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TEXT BOOK

ON

CIVIL GOVERNMENT

IN

THE UNITED STATES.

BY

GEORGE H. MARTIN,

TEACHER OF HISTORY AND CIVIL POLITY

IN

THE STATE NORMAL SCHOOL,

BRIDGEWATER, MASS.

PUBLISHED BY

A. S. BARNES AND COMPANY,

NEW YORK AND CHICAGO.

HARVARD COLLEG
Feb 18, 1937

LIBRARY

Miss Jenny C. Watts

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1875, by

GEORGE H. MARTIN,

in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.

PREFACE.

THE attention of teachers is invited to the five distinctive features of this book:

1. Its full statement of principles. A knowledge of these principles will be found of value not only in studying our own institutions, but also in studying ancient and modern history. They furnish a standard by which to test the various governments that have existed, and often explain the influence that those governments have exerted.

2. Its comprehensive plan, embracing the state, county, city, and town organizations, as well as that of the United States. As every citizen takes part more directly in the local administration than in that of the general government, he needs to understand the powers and relations of the state and municipal governments.

3. Its historical method. The endeavor has been to show not only what our free institutions are, but why they are, by tracing their development from germs in the early English constitution through the colonial and revolutionary periods of our own history.

4. Its topical arrangement. The teacher will find this a

help in assigning lessons; and the scholar, in studying and remembering them.

5. Its omission of details. A school text-book on this subject should not be a compendium of political statistics, nor an office-holder's guide, but a citizen's manual.

Experience has shown that young men and women from fifteen to twenty years of age may become deeply interested in the study of civil polity if the teacher is interested, and knows his subject. The best results in knowledge and discipline are attained by making the class exercise one of discussion, rather than of mere recitation. It is not intended that the chapters on the colonial governments should be committed; but read in the class-room, and compared, and a summary made of their general features. Every school should have among its reference books a copy of the General Statutes, the Acts and Resolves of the Legislature, and a Law Dictionary.

As Parts III. and IV. of the book are themselves summaries of the constitutions of the State and the United States, summaries at the end of the chapters are omitted.

BRIDGEWATER, August, 1875

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