[Sidenote: Grades of township government.]
Two distinct grades of township government are to be observed in the
states west of the Alleghanies; the one has the town-meeting for
deliberative purposes, the other has not. In Ohio and Indiana, which
derived their local institutions largely from Pennsylvania, there is
no such town-meeting, the administrative offices are more or less
concentrated in a board of trustees, and the town is quite subordinate
to the county. The principal features of this system have been
reproduced in Iowa, Missouri, and Kansas.
The other system, was that which we have seen beginning in
Michigan, under the influence of New York and New England. Here the
town-meeting, with legislative powers, is always present. The most
noticeable feature of the Michigan system is the relation between
township and county, which was taken from New York. The county board
is composed of the supervisors of the several townships, and thus
represents the townships. It is the same in Illinois. It is held
by some writers that this is the most perfect form of local
government,[11] but on the other hand the objection is made that county
boards thus constituted are too large.
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