CHAPTER V.

THE CITY.

Section 1. Direct and Indirect Government.

[Sidenote:  Summary of foregoing results.] In the foregoing survey of local institutions and their growth, we have had occasion to compare and sometimes to contrast two different methods of government as exemplified on the one hand in the township and on the other hand in the county.  In the former we have direct government by a primary assembly,[1] the town-meeting; in the latter we have indirect government by a representative board.  If the county board, as in colonial Virginia, perpetuates itself, or is appointed otherwise than by popular vote, it is not strictly a representative board, in the modern sense of the phrase; the government is a kind of oligarchy.  If, as in colonial Pennsylvania, and in the United States generally to-day, the county board consists of officers elected by the people, the county government is a representative democracy.  The township government, on the other hand, as exemplified in New England and in the northwestern states which have adopted it, is a pure democracy.  The latter, as we have observed, has one signal advantage over all other kinds of government, in so far as it tends to make every man feel that the business of government is part of his own business, and that where he has a stake in the management of public affairs he has also a voice.  When people have got into the habit of leaving local affairs to be managed by representative boards, their active interest in local affairs is liable to be somewhat weakened, as all energies in this world are weakened, from want of exercise.  When some fit subject of complaint is brought up, the individual is too apt to feel that it is none of his business to furnish a remedy, let the proper officers look after it.  He can vote at elections, which is a power; he can perhaps make a stir in the newspapers, which is also a power; but personal participation in town-meeting is likewise a power, the necessary loss of which, as we pass to wider spheres of government, is unquestionably to be regretted.

[Footnote 1:  A primary assembly is one in which the members attend of their own right, without having been elected to it; a representative assembly is composed of elected delegates.]

[Sidenote:  Direct government impossible in a county.] Nevertheless the loss is inevitable.  A primary assembly of all the inhabitants of a county, for purposes of local government, is out of the question.  There must be representative government, for this purpose the county system, an inheritance from the ancient English shire, has furnished the needful machinery.  Our county government is near enough to the people to be kept in general from gross abuses of power.  There are many points which can be much better decided in small representative bodies than in large miscellaneous meetings.  The responsibility of our local boards