townships and counties with corresponding
divisions in Massachusetts and Virginia.

7. Contrast them in convenience and in picturesqueness.

8. What had the convenience of the government system to do with the
settlement of the West?

9. What were the divisions of the township, and what disposition was
made of them?

10. What important reservations were made in the townships?

11. Show how these reservations involved a kind of taxation.

12. What profound influence has the reservation for schools exerted
upon local government?

13. Why did the county system prevail at first?

Section 3. _The Representative Township-County System in the
West_.

[Sidenote: The town-meeting in Michigan.] The first western state to
adopt the town-meeting was Michigan, where the great majority of the
settlers had come from New England, or from central New York, which
was a kind of westward extension of New England.[9] Counties were
established in Michigan Territory in 1805, and townships were first
incorporated in 1825. This was twelve years before Michigan became a
state. At first the powers of the town-meeting were narrowly
limited. It elected the town and county officers, but its power of
appropriating money seems to have been restricted to the purpose
of extirpating noxious animals and weeds. In 1827, however, it was
authorized to raise money for the support of schools, and since then
its powers have steadily increased, until now they approach those of
the town-meeting in Massachusetts.

[Footnote 9: "Of the 496 members of the Michigan Pioneer Association
in 1881, 407 are from these sections" [New England and New York].
Bemis, _Local Government in Michigan and the Northwest_, J. H. U.
Studies, I., v]

[Sidenote: Settlement of Illinois.]
The history of Illinois presents an extremely interesting example of
rivalry and conflict between the town system of New England and the
county system of the South. Observe that this great state is so long
that, while the parallel of latitude starting from its northern
boundary runs through Marblehead in Massachusetts, the parallel
through its southernmost point, at Cairo, runs a little south of
Petersburg in Virginia. In 1818, when Illinois framed its state
government and was admitted to the Union, its population was chiefly
in the southern half, and composed for the most part of pioneers from
Virginia and Virginia's daughter-state Kentucky. These men brought
with them the old Virginia c