d necessary in 1822 to drop
the town-meeting altogether and devise a new form of government for
Boston. After various plans had been suggested and discussed, it was
decided that the new government should be vested in a Mayor; a select
council of eight persons to be called the Board of Aldermen; and a
Common Council of forty-eight persons, four from each of twelve wards
into which the city was to be divided. All these officials were to be
elected by the people. At the same time the official name "Town of
Boston" was changed to "City of Boston."

[Sidenote: Distinctions between towns and cities.]
There is more or less of history involved in these offices and
designations, to which we may devote a few words of explanation. In
New England local usage there is an ambiguity in the word "town."
As an official designation it means the inhabitants of a township
considered as a community or corporate body. In common parlance it
often means the patch of land constituting the township on the map, as
when we say that Squire Brown's elm is "the biggest tree in town." But
it still oftener means a collection of streets, houses, and families
too large to be called a village, but without the municipal government
that characterizes a city. Sometimes it is used _par excellence_
for a city, as when an inhabitant of Cambridge, itself a large
suburban city, speaks of going to Boston as going "into town." But
such cases are of course mere survivals from the time when the suburb
was a village. In American usage generally the town is something
between village and city, a kind of inferior or incomplete city. The
image which it calls up in the mind is of something urban and not
rural. This agrees substantially with the usage in European history,
where "town" ordinarily means a walled town or city as contrasted with
a village. In England the word is used either in this general sense,
or more specifically as signifying an inferior city, as in America.
But the thing which the town lacks, as compared with the complete
city, is very different in America from what it is in England. In
America it is municipal government--with mayor, aldermen, and common
council--which must be added to the town in order to make it a city.
In England the town may (and usually does) have this municipal
government; but it is not distinguished by the Latin name "city"
unless it has a cathedral and a bishop. Or in other words the English
city is, or has been, the capital of a