lines and township lines the whole land is thus divided into townships just six miles square, and the townships are Western Origin of all numbered. Take, for Take, for example, townships, the township of Deerfield in Michigan. That 1 The following is a diagram of the first principal meridian, and of the base line running across southern Michigan. A B is the principal meridian; C D is the base line. The figures is the fourth township north of the base line, and it is in the fifth range east of the first principal meridian. It would be called township number 4 north range 5 east, and was so called before it was settled and received a name. Evidently one must go 24 miles from the principal meridian, or 18 miles from the base line, in order on the base line mark the range lines; the figures on the principal meridian mark the township lines. E is township 4 north in range 5 east; F is township 5 south in range 4 west ; G is township 3 north in range 3 west. As the intervals between meridians diminish as we go northward, it is sometimes necessary to introduce a correction line, |