NEW ENGLAND TOWN LAW would have time to give. To take, for example, the question of domicile, cases on this subject are scattered through the Massachusetts section of the book under the separate titles of assessors of taxes, overseers of the poor, and voters. If a second edition is to be published, and it is desired to bring the book up to the highest standard of usefulness for the bar, it is hoped that it will contain, if not a table of cases, at least a much more generous index to the decisions. The chief interest of the book, however, lies in its description of the unique system of government which has grown up among the towns of New England. Much has been written about the New England town, but not until the appearance of Mr. Garland's work has there been furnished such a full statement of the various functions of the different town officials and such a chance to observe, by comparison, the different lines along which the town system has developed in the several New England states. In his introduction, which covers some eighty pages, Mr. Garland discusses the origin and growth of the towns and compares the different provisions for town government now in force in New England. Beginning with a description of the towns as they existed in the days of the early settlers, when the town and parish were one, and the town meeting voted the minister's salary and the repairs on the meeting-house, when the "common" was really used for common pasturage and when the affairs of the little settlement were comparatively few and simple, the introduction traces the effect on the town government of the growing population, showing the early introduction of the prac tice of choosing selectmen to attend to cer tain of the details of administration, thus avoiding the necessity of frequent meetings of the inhabitants themselves. As the affairs of the community became more com plicated, with the introduction of systems of water supply, drainage, and the like, and
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the necessity for better police and fire pro tection, the duties of the selectmen and other town officials grew, and Mr. Garland gives not only an interesting account of this growth, but also a painstaking descrip tion of the various functions now exercised by the towns, and of the relations between the town and the state. In this descrip tion no words are wasted and an astonish ing amount of information has been con densed within the limits of the introduction. While the details of administration are intrusted to the selectmen and other offi cials, the essential powers of government have always been kept by the inhabitants themselves. It is the voters in town meet ing who decide how much to spend and what to spend it for, and it can readily be seen that in a town of any great size this matter of directing the general affairs and of appropriating money for the various municipal purposes would soon come to require more thought and study than most of the voters would or could give. If the average voter should be asked how much money would be required to run the water department, or to keep the streets in repair for a year, or to maintain the public schools (questions on which he is called upon to vote in town meeting), he would, in all probability, be at a loss for an answer. Questions of this kind must, in the nature of things, be determined largely by a few men who have the time and facilities to look into them, and thus there has grown up in the system of town government a custom (for it is only a custom and not referred to, so far as the writer is aware, in any statute) of appointing certain persons to examine the subjects to be voted on and to make their recommendations at or before the town meeting. The by-laws of some towns even provide that questions of appro priating money shall not be acted upon in town meeting until the committee on appro priations (a body not recognized by statute) has passed upon them. In other towns all the subjects to come up in town meeting,
