council, for the performance of all acts of legislation for the common good, is the outgrowth of and exists only by virtue of the towns. The towns created it, compose it, send up to it its heartand-life blood. This it is which makes the New England town unique, attracting the attention and interest of intelligent foreigners who visit our shores. Judge Parker says: "I very well recollect the curiosity expressed by some of the gentlemen in the suite of Lafayette, on his visit to this country in 1825, respecting these town organizations and their powers and operations." In the same connection he adds that "a careful examination of the history of the New England towns will show that," instead of being modeled after the town of our Anglo-Saxon ancestors, or the free cities of the continent of the twelfth century, "they were not founded or modeled on precedent" at all. Mr. E. A. Freeman, however, puts it more truthfully in saying: "The circumstances of New England called the primitive assembly (that is, the Homeric agora, Athenian ekklesia, Roman comitia, Swiss landesgemeinde, English folk-moot) again into being, when in the older England it was wellnigh forgotten. What in Switzerland was a survival was in New England rather a revival." *

Our New England town-house, therefore, is a symbol of institutions, partly original with our fathers, partly a priceless inheritance from Old England the land of our fathers, and nearly in the whole, if not quite, a regermination and new growth of old race instincts and practices on a new soil.

The New England town is not an institution of all the States, but its *Introduction to American Institutional History. Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and

Political Science.

principle has invaded the majority. To the West and Northwest it has been carried by the New Englander himself, and is being carried by him both directly and indirectly into the South and Southwest, and will show there in no great length of time its prevailing and vitalizing power.

It was Jefferson, himself a Virginian, reared in the midst of another system, aristocratical and central in its character, who said: "These wards, called townships in New England, are the vital principle of their governments, and have proved themselves the wisest invention ever devised by the wit of man for the perfect exercise of selfgovernment and for its preservation."

The New England town-house, therefore, is significant of more than its predecessor in England or Germany. While with them it means freedom in the management of local affairs, beyond them it means a relation to the State and the National government which they did not. It means not merely a broad basis for the general government in the people, that the people are the reason and remote source of governing power, but that they are themselves the governors. Every man who enters a New England town-house and casts his vote knows that that expression of his will is a force which reaches, or may reach, the Legislature of his State, the governor in his chair, the National Congress, and the President in the White House at Washington. He feels an interest therefore, and a responsibility which the voter in no other land in the world feels, and the town-house is an education to him in the art of self-government which no other country affords, and because of it the town is an institution teaching how to maintain government, local,

state, and general, and so bases that government in self-interest and beneficial experience, that it is a pledge of security and perpetuity as regards socialism, communism, and as it would seem every other revolutionary influence from within. It is in strong contrast with the commune of France. France is divided for the purposes of local government into departments; departments into arrondissements; and arrondissements into communes, the commune being the administrative unit. The department is governed by a préfet and a conseil-général, the préfet being appointed by the central government and directly under its control, and the conseil-général an elective body. The arrondissement is presided over by a sous-préfet and an elective

council. by a maire and a conseil-municipal. The conseil-municipal is an elecits tive body, but duties 66 consist in assisting and to some extent controlling the maire, and in the management of the communal affairs," but the maire is appointed by the central government and is liable to suspension by the préfet.

The commune is governed

The relation of the citizen to the general government in France is therefore totally different from that of the citizen of the United States to his general government, and the town organization is a school of free citizenship which the commune is not, and so far republican institutions in America have a guaranty which in France they have not.

AN exhaustless theme may be so outlined that fairly stated data will suggest the possibilities beyond.

Waterloo is incidentally related to the crowning laurels of Wellington; but, primarily, to the downfall of Napoleon, while rarely to the assured growth of genuine popular liberty.

No battle during the American Rebellion of 1861-65 was so really decisive as was the first battle of Bull's Run. As that Federal failure enforced the issue which freed four millions of

people from slavery, and had its sequence and culmination, through great struggle, in a perpetuated Union, so did the battle of Bunker Hill open wide the breach between Great Britain and the Colonies, and render American Independence inevitable.

The repulse of Howe at Breed's Hill practically ejected him from Boston, enforced his halt before Brooklyn, delayed him at White Plains, explained his hesitation at Bound Brook, near Somerset Court-House, in 1777, as well

as his sluggishness after the battle of Brandywine, and equally induced his inaction at Philadelphia, in 1778. 'Just as a similar resistance by Totleben at Sevastapol during the Crimean War prolonged that struggle for twelve months, so did the hastily constructed earthworks on Breed's Hill forewarn the assailants that every ridge might serve as a fortress, and every sand-hill become a cover, for a persistent and earnest foe.

Historical research and military criticism suggest few cases where so much has been realized by the efforts of a few men, in a few hours, during the shelter of one night, and by the light of one day.

The simple narrative has been the subject of much discussion. Its details have been shaped and colored, with supreme regard for the special claims of preferred candidates for distinction, until plain consideration of the issue then made, from a then made, from a purely military point of view, as introductory to a detail of the battle itself, cannot be barren of interest to the readers of a Magazine which treats largely of the local history of Massachusetts.

The city of Boston was girdled by rapidly increasing earthworks. These were wholly defensive, to resist assault from the British garrison, and not, at first, as cover for a regular siege approach against the Island Post. They soon became a direct agency to force the garrison to look to the sea alone for supplies or retreat.

Open war against Great Britain began with this environment of Boston. The partially organized militia responded promptly to call.

The vivifying force of the struggle through Concord, Lexington, and West

Cambridge (Arlington now), had so quickened the rapidly augmenting body of patriots, that they demanded offensive action and grew impatient for results. Having dropped fear of British troops, as such, they held a strong purpose to achieve that complete deliverance which their earnest resistance foreshadowed.

Lexington and Concord were, therefore, the exponents of that daring which made the occupation and resistance of Breed's Hill possible. The fancied invincibility of British discipline went down before the rifles of farmers; but the quickening sentiment, which gave nerve to the arm, steadiness to the heart, and force to the blow, was one of those historic expressions of human will and faith, which, under deep sense of wrong incurred and rights imperilled, overmasters discipline, and has the method of an inspired madness. The moral force of the energizing passion became overwhelming and supreme. No troops in the world, under similar conditions, could have resisted the movement.

The opposing forces did not alike estimate the issue, or the relations of the parties in interest. The troops sent forth to collect or destroy arms, rightfully in the hands of their countrymen, and not to engage an enemy, were under an involuntary restraint, which stripped them of real fitness to meet armed men, who were already on fire with the conviction that the representatives of national force were ployed to destroy national life.

em

The ostensible theory of the Crown was to reconcile the Colonies. The actual policy, and its physical demonstrations, repelled, and did not conciliate. Military acts, easily done by the force in hand, were needlessly done.

Military acts which would be wise upon the basis of anticipated resistance were not done.

Threats and blows toward those not deemed capable of resistance were freely expended. Operations of war, as against an organized and skilful enemy, were ignored. But the legacies of English law and the inheritance of English liberty had vested in the Col onies. Their eradication and their withdrawal were alike impossible. The time had passed for compromise or limitation of their enjoyment. The filial relation toward England was lost when it became that of a slave toward master, to be asserted by force. This the Americans understood when they environed Boston. This the British did This the British did not understand, until after the battle of Bunker Hill. The British worked as against a mob of rebels. The Americans made common cause, "liberty or death," against usurpation and tyranny.

THE OUTLOOK.

Reference to map, "Boston and vicinity," already used in the January number of this Magazine to illustrate the siege of Boston, will give a clear impression of the local surroundings, at the time of the American occupation of Charlestown Heights. The value of The value of that position was to be tested. The Americans had previously burned the lighthouses of the harbor. The islands of the bay were already miniature fields of conflict; and every effort of the garrison to use boats, and thereby secure the needed supplies of beef, flour, or fuel, only developed a counter system of boat operations, which neutralized the former and gradually limited the garrison to the range of its guns. This close grasp of the land approaches to Boston, so persistently

maintained, stimulated the Americans to catch a tighter hold, and force the garrison to escape by sea. The capture of that garrison would have placed unwieldy prisoners in their hands and have made outside operations impossible, as well as any practical disposition of the prisoners themselves, in treatment with Great Britain. Expulsion was the purpose of the rallying people.

General Gage fortified Boston Neck as early as 1774, and the First Continental Congress had promptly assured Massachusetts of its sympathy with her solemn protest against that act. It was also the intention of General Gage to fortify Dorchester Heights. Early in April, a British council of war, in which Clinton, Burgoyne, and Percy took part, unanimously advised the immediate occupation of Dorchester, as both indispensable to the protection of the shipping, and as assurance of access to the country for indispensable supplies.

General Howe already appreciated the mistake of General Gage, in his expedition to Concord, but still cherished such hope of an accommodation of the issue with the Colonies that he postponed action until a peaceable occupation of Dorchester Heights became impossible, and the growing earthworks of the besiegers already commanded Boston Neck.

General Gage had also advised, and wisely, the occupation of Charlestown Heights, as both necessary and feasible, without risk to Boston itself. He went so far as to announce that, in case of overt acts of hostility to such occupation, by the citizens of Charlestown, he would burn the town.

It was clearly sound military policy for the British to occupy both Dorchester and Charlestown Heights, at the