The Genesis of the Massachusetts Town, and the Development of Town-Meeting Government (Classic Reprint)
Description:... Excerpt from The Genesis of the Massachusetts Town, and the Development of Town-Meeting Government England, I found absolutely nothing in the case of this town (braintree) to support the theories referred to. While un doubtedly, as Mr. Freeman has observed in another connec tion, the institutions of every one of the older Massachusetts towns are part of the general institutions of the English people, as those again are part of the general institutions of the Teutonic race, and those are again part of the general institu tions of the whole Aryan family yet, while a general re semblance, however striking, is in itself no evidence of descent, it is easy to give altogether too great weight to simili tudes and analogies. In approaching an investigation of this sort, therefore, it is well to bear in mind a remark of Sir Henry Maine in his first lecture on Village Communities, that it is the characteristic error of the direct observer of nu familiar social or juridical phenomena: to compare them too hastily with familiar phenomena apparently of the same kind and Sir Henry further adds that the greatest cau tion must be observed in all speculations on the inferences derivable from parallel usages.
But while the Braintree records afforded no support to re mote genetic theories, the examination of them soon made it apparent that, for reasons presently to be stated, Braintree was not one of the towns in the history of which the subject could be advantageously studied. It was equally clear that it could be studied only in the original records of some properly selected towns; for the indications all were that the advo cates of remote descent had fallen into the not uncommon error of looking too far afield for that which was in fact close at hand. Accordingly, in order to secure a sufficiently wide basis for generalization, I examined the original records, church as well as town, of Hingham, Weymouth, Dorchester, Ded ham, and Cambridge, as well as those of Boston. All of the towns named, organized prior to 1636, are among the original Massachusetts towns; and the evidence on the subject of the genesis of the town and town-meeting government, to be de rived from their records, it is the object of this paper to set forth in detail.
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