to enter this township. It is all as simple as the numbering of streets in Philadelphia.1 the nature of which will be seen from the following diagram: Correction Line. Meridian Line. Base Line. DIAGRAM OF CORRECTION LINE. 1 In Philadelphia the streets for the most part cross each other at right angles and at equal distances, so that the city is laid out like a checkerboard. The parallel streets running in one direction have names, often taken from trees. Market Street is the central street from which the others are reckoned in both directions according to the couplet "Market, Arch, Race, and Vine, Chestnut, Walnut, Spruce, and Pine," etc. The cross streets are not named but numbered, as First, Second, etc. The houses on one side of the street have odd numbers and on the other side even numbers, as is the general custom in the United States. With each new block a new century of numbers begins, although there are seldom more than forty real numbers in a block. For example, the corner If now we look at Livingston County, in which this township of Deerfield is situated, we observe that the county is made up of sixteen townships, in four rows of four; and the next county, Washtenaw, is made up of twenty townships, in five rows of four. Maps of our Western states are thus apt to have somewhat of a and of West- checkerboard aspect, not unlike the wonderful country which Alice visited after she had gone through the looking-glass. Square townships are apt to make square or rectangular counties, and the state, too, is likely to acquire a more symmetrical shape. Nothing ern counties house on Market Street, just above Fifteenth, is 1501 Market Street. At somewhere about 1535 or 1539 you come to Sixteenth Street; then there is a break in the numbering, and the next corner house is 1601. So in going along a numbered street, say Fifteenth, from Market, the first number will be ; after passing Arch, 101; after passing Race, 201, etc. With this system a very slight familiarity with the city enables one to find his way to any house, and to estimate the length of time needful for reaching it. St. Louis and some other large cities have adopted the Philadelphia plan, the convenience of which is as great as its monotony. In Washington the streets running in one direction are lettered A, B, C, etc., and the cross streets are numbered; and upon the checkerboard plan is superposed another plan in which broad avenues radiate in various directions from the Capitol, and a few other centres. These avenues cut through the square system of streets in all directions, so that instead of the dull checkerboard monotony there is an almost endless variety of magnificent vistas. could be more unlike the jagged, irregular shape of counties in Virginia or townships in Massachusetts, which grew up just as it happened. The contrast is similar to that between Chicago, with its straight streets crossing at right angles, and Boston, or London, with their labyrinths of crooked lanes. For picturesqueness the advantage is entirely with the irregular city, but for practical convenience it is quite the other way. So with our western lands the simplicity and regularity of the system have made it a marvel of convenience for the settlers, and doubtless have had much to do with the rapidity with which civil governments have been built up in the West. "This fact," says a recent writer," will be appreciated by those who know from experience the ease and certainty with which the pioneer on the great plains of Kansas, Nebraska, or Dakota is enabled to select his homestead or locate his claim' unaided by the expensive skill of the surveyor." 1 There was more in it than this, however. There was a germ of organization planted in these western townships, which must be noted. as of great importance. Each township, being six miles in length and six miles in breadth, was divided into thirty-six numbered sections, each containing just one square mile, or 640 acres. Each section, moreover, was divided into sixteen 1 Howard, Local Const. Hist. of U. S., vol. i. p. 139. Some effects tracts of forty acres each, and sales to settlers were and are generally made by tracts at the rate of a dollar and a quarter per acre. of the system For fifty dollars a man may buy forty acres of unsettled land, provided he will actually go and settle upon it, and this has proved to be a very effective inducement for enterprising young men to "go West." Many a tract thus bought for fifty dollars has turned out to be a soil upon which princely fortunes have grown. A tract of forty acres represents to-day in Chicago or Minneapolis an amount of wealth difficult for the imagination to grasp. The reserva lic schools But in each of these townships there was at least one section which was set apart for a special purpose. This was usually the sixteenth section, nearly in the centre of the township; and sometimes the thirty-sixth section, tion for pub in the southeast corner, was also reserved. These reservations were for the support of public schools. Whatever money was earned, by selling the land or otherwise, in these sections, was to be devoted to school purposes. This was a most remarkable provision. No other nation has ever made a gift for schools on so magnificent a scale. We have good reason for taking pride in such a liberal provision. But we ought not to forget that all national gifts really involve taxation, and this is no exception to the rule, although in this case it is not a taking of money, but a keeping of it back. The national government says to the local government, whatever revenues may come from that section of 640 acres, be they great or small, be it a spot in a rural grazing district, or a spot in some crowded city, are not to go into the pockets of individual men and women, but are to be reserved for public purposes. This is a case of disguised taxation, and may serve to remind us of what was said some time ago, that a government cannot give anything without in one way or another depriving individuals of its equivalent. No man can sit on a camp-stool and by any amount of tugging at that camp-stool lift himself over a fence. Whatever is given comes from somewhere, and whatever is given by governments comes from the people. This reservation of one square mile in every township for purposes of education has already most profoundly influenced the development of local government in vation there our western states, and in the near future its effects are likely to become township still deeper and wider. To mark out In this reser were the germs of government a township on the map may mean very little, but when once you create in that township some institution that needs to be cared for, you have made a long stride toward inaugurating township government. When a state, as for instance |