hannel to their barbarian German home, and to the people described by
Tacitus in his Germania, for the origin, as far as we can trace it, of
this part of our inheritance. These people were famed for their spirit
of independence and freedom. The mass are described as freemen, voting
together in the great assemblies of the tribe, and choosing their own
leaders or kings from the class of nobles, who were nobles not as
constituting a distinct and privileged caste. "It was their greater
estates and the greater consequence which accompanied these that marked
their rank." When we first learn of these assemblies, they are
out-of-doors, under the broad canopy of heaven alone, but the time came,
as the rathhaus of the German town to-day attests, when they built the
common hall or town-house; and we, to-day, in this remote and then
unknown and unconjectured land of the West, are in this regard their
heirs as well as descendants.[B]

[Footnote A: Green's Short History of the English People, chap. ii, sec.
6.]

[Footnote B: The present rathhaus of the quaint old city of Nuremberg,
built in 1619, is a notable building, much visited by travelers. Around
the wall of the hall within runs the legend: "Eins manns red ist eine
halbe red, man soll die teyl verhoeren bed,"--"One man's talk is a half
talk; one should hear both sides."]

In what, then, is the New England town-house more than, or different
from, the English town-house? In this, that it is the state-house of a
little democratic republic which came into existence of and by itself of
a natural necessity, and not merely governs itself, making all the laws
of local need and executing them--levying taxes, maintaining schools,
and taking charge of its own poor, of roads, bridges, and all matters
pertaining to the health, peace, and safety of all within its bounds, in
a word, all things which it can do for itself,--but also in
confederation with other little democratic republics has called into
being, and clothed with all the power it has for those matters of common
need which the town cannot do, the State. The State of Massachusetts,
from the day that the people created the General Court the body it still
is, by electing deputies from the towns,--representatives we now call
them,--to sit instead of the whole body of freemen, with the governor
and council, for the performance of all acts of legislation for the
common good, is the outgrowth of and exists only by virtue of the towns.