sed
of special commissioners chosen by popular vote, but its essential
character has not been altered. As a thoroughly representative body,
it reminds one of the county courts of the Plantagenet period.

[Sidenote: The old Pennsylvania county.]
We next come to the great middle colonies, Pennsylvania and New York.
The most noteworthy feature of local government in Pennsylvania was
the general election of county officers by popular vote. The county
was the unit of representation in the colonial legislature, and on
election days the people of the county elected at the same time their
sheriffs, coroners, assessors, and county commissioners. In this
respect Pennsylvania furnished a model which has been followed by most
of the states since the Revolution, as regards the county governments.
It is also to be noted that before the Revolution, as Pennsylvania
increased in population, the townships began to participate in the
work of government, each township choosing its overseers of the poor,
highway surveyors, and inspectors of elections.[3]

[Footnote 3: Town-meetings were not quite unknown in Pennsylvania;
see W. P. Holcomb, "Pennsylvania Boroughs," _J. H. U. Studies_,
IV., iv.]

[Sidenote: Town-meetings in New York.]
[Sidenote: The county board of supervisors.]
New York had from the very beginning the rudiments of an excellent
system of local self-government. The Dutch villages had their
assemblies, which under the English rule were developed into
town-meetings, though with less ample powers than those of New
England. The governing body of the New York town consisted of the
constable and eight overseers, who answered in most respects to the
selectmen of New England. Four of the overseers were elected each year
in town-meeting, and one of the retiring overseers was at the same
time elected constable. In course of time the elective offices came
to include assessors and collectors, town clerk, highway surveyors,
fence-viewers, pound-masters, and overseers of the poor. At first
the town-meetings seem to have been held only for the election of
officers, but they acquired to a limited extent the power of levying
taxes and enacting by-laws. In 1703 a law was passed requiring each
town to elect yearly an officer to be known as the "supervisor," whose
duty was "to compute, ascertain, examine, oversee, and allow the
contingent, publick, and necessary charges" of the county.[4] For
this purpose the supervisors met once a year at t