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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: with French, an excellent book is Albert Babeau, Lt Village sous I'ancien Regime, Paris, 1879 ; see also Tocqueville, L'ancien Regime et la Revolution, 7th ed., Paris, 1866. There is a good sketch of the causes of the French revolution in the fifth volume of Lecky's History of England in the Eighteenth Century, N. Y., 1887; see also Buckle's History of Civilization, chaps, xii.-xiv. There is no better commentary on my first chapter than the lurid history of France in the eighteenth century. The strong contrast to English and American history shows us most instructively what we have thus far escaped. CHAPTER H. THE TOWNSHIP. § 1: The New England Township. Of the various kinds of government to be found in the United States, we may begin by considering that of the New England township. As we shall presently see, it is in principle of all known forms of government the oldest as well as the simplest. Let us observe how the New England township grew up. When people from England first came to dwell in the wilderness of Massachusetts Bay, they settled in groups upon small irregular-shaped patches of land, which soon came to be known as townships. There were several reasons why they settled thus in small groups, instead of scattering about over the country and carving out broad estates for themselves. In the first place, their principal reason for coming und was to New England was their dissatisfaction settled by .,, . i i chmch con- with the way in which church affairs were managed in the old country. They wished to bring about a reform in the church, in such wise that the members of a congregation should have more voice than formerly in the church-government, and that the minister of each congregation should be more independent than formerly of the bishop and of th...