ch is so perfectly
natural that wherever a number of men are collected it seems to
constitute itself.

The town, or tithing, as the smallest division of a community, must
necessarily exist in all nations, whatever their laws and customs
may be: if man makes monarchies and establishes republics, the first
association of mankind seems constituted by the hand of God. But
although the existence of the township is coeval with that of man, its
liberties are not the less rarely respected and easily destroyed. A
nation is always able to establish great political assemblies, because
it habitually contains a certain number of individuals fitted by their
talents, if not by their habits, for the direction of affairs. The
township is, on the contrary, composed of coarser materials, which are
less easily fashioned by the legislator. The difficulties which attend
the consolidation of its independence rather augment than diminish with
the increasing enlightenment of the people. A highly civilized community
spurns the attempts of a local independence, is disgusted at its
numerous blunders, and is apt to despair of success before the
experiment is completed. Again, no immunities are so ill protected from
the encroachments of the supreme power as those of municipal bodies in
general: they are unable to struggle, single-handed, against a strong
or an enterprising government, and they cannot defend their cause with
success unless it be identified with the customs of the nation and
supported by public opinion. Thus until the independence of townships is
amalgamated with the manners of a people it is easily destroyed, and
it is only after a long existence in the laws that it can be thus
amalgamated. Municipal freedom is not the fruit of human device; it
is rarely created; but it is, as it were, secretly and spontaneously
engendered in the midst of a semi-barbarous state of society.
The constant action of the laws and the national habits, peculiar
circumstances, and above all time, may consolidate it; but there is
certainly no nation on the continent of Europe which has experienced
its advantages. Nevertheless local assemblies of citizens constitute
the strength of free nations. Town-meetings are to liberty what primary
schools are to science; they bring it within the people's reach, they
teach men how to use and how to enjoy it. A nation may establish
a system of free government, but without the spirit of municipal
institutions it cannot hav