LOCAL GOVERNMENT IN AMERICA

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sistent and harmonious system, which reminded Matthew Arnold of a well-fitting suit of clothes, loose where it should be loose, and tight where tightness is an advantage.

As we have already noticed, the feature of it all which strikes the Englishman most forcibly is the separation of local from national affairs in the administration of the state and the general government. But the township system, with its more direct local self-government, is of greater importance. Given that, and the rest of the system follows almost as matter of course. Every American is a politician, and feels a keen interest in his presidential and state elections. But, after all, these are generally of much less practical importance to him than the home elections, which determine whether his local affairs shall be wisely, economically, and justly administered. General taxation is a trifle compared with that for his schools, roads, bridges, and other local expenses. It is in the town meeting that the incipient statesman is formed. It is in managing his local affairs that the American acquires the discipline, the self-respect, and self-reliance which enable him, when occasion calls, to command a company, a regiment, or an army, control a railroad or govern a state. When our late war closed, the United States had one of the most efficient armies. that ever stood in line of battle. The secret lay in the fact that each man was a drilled and disciplined, but at the same time a thinking, machine. The drill and discipline came from years of service, but the man beneath them came from the school-house and the town meeting.

Now, does any one imagine that the American institutions of local self-government are of English origin? What England is to-day we have faintly outlined. As

to the past, we can pursue the same line of inquiry as was followed in relation to the origin of the free-school system. It was only where the Puritans settled that the township and the town meeting were fully developed. Virginia attempted to copy directly the parishes and vestries, boroughs and guilds, of England. Jefferson said: "These wards, called townships in New England, are the vital principle of their government; and have proved themselves the wisest invention ever devised by the wit of man for the perfect exercise of self-government, and for its preservation." De Tocqueville wrote, over fifty years ago: "The more we descend towards the South, the less active does the business of the township or parish become; the population exercises a less immediate influence on affairs; the power of the elected magistrate is augmented and that of the elections diminished, while the public spirit of the local communities is less awakened and less influential." The system does not appear to be English in its origin. How it came to America is an interesting question.

We have now passed in review some of the most important of the institutions which to-day are found in the United States and are not found in England. Even if we went no further, he would be a bold man who, after studying their influence upon the national life and character, should still continue to claim that America was only a transplanted England. But, in addition to these peculiar institutions, there are others, now common to both countries, which have exerted a powerful influence in the United States for more than a century, while they have been only recently introduced into England, and in that country are just beginning to bear fruit.

Three of these are of an importance which no one

RELIGIOUS LIBERTY IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA

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will question. They are freedom of religion, freedom of the press, and the secret ballot. The first protects the conscience, the second protects the mind, the third protects the suffrage. Without these guarantees the United States of the nineteenth century seems impossible, and yet for none of them are we indebted to the legislation or to the example of the mother country. In adopting each of them, England has not been the leader, but has followed in the footsteps of America.

First, as to the introduction of religious liberty into the two countries, a few dates tell the whole story. Of the Established Church in England I have already spoken- the Church which exacts a tax from every one, and which is the chief bulwark of the aristocracy. Still, with the exception of this tax, all religious denominations stand to-day in England on a basis of equality before the law, save that a Catholic cannot sit on the throne, nor can he hold the office of Lord Chancellor of England or that of Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. But the establishment of this equality is of very recent date. In 1689 a partial Act of Toleration was enacted, but it was not extended to Unitarians until 1813, to Roman Catholics until 1829, and to Jews until 1858. Until such respective dates the members of these proscribed religious bodies were excluded from public office, while it was not until 1871 that all religious tests were abolished in the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, so as to open those institutions equally to students of all religious denominations.

The removal of this last restriction, as we shall see hereafter, was nearly a hundred years after religious liberty had been proclaimed in the United States.

Next let us consider the question of the freedom of the press. Of the importance of this subject nothing

need be said; but here again attention is for the present requested simply to a few facts and dates. About a century after the printing-press was introduced into England, and as soon as it came to be recognized as a power in religious and political discussions, it was placed under a rigid censorship. Printing was permitted only in certain specified places, and the approval of certain officials was required before a book could be given to the public. This system continued until 1693, when the licensing law was permitted to expire.*

But with the abolition of the censorship the English judges took the subject up, and the system which was developed under their manipulation of the law was nearly as oppressive as the one just abolished. They held that in criminal prosecutions for libel-and such prosecutions were the ordinary means of silencing political opponents-the truth could not be given in evidence, and that the jury before whom the offender was tried had nothing to do except to pass upon the fact of publication. "The greater the truth, the greater the libel," became the maxim of the law. In other words, if a citizen published a statement regarding an official or a candidate for office, charging him with corruption or with any other offence against the state, the publisher or author could be arrested for libel, and would be tried before a judge, who excluded all evidence of the truth of the charges, left to the jury only the question of the publication or authorship, and then, if the prisoner was found guilty, sentenced him to fine or imprisonment, and frequently to both.

No one at all acquainted with the political history of England needs to be told how persistently this muzzle

*Hallam's "Constitutional History," iii. 163.

FREEDOM OF THE PRESS IN ENGLAND

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of the press was utilized by the government during the last century. There were, from time to time, juries to be found who, under the spell of consummate orators, were willing to go to prison for contempt of court rather than to find a verdict against the tribunes of the people. But for such revolts against the law English liberty would have been dead indeed. Yet although under these occasional breaths of free air the spark was kept alive, the. flame burned very low.*

* Chief Justice Holt is represented in history as one of the friends and upholders of liberty. In 1704, Tutchin, the printer of the Observator, was tried before him for an article criticising Queen Anne's ministers in language which we should now consider very innocent. The defendant's counsel having attempted to justify it, Holt observed to the jury: "I am surprised to be told that a writing is not a libel which reflects upon the government, and endeavors to possess the people with the notion that the government is administered by corrupt persons. If writers should not be called to account for possessing the people with an ill opinion of the government, no government can subsist. You are to consider whether the words which I have read to you do not tend to beget an ill opinion of the administration of the government. Their purport is that those who are employed know nothing of the matter, and those who do know are not employed; that men are not adapted to offices, but offices to men, out of particular regard to their interest, and not to their fitness." The defendant was accordingly found guilty. Campbell's "Lives of the Chief Justices" (Blanchard & Lea, 1853), ii. 120. This was the law for many years, that any reflection upon the administration was punishable as a criminal libel. See Hallam's "Cons. Hist.," iii. 164-166. In 1731, on the trial of Franklin, Lord Raymond positively refused to admit any evidence to prove the published matter to be true. In the famous trial of the Dean of St. Asaph, some fifty years later, Lord Mansfield sustained this doctrine, and he was afterwards supported in his view of the law by all the judges in the House of Lords. Campbell's "Lives of the Chief Justices," ii.

410-413.