Young v. Clarendon Tp. (26 Fed. R. 805) Page 623, 625 v. Clarendon Tp. (132 U. S. 340) 1028 v. Edgefield Road Com'rs (2 N. & McC. 537) 323, 1169, 1172, v. Harrison (17 Ga. 30) v. Harvey (16 Ind. 314) v. Leedom (67 Pa. St. 351) v. New Haven (39 Conn. 435) v. St. Louis (47 Mo. 492) 1174 1321 Z. Zabriskie v. Cleveland, C. & C. R. Page 77, 226 v. Jersey City & B. R. Co. (13 N. J. Eq. 314) 454, 850, 855 Zanesville v. Richards (5 Ohio St. 589) 908, 939, 940, 962 1312 Zanone v. Mound City (103 Ill. 552) 400, 434, 1006 1269 Zeigler v. Hopkins (117 U. S. 683) 707, 395 979, 1123 Zettler v. Atlanta (66 Ga. 195) 1267 Zimmerman v. Snouden (88 Mo. 218) 979 Zinc Co., &c. (117 Ill. 411). [See Matthiesen, &c.] v. Yarmouth (9 Gray, 386) 830, 1130, 1315 Youngblood v. Sexton (32 Mich. 406) 425, 432, 970, 971, 1121 Young Men's Soc. v. Detroit (3 Mich. 172) 953 Youngs v. Hall (9 Nev. 212) 105, 120, 896 1226 Youngstown v. Moore (30 O. St. 133) Zoeller v. Kellogg (4 Mo. App. 163) 732 § 1. As this treatise is designed strictly for the practising lawyer, it does not fall within its scope to give a detailed account of the origin and rise of cities and towns, or to trace minutely the history of the rights, powers, and jurisdiction with which they are now generally invested. Such inquiries more appropriately belong to the legal antiquary, to the historian, or to the general scholar; and yet a brief historical survey of municipalities will conduce to a more intelligent understanding, even in its practical bearings, of the subject of which it is proposed to treat.1 The existence of towns and cities, and probably the exercise by them, to a greater or less extent, of local jurisdiction, may be ascribed to a very remote period. PHOENICIA and EGYPT were noted for their large and splendid 1 Mr. Dicey has some just observations on the different purposes of the historical and of the legal inquirer. "An historian is primarily occupied with ascertaining the steps by which a constitution has grown to be what it is. He is deeply, sometimes excessively, concerned with questions of 'origins.' He is only indirectly concerned in ascertaining what are the rules of the Constitution in the year 1886. To a lawyer on the other hand, the primary object of study is the law as it now stands; he is only secondarily occupied with ascertaining how it came into existence." 1 VOL. I. Dicey, Law of the Constitution (2d ed.), Lect. I. The present work is intended for the use of courts and lawyers, and the historical view of the development of municipal institutions in this country is entirely subordinated to the legal and strictly technical view. In the course of the present chapter and elsewhere, the sources of historical information are more or less indicated, and the author specially refers with pleasure to the valuable series of publications on Local Government in the United States, in The Johns Hopkins University Studies. cities. In the latter country we find Memphis, one of the Old World's proudest capitals, even whose site was, until recently, a matter of learned conjecture. It was, centuries ago, buried beneath the sands of the encroaching desert, and in our own day it has been exhumed in the midst of Bedouins too wild to be interested in the wondrous revelations of its entombed mysteries. Temples and buildings, vast and magnificent, dating probably fifteen centuries before the Christian era, and preserved by burial from decay and spoliation, may to-day be seen almost in their original perfection. "The pyramids themselves," as Fuller quaintly says, "doting with age, have forgotten the names of their founders." There, too, in "old, hushed Egypt and its sands," on the banks of the Nile, are the massive ruins of Thebes (Diospolis), the city of "the hundred gates," antedating secular history, and claimed by the Egyptians to have been the first capital, as undoubtedly it was one of the oldest cities of the historic world. As the eye runs along the colonnades of ruined temples, the mind runs back through the Egypt of the Ptolemies to the Egypt of the Pharaohs, four thousand years ago, when Thebes was in its glory and its pride. But in the midst of these stupendous remains of an early civilization, we find but little evidence of their municipal history and organization. The chief lesson they teach is that they were the centres of great wealth and power in the ruling classes, and that the people, who constitute the true wealth of modern cities, were at the absolute disposal of their masters, bound down and degraded by servitude and oppression. § 2. Notwithstanding the people of GREECE were of a common blood, language, and religion, Greece was never politically united. Political power resided not in a number of independent states, but in a large number of free, independent, and autonomous cities, with districts of country adjoining or attached to them. Each city, except in Attica, was sovereign; was the sole source of supreme authority, and possessed the exclusive management of its own affairs. The citizen of one was a foreigner in the others, and could not, without permission or grant, acquire property, make contracts, or marry out of his own city. The Grecian heart always glowed with patriotic fervor for the city, but it rarely, except in times of great common danger, kindled with a love for the whole country. Although, according to Chancellor Kent,2 the "civil and political institutions of 1 Hearn, Government of England, chap. xvii. p. 467; Grote, Hist. Greece, ii. 302; ib. 348. 21 Kent, Com. 268, note. |