In England, therefore, the free village-community, though perhaps
nowhere found in its primitive integrity, has nevertheless survived in
partially transfigured forms which have played no unimportant part in
the history of the English people. In one shape or another the assembly
of freemen for purposes of local legislation has always existed. The
Puritans who colonized New England, therefore, did not invent the
town-meeting. They were familiar already with the proceedings of the
vestry-meeting and the manorial courts, but they were severed now from
church and from aristocracy. So they had but to discard the
ecclesiastical and lordly terminology, with such limitations as they
involved, and to reintegrate the separate jurisdictions into one,--and
forthwith the old assembly of the township, founded in immemorial
tradition, but revivified by new thoughts and purposes gained through
ages of political training, emerged into fresh life and entered upon a
more glorious career.

It is not to an audience which speaks the English language that I need
to argue the point that the preservation of local self-government is of
the highest importance for the maintenance of a rich and powerful
national life. As we contemplate the vicissitudes of local
self-government in the various portions of the Aryan world, we see the
contrasted fortunes of France and England illustrating for us most
forcibly the significance of this truth. For the preservation of local
self-government in England various causes may be assigned; but of these
there are two which may be cited as especially prominent. In the first
place, owing to the peculiar circumstances of the Teutonic settlement of
Britain, the civilization of England previous to the Norman Conquest was
but little affected by Roman ideas or institutions. In the second place
the thrusting down of the old thegnhood by the Norman Conquest (to which
I have already alluded) checked the growth of a _noblesse_ or _adel_ of