In what are
called the New England States, the best governed portion of the
Union, each town is a corporation, having important powers and
the charge of all purely local matters--chooses its own
officers, manages its own finances, takes charge of its own
poor, of its own roads and bridges, and of the education of its
own children. Between these corporations and the State
government are the counties, that take charge of another class
of interests, more general than those under the charge of the
town, but less general than those of the State. In the great
central and Northwestern States the same system obtains, though
less completely carried out. In the Southern and Southwestern
States, the town corporations hardly exist, and the rights and
interests of the poorer classes of persons have been less well
protected in them than in the Northern and Eastern States. But
with the abolition of slavery, and the lessening of the
influence of the wealthy slaveholding class, with the return of
peace and the revival of agricultural, industrial, and
commercial prosperity, the New England system, in its main
features, is pretty sure to be gradually introduced, or
developed, and the division of powers in the State to be as
effectively and as systematically carried out as it is between
the General government and the particular or State governments.
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