[10] This was introducing the principle
of local option, and in accordance therewith township governments with
town-meetings were at once introduced in the northern counties of the
state, while the southern counties kept on in the old way. Now comes
the most interesting part of the story. The two systems being thus
brought into immediate contact in the same state, with free choice
between them left to the people, the northern system has slowly but
steadily supplanted the southern system, until at the present day only
one fifth part of the counties in Illinois remain without township
government.
[Footnote 10: Shaw, _Local Government if Illinois_, J. H. U.
Studies, I., iii.]
[Sidenote: Intense vitality of the township system.]
This example shows the intense vitality of the township system. It is
the kind of government that people are sure to prefer when they
have tried it under favourable conditions. In the West the hostile
conditions against which it has to contend are either the recent
existence of negro slavery and the ingrained prejudice in favour of
the Virginia method, as in Missouri; or simply the sparseness of
population, as in Nebraska.
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