and of providing for miscellaneous emergencies by what might be termed
special legislation. Besides the annual meeting held in the spring for
transacting all this local business, the selectmen are required to call
a meeting in the autumn of each year for the election of state and
county officers, each second year for the election of representatives to
the federal Congress, and each fourth year for the election of the
President of the United States.

It only remains to add that, as an assembly of the whole people becomes
impracticable in a large community, so when the population of a township
has grown to ten or twelve thousand, the town-meeting is discontinued,
the town is incorporated as a city, and its affairs are managed by a
mayor, a board of aldermen, and a common council, according to the
system adopted in London in the reign of Edward I. In America,
therefore, the distinction between cities and towns has nothing to do
with the presence or absence of a cathedral, but refers solely to
differences in the communal or municipal government. In the city the
common council, as a representative body, replaces (in a certain sense)
the town-meeting; a representative government is substituted for a pure
democracy. But the city officers, like the selectmen of towns, are
elected annually; and in no case (I believe) has municipal government
fallen into the hands of a self-perpetuating body, as it has done in so
many instances in England owing to the unwise policy pursued by the
Tudors and Stuarts in their grants of charters.

It is only in New England that the township system is to be found in its
completeness. In several southern and western states the administrative
unit is the county, and local affairs are managed by county
commissioners elected by the people. Elsewhere we find a mixture of the
county and township systems. In some of the western states settled by