o mean share in keeping alive the spirit of
local independence and self-government among our people. As regards
efficiency of administration, it has achieved commendable success,
except in the matter of rural highways; and if our roads are worse
than those of any other civilized country, that is due not so much
to imperfect administrative methods as to other causes,--such as the
sparseness of population, the fierce extremes of sunshine and frost,
and the fact that since this huge country began to be reclaimed from
the wilderness, the average voter, who has not travelled in Europe,
knows no more about good roads than he knows about the temples of
Paestum or the pictures of Tintoretto, and therefore does not realize
what demands he may reasonably make.

This last consideration applies in some degree, no doubt, to the
ill-paved and filthy streets which are the first things to arrest
one's attention in most of our great cities. It is time for us now to
consider briefly our general system of city government, in its origin
and in some of its most important features.

[Sidenote: The Boston town-meeting in 1820.]
Representative government in counties is necessitated by the extent of
territory covered; in cities it is necessitated by the multitude
of people. When the town comes to have a very large population, it
becomes physically impossible to have town-meetings. No way could be
devised by which all the taxpayers of the city of New York could be
assembled for discussion. In 1820 the population of Boston was about
40,000, of whom rather more than 7,000 were voters qualified to attend
the town-meetings. Consequently when a town-meeting was held on any
exciting subject in Faneuil Hall, those only who obtained places near
the moderator could even hear the discussion. A few busy or interested
individuals easily obtained the management of the most important
affairs in an assembly in which the greater number could have neither
voice nor hearing. When the subject was not generally exciting,
town-meetings were usually composed of the selectmen, the town
officers, and thirty or forty inhabitants. Those who thus came were
for the most part drawn to it from some official duty or private
interest, which, when performed or attained, they generally troubled
themselves but little, or not at all, about the other business of the
meeting.[2]

[Footnote 2: Quincy's _Municipal History of Boston_, p. 28.]

Under these circumstances it was foun