*185. Periods in Local Governmental History.*--No description of a governmental system can be adequate which does not take into account the agencies and modes by which the powers of government are brought close to the people, as well as those by which the people in greater or lesser measure regulate locally their own public affairs. More especially is this true in the instance of a government such as the English in which local self-control is a fundamental rather than an incidental fact. The history of local institutions in England covers an enormous stretch of time, as well as a remarkable breadth of public organization and activity, and by no means its least important phases are those which have appeared in most recent times. Speaking broadly, it may be said to fall into four very unequal periods. The first, extending from the settlement of the Saxons to the Norman Conquest, was marked by the establishment of the distinctive English units of administration--shire, hundred, and township--and by the planting of the principle of broadly popular local control. The second, extending from the Conquest to the fourteenth century, was characterized by a general increase of centralization and a corresponding decrease of local autonomy. The third, extending from the fourteenth century to the adoption of the Local Government Act of 1888, was pre-eminently a period of aristocratic control of local affairs, of government by the same squirearchy which prior to 1832, if not 1867, was accustomed to dominate Parliament. The last period, that from 1888 to the present time, has been notable in a special degree for the democratization and systematization of local governing arrangements which has taken place within it.