place to another than in a pot or other vessell fit for such a purpose and close covered.”[72] Until the present century, however, this ordinance seems to have been regarded as sufficient protection against the dangers of conflagration, thus cutting off that heavy item of modern town expenses; while, so far as salaries were concerned, volumes are contained in the following clause with which the vote of 1651, defining the duties and powers of the selectmen, closed;--“Sixthly--Wee willingly grant they shall have their Dynners uppon the Towne’s charge when they meet about the Towns affayres.”[73] The town government of those days was, indeed, the simplest government conceivable. There were the clergyman (for parish and town were one), the school-master, the selectmen, the deputy, the constable and the pound-keeper. In the earliest days it was even simpler yet than this, for frequent meetings of the whole town were called. But even then it was speedily found that this led to abuses,[74] and, in 1651, a system of two regular town meetings in each year was adopted, and the powers of the selectmen were specifically defined.[75] The continuous record of these meetings through more than a century, at once reveals the slow, unconscious growth of a great political system, and supplies the amplest evidence of the sameness of a colonial village life. To the student in the science of government these volumes of the Weymouth town records are replete with interest. In them the growth of a system from the root up may be studied. As an observing man turns over the ill-spelt, almost illegible pages, they grow luminous in their bearing on many of the most distressing problems of the age. As Gibbon, from an experience among the yeoman militia of England, derived a certain comprehension of the legionaries of Rome,--so the early records of the New England towns make it most manifest to us why the horrors of 1793, and the later excesses of the Commune, are possible in France, and why nothing other than a republic is now possible in New England. In these records we see parliamentary institutions stripped of their non-essentials and reduced to first principles;--we see that the New England town-meeting democracy was the purest and simplest government of the people, for the people, which the world has yet produced. Here is a perfect equality, controlled by an almost iron law of usage. Year after year every question of common concernment is settled in general town-meeting by a vote of the majority, after a free and full discussion, conducted in perfect deference to a rude parliamentary law. The greater number rules, but the minority ever asserts its rights, which are always freely conceded. The protests of the _contra dicentes_ make a part of the records; the final appeal is made to the courts of law; the idea of an ultimate resort to force is never even suggested, much less discussed. Thus, through our town records, we are