ry unit (the township or ward)
where he had legal residence. At an annual "town meeting" he would vote
for the "selectmen" or the ward council who would have in charge the
local interests of the primary unit, which would be comprehensive in the
case of a township, necessarily more limited in the case of a ward.
These local boards would elect their own chairmen who would also form
the legislative body of the county or the municipality. At the same town
meeting the voter would cast his ballot for a representative in the
lower legislative body of the state. In the smaller commonwealths each
township or ward would elect its own representative, but in states of
excessive population representation would have to be on the basis of
counties and municipalities, for no legislative body should contain more
than a very few hundred members. Nominations in the town meeting should
be _viva voce,_ elections by secret ballot. Legislation should be
primarily on the initiative of the selectmen or ward council, and voting
should be _viva voce._ With the exercise of his privilege of speaking
and voting at the meetings of his primary unit, the direct political
action of the citizen would cease.

The secondary unit would be the county or the city. Here the legislative
body would consist of the presiding officers of the township or ward
governments. The sheriff of a county or the mayor of a city would be
chosen by these legislative bodies from their own number and should hold
office for a term of several years, while the local governments, and
therefore the legislative bodies of the county or the city, would be
chosen annually. The chief executive of a county or city would appoint
all heads of departments who would form his advisory council, and he
would also frame and submit annually both a fiscal and a legislative
budget.

The tertiary unit is the state, which is a federation of the counties
and cities forming some one of the historic divisions of the United
States. The legislature would as now be composed of two chambers, one
made up of representatives of the primary units, holding office for a
brief term, and a second representing the secondary units and chosen by
their governing bodies for a long term. The logic of a bi-cameral system
demands that the lower house should represent the changing will of the
people, the upper, in so far as possible, its cumulative wisdom and the
continuity of tradition, while, as already stated, the whole pr