USA > Pennsylvania > Philadelphia County > Philadelphia > Municipal government history and politics, Vol. V > Part 17
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41
1 Bancroft very truly considers Samuel Adams more than any other man, "the type and representative of the New England town-meeting." History of the Constitution, ii. 260. For an interesting account of his career, see Samuel Adams, the Man of the Town Meeting, by J. K. Hosmer. Here the reader will be able to obtain a very accurate idea of the important in- fluence that Adams and the town-meetings of Boston exercised over the destinies of America. No wonder was it that the governing class in Halifax frowned upon all manifestations of popular feeling in the province.
2 Daniel Leonard, cited by Hosmer, p. 45.
46
Local Government in Canada. [220
annual meeting for the purpose of voting money for the support of the poor."1 Up to very recent times, the Justices in Sessions were practically the local governing bodies in the various divisions of the province. Even Halifax was not allowed a special act of incorporation as a city until 1841, although its people made frequent applications to the Legis- lature for power to manage their own affairs.2 The time of the Legislature was taken up with making provision for local wants. All the roads and bridges were built and maintained, and the public schools supported by the Legislature. The system that so long prevailed, by which members of the Legislature controlled the expenditures for local works, was well calculated to demoralize public men and encourage specu- lation and jobbery. Large sums were frittered away by the appointment of Road Commissioners with reference only to political considerations.3 It was one well adapted to stimulate the energies of village politicians, and the spirit of party in the counties.
As respects local affairs, the people had little or no voice. The Grand Jury, in the Court of Sessions of the Peace,
1 Haliburton's Hist. ii. 8, 9.
* Murdoch, ii. 449. In 1850 Mr. Howe attempted to pass a bill dividing the county of Halifax into townships, and conferring certain municipal privileges upon the inhabitants. The people were to have the power to raise funds by assessment. for the support of education and for other public purposes, and to elect their own township officers, including Magistrates. Lord Grey, however, took exception to the measure, and the Queen's assent was withheld. Speeches and Public Letters of Hon. Joseph Howe, i. 642.
3 " According to a report presented to me by Major Head, an Assistant Commissioner of Enquiry whom I sent to that colony [Nova Scotia ], a sum of £10,000 was, during the last session, appropriated to local improvements; this sum was divided into 830 portions, and as many Commissioners were appointed to expend it, giving, on an average, a Commissioner for rather more than every £12, with a salary of 5s. a day, and a further remunera- tion of two and a half per cent. on the money expended, to be deducted out of each share." Lord Durham's Report, p. 29. This demoralizing and wasteful system lasted until very recently in Nova Scotia.
47
Local Government in Canada.
221]
annually nominated such number of town officers as the Justices should direct, and out of them the latter made the appointments. The Grand Jury had also the power to raise money for certain public purposes within a particular division. Of their own knowledge, or on the representation of three frecholders, they could make presentments for money for building or repairing jails, court-houses, pounds, or for other necessary local purposes. In the event of their neglecting to act, in certain cases the Justices in Sessions could amerce the county. The officers appointed at the Sessions were a County Treasurer and Assessors. The Clerk of the Peace, as in England, was appointed by the Custos, as Chairman of the Sessions ; the office of Sheriff was a government appointment. Practically, in Nova Scotia, as in the other provinces, the English county system prevailed.
If we now turn to the province of New Brunswick, we find that a similar system existed until very recently. This province originally formed part of the extensive and ill-defined territory known in French times as "Acadie." For some years it was governed by the Governor and Council of Nova Scotia, until the settlement of a large number of Loyalists on the banks of the St. John River brought about a change in its political constitution. Then the Imperial authorities thought it expedient to create a separate province, with a government consisting, in the first instance, of a Governor and Council of twelve members, exercising both executive and legislative powers, ar ", eventually, of an assembly of twenty-six members.
On the 17th of May, 1785, a charter was granted by Governor Carleton for the incorporation of Parr Town, on the east side of the St. John River, and of Carleton, on the west side, as a city under the name of St. John.1 The inhabitants
1 " The Governor of Nova Scotia-which then included New Brunswick- at the time of the arrival of the Loyalists, was John Parr, Esq., and St. John was at first named Parr Town, after that gentleman." Jack's Prize Essay on the History of St. John, p. 65.
48
Local Government in Canada.
[222
were given a Mayor, Recorder, six Alderman and six assist- ants, and the city was divided into six wards.1 St. John, consequently, was the first city incorporated in British North America, and it remained so for many years, as Halifax and other towns were refused the same privileges for a long while.
In 1786 the Governor, Council and Assembly passed an act providing that the Justices of the General Sessions of the Peace for the several counties of the province should annually appoint, out of every town or parish in the same, Overseers, Clerk, Constables, Clerks of Markets, Assessors, Surveyors, Weighers of Hay, Fence Viewers. It will be seen from this and other acts that the divisions for local purposes consisted of counties, townships and parishes. In 1786, an act was passed for the better ascertaining and confirming of the boun- daries of the several counties2 within the province, and for sub- dividing them into towns or parishes "for the more convenient and orderly distribution of the respective inhabitants, to enable them, in their respective districts, to fulfil the several duties incumbent on them, and for the better administration of justice therein."
Town and parish appear to have been always synonymous terms in this province. In the interpretation clause of a recent act, "parish " is defined as " parish, incorporated town or city."3 This designation of one of the civil divisions of New Brunswick is, no doubt, so much evidence of the desire of the early settlers, many of whom were from Virginia and Maryland,4 to introduce the institutions of their old homes.
1 Murdoch, iii. 42.
? " The names of the original eight counties into which New Brunswick was divided, are: Saint John, Westmoreland, York, Charlotte, Northum- berland, King's, Queen's, and Sunbury. These counties were confirmed by law February 10th, 1786." Jack's Prize Essay, p. 74. 3N. B. Cons. Stat., c. 100, s. i.
4 Among the members of the first Council of New Brunswick, 1784, were Chief Justice Ludlow, formerly a Judge of the Supreme Court of New York; Judge Israel Allen, of Pennsylvania; Gabriel G. Ludlow, of Mary- land; Judge John Saunders, of Virginia. Not a few Virginia Loyalists settled in New Brunswick. Murdoch, iii. 42.
49
Local Government in Canada.
223]
In all of the British colonies, indeed, the town system had long been in use. In the first instance, the colonists intro- duced the local institutions of the parent State, with such modifications as were suitable to the conditions of their exist- ence. But the "parish " of the colonies, as a rule, bore little resemblance to the historic " parish " of England. The latter was simply the old township of the Saxons in an ecclesiastical form : " The district assigned to a church or priest ; to whom its ecclesiastical dues and generally also its tithes are paid. The boundaries of the parish and the township or townships with which it coincides, are generally the same; in small parishes the idea and even name of township is frequently, at the present day, sunk in that of the parish ; and all the bus- iness that is not manorial is despatched in vestry meetings, which are however primarily meetings of the township for church purposes." 1
Throughout New England the township was the political unit. It is true that the religious convictions of the people dominated in all their arrangements for the administration of civil affairs. An eminent authority has said of the people of Massachusetts : " They founded a civil state upon a basis which should support the worship of God according to their con- scientious convictions of duty ; and an ecclesiastical state com- bined with it, which should sustain and be in harmony with the civil government, excluding what was antagonistic to the welfare of either."2 In England the parish was invested with civil functi 's, and the old Saxon township became gradually absorbed in .ne former. But in New England the parish and township had really distinct meanings. Whenever the word "parish " was there used, it was to denote the township from an ecclesiastical point of view, as well as a portion of the town- ship not possessing town rights. Consequently the "parish of Massachusetts" was essentially a term used for religious
1 Stubbs, Const. Hist. i. 85.
" Parker's Lowell Institute Lectures, p. 403.
4
50
Local Government in Canada. [224
purposes, and had no reference to civil matters which were all discharged in the township or political unit of the com- munity.1 In Virginia, however, the parish attained consider- able prominence in the administration of local affairs. The early settlers of the old Dominion were men wedded to the ancient institutions of the parent State, and they set up the system long established in England, with such changes as were adapted to the circumstances of the country. Parishes were originally coterminous with the old plantations or with the counties, and covered immense areas. In the course of time, when the country became more settled, counties were laid out and divided into parishes. Some of these parishes sent representatives to the House of Burgesses in early times of the colony, and they were always important local units in the civil organization of the country. It does not, however, appear that they ever possessed powers entirely equal to those enjoyed in the parent State.2 No doubt the Loyalists who settled in New Brunswick and other sections of British North America were so accustomed to this division that they naturally intro- duced it when they came to organize the new province. We have already seen, in our sketch of local government in Upper Canada, that there was an effort made to establish parishes in that section It is only in New Brunswick, however, that the name has become permanently inscribed on the civil organization of the country. I do not of course refer in this connection to French Canada, where the division was consti- tuted purely for ecclesiastical purposes, and had no relation to the English parish which is the descendant of the township of early English times-itself developed from the mark com- munities of the Teutonic tribes.3
1 The English Parish in America; Local Institutions in Virginia, by E. Ingle, Johns Hopkins University Studies, vol. iii. 154.
$ Johns Hopkins University Studies, vol. iii. 154, 155.
3 " Primarily the parish is merely the old township in its ecclesiastical aspect. We can, therefore, trace the descent of the modern civil parish through the ecclesiastical parish, up to the old Saxon township. It may
51
Local Government in Canada.
225]
The Island of Prince Edward, originally known as St. John's, formed part of the province of Nova Scotia until 1769, when it was created a separate province, with a Lieu- tenant-Governor, a combined Executive and Legislative Coun- cil, and in 1773 a Legislative Assembly of eighteen members.1 The history of this island is interesting from the fact that it gives an instance of a land system which kept the province in a state of agitation for many years, until it was finally set- tled soon after the union with the Dominion. The island was surveyed by Captain Holland in 1765, and in 1767 divided into sixty-seven townships, containing in the aggre- gate 1,360,600 acres.2 This extensive tract was conveyed by ballot, with some reservations, to officers and other individuals who had claims or supposed claims on the Crown, and a landed monopoly was in this way established in the island. The grantees were to settle in the province or establish a certain number of settlers within ten years, but these proper conditions were practically laid aside and an absentee owner- ship allowed to grow up, to the great injury of the tenants who farmed the lands. In those days the Crown availed itself lavishly of its prerogatives with very little regard to future settlement on the public lands of the country over which it exercised dominion. Previous to the arrangement
be safely said that the English parish is the legitimate descendant of the Teutonic mark, and that the English parish, the New England township, the French or Belgian commune, and the village community of Northern India, are bu ariations of one common type which reproduces itself wherever the Aryan race is found. Whether the Teutonic mark system was ever introduced into England by our Saxon forefathers is an open question, but the Saxon township owed many of its distinguishing charac- teristics to the mark system. The township was so called from the tun or hedge which surrounded the group of homesteads." Chalmers' Local Government in England, p. 36.
1 Bourinot, p. 69. See also copy of commission of the first Lieutenant- Governor, Captain W. Paterson. Canada Sessional Papers, 1883, No. 70, p. 2.
2 Campbell's History, pp. 3, 19. Colonial Office List, 1885, p. 38.
52
Local Government in Canada. [226
just mentioned, a British nobleman had applied to the King for a grant of the whole island. His proposition was to divide it into hundreds1 as in England, or baronies as in Ireland. These hundreds or baronies were to be divided into manors over which would preside a Court Baron, in accordance with the old English system. Townships were to be carved out of hundreds; Courts Leet and Courts Baron were also to be established under the direction of the lord paramount. A local historian has clearly epitomized the whole proposition as follows: "There was to be a lord paramount of the whole island, forty capital lords of forty hundreds, four hundred lords of manors, and eight hundred freeholders. For assurance of the said tenures, eight hundred thousand acres were to be set apart for establishments for trade and commerce in the most suitable parts of the island, including one county town, forty market towns, and four hundred villages." Each hundred or barony was to consist of somewhat less than eight square miles, and the lord of each was bound to erect and maintain forever a castle or blockhouse as the capital seat of his property, and as a place of retreat and rendezvous for the settlers ; and thus, on any alarm of sudden danger, every inhabitant might have a place of security within four miles of his habitation. A cannon
1 It does not appear that "hundreds" were ever established in Canada. The union of a number of townships for the purpose of judicial admin- istration, peace and defence, formed what is known as the hundred or wapentake, in Anglo-Saxon times. "It is very probable," writes Stubbs (i. 96, 97) "that the colonists of Britain arranged themselves in hundreds of warriors; it is not probable that the country was carved into equal districts. The only conclusion that seems reasonable is that, under the name of geographical hundreds, we have the variously sized pagi or dis- tricts in which the hundred warriors settled." The first civil divisions of the infant settlement of Maryland were called "hundreds," and the election district of "Bay Hundred" on the eastern shore of the State, is a memorial of those old times. Local Institutions of Maryland, by L. W. Wilhelm, p. 39. A similar division was also known in the early history of Virginia. Ingle, pp. 40-47.
53
Local Government in Canada.
227]
fired at one of the castles would be heard at the next, and thus the firing would proceed in regular order from castle to castle, and be "the means," adds the noble memoralist, " of putting every inhabitant of the whole island under arms and in motion in the space of one quarter of an hour."1
But this proposition was not entertained by the King, who had had some experience of a similar plan which failed in Carolina.2 The division, however, of the whole island, among a few proprietors, appears to have had consequences probably fully as disastrous as would have been the concession to a single nobleman, who might have taken a deep interest in its settlement, as was notably done by Lord Baltimore in Mary- land.
The island was originally laid out in counties,8 parishes, and townships. The county lines appear to have been run from north to south across the island at two of its widest parts. Where the boundaries of townships or parishes touch the county lines, they are coterminous therewith. The same is true of the township and parish lines. The average area of the townships is 20,000 acres, though number 66, the last regular township surveyed, contains only 6,000, and number 67, an irregular block in the centre of the island, is somewhat larger than the average.
Each parish includes from three to six townships. In addition to the territorial divisions before mentioned, there was laid out in each county, at the time of the original survey,
1 Campbell's History, ch. i. p. 11.
2 Shaftesbury and Locke attempted to frame a constitution for Carolina, which would "connect political power with hereditary wealth." Bancroft's History of the United States, ii. 146.
3 " In 1768 the Island was divided into three counties :- (1.) King's, con- taining 20 townships, 412,100 acres; county town, Georgetown, 4,000 acres (Les Trois Rivières). (2.) Queen's, 23 townships, 486,600 acres; county town, Charlottetown, 7,300 acres (Port la Joie). (3.) Prince County, 23 townships, 467,000 acres; county town, Princetown, 4,000 acres (Mal- peque)." Murdoch's History, ii. 474. The names in parentheses are those of the old French settlements.
54
Local Government in Canada. [228
a site for a chef lieu, or county town. For Queen's County, a town plot was laid out on the site of the present city of Char- lottetown, at the head of Hillsboro' Bay, where the North- West and Hillsboro' Rivers unite. The town of King's County was laid out at Georgetown, on the south-east coast, on Cardigan Bay, and, for Prince County, a town site was sur- veyed on the east side of Richmond or Malpeque Bay, near its mouth. To each of these. town sites there were attached distinct areas of land called " commons " 1 and "royalties," 2 which covered about 6,000 acres each, and were not included in any of the townships. Instead of being reserved for their original purpose, the common and royalty attached to each town site were subsequently sold by the Crown as farm lands, and are now occupied and cultivated as such, though the city of Charlottetown extends beyond the old town site, and covers a portion of the common. The county town of Prince County was not established at Princetown, but at a point on the shores of Bedeque Bay, on the south coast, now called " Summerside."
As we have just seen, there was an attempt made in Prince Edward Island to establish parishes as in other parts of the old colonies, but, in the course of time, these local divisions became practically useless, and are seldom mentioned now, except in legal proceedings connected with old land titles. It is only in Prince Edward Island, I may add, that we come across the term "royalties " as reservations of the crown, in
1 These common lands were a memorial of Anglo-Saxon times. "The pleasant green commons or squares which occur in the midst of towns and cities in England and the United States most probably originated from the coalescence of adjacent mark-communities, whereby the border-land used in common by all was brought into the centre of the new aggregate. . . . In old towns of New England. ... the little park. ... was once the common pasture of the town."-Fiske's American Political Ideas, pp. 39, 40.
2 " In its primary and natural sense 'royalties' is merely the English translation or equivalent of regalitates, jura regalia, jura regia." See an interesting definition of the term given by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, Legal News (Montreal), vi. 244; and Bourinot, p. 690.
55
Local Government in Canada.
229]
the vicinity of the old settlements. In the other provinces, however, provision was made for the establishment of com- mons,1 though, in the course of time, they, too, in the majority of cases, were leased for private purposes and ceased to become available for the general use of the community. The Legis- lature of Nova Scotia, for instance, passed an act in 1816 to lease twenty-five acres of the Halifax common, in half acre lots, for 999 years.2
In this island, the several divisions to which we have re- ferred appear to have been established chiefly for representative and judicial purposes. No system of local government ever existed in the counties and parishes, as in other parts of America. The Legislature has been always a municipal coun- cil for the whole island.
VI .- THE ESTABLISHMENT OF MUNICIPAL INSTITUTIONS IN THE PROVINCES .OF THE DOMINION.
We have now brought this review of local government up to the time when a new era in the history of political insti- tutions commenced in all the provinces of British North America. The troubles which culminated in the Rebellion of 1837-8 led to the reunion of the Canadas and the concession of a more liberal system of government to the people. The British authorities recognized the necessity of leaving the people free to control their own internal affairs, and of giving up that system of paternal government which had worked so unsatisfactorily. Between 1840 and 1854 all the provinces were granted responsible government in the real sense of the term, and entered almost immediately on a career of political and national progress which was in remarkable contrast with the condition of things previous to 1840. The legislation of the province was distinguished by greater vigor as soon as the
! Nova Scotia Archives, Aikens, p. 700.
" Murdoch, iii. 415.
56
Local Government in Canada. [230
people obtained full control of their own taxation and revenue. The result was the improvement of the communications of the country and the passage of measures in the direction of in- creasing the responsibilities of the people in the management of their local affairs.
In the speech with which Lord Sydenham, then Governor- General, opened the Legislature of 1841, he called attention to the fact that it was "highly desirable that the principles of local self-government, which already prevail to some extent throughout that part of the province which was formerly Upper Canada, should receive a more extended application and that the people should exercise a greater control over their own local affairs."} It had been proposed to make such a sys- tem a part of the Constitution of 1840;2 but the clauses on the subject were struck out of the bill during its passage in the House of Commons on the ground that such a purely local matter should be left to the Legislature of the province.3 The Legislature went energetically to work to provide for the
1 Assembly Journals, 1841, p. 8.
2 " The establishment of a good system of municipal institutions through- out these provinces is a matter of vital importance./A general legislature, which manages the private business of every parish, in addition to the com- mon business of the county, wields a power which no single body, however popular in its constitution, ought to have-a power which must be destruc- tive of any constitutional balance. The true principle of limiting popular power is that apportionment of it in many different depositories, which has been adopted in all the most free and stable States of the Union. Instead of confiding the whole collection and distribution of all the revenues raised in any county for all general and local purposes to a single representative body, the power of local assessment, and the application of the funds arising from it, should be intrusted to local management. It is in vain to expect that this sacrifice of power will be voluntarily made by any representative body. The establishment of municipal institutions for the whole country should be made a part of every colonial constitution, and the prerogative of the Crown should be constantly interposed to check any encroachment on the functions of the local bodies, until the people should become alive, as most assuredly they almost immediately would be, to the necessity of pro- tecting their local privileges." Lord Durham's Report, p. 92.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.