haustible fund of wealth,
and able to do all manner of things for the benefit of "the People."
Some such notion as this, more often implied than expressed, is very
common, and it is inexpressibly dear to demagogues. It is the prolific
root from which springs that luxuriant crop of humbug upon which
political tricksters thrive as pigs fatten upon corn. In point of
fact no such government, armed with a magic fund of its own, has ever
existed upon the earth. No government has ever yet used any money
for public purposes which it did not first take from its own
people,--unless when it may have plundered it from some other people
in victorious warfare.

The inhabitant of a New England town is perpetually reminded that "the
Government" is "the People." Although he may think loosely about
the government of his state or the still more remote government at
Washington, he is kept pretty close to the facts where local affairs
are concerned, and in this there is a political training of no small
value.

[Sidenote: Educational value of the town-meeting.]
In the kind of discussion which it provokes, in the necessity of facing
argument with argument and of keeping one's temper under control, the
town-meeting is the best political training school in existence. Its
educational value is far higher than that of the newspaper, which, in
spite of its many merits as a diffuser of information, is very apt to do
its best to bemuddle and sophisticate plain facts. The period when
town-meetings ware most important from the wide scope of their
transactions was the period of earnest and sometimes stormy discussion
that ushered in our Revolutionary war. Country towns were then of more
importance relatively than now; one country town--Boston--was at the
same time a great political centre; and its meetings were presided over
and addressed by men of commanding ability, among whom Samuel Adams,
"the man of the town-meeting," was foremost[3]. In those days
great principles of government were discussed with a wealth of knowledge
and stated with masterly skill in town-meeting.

[Footnote 3: The phrase is Professor Hosmer's: see his _Samuel Adams, the
Man of the Town Meeting_, in "Johns Hopkins Univ. Studies," vol. II. no.
iv.; also his _Samuel Adams_, in "American Statesmen" series; Boston,
1885.]

[Sidenote: By-laws.]
The town-meeting is to a very limited extent a legislative body; it can
make sundry regulations for the management of its local affairs