Page:Historic towns of the southern states (1900).djvu/50

 "towns there were none." For, first by proclamations, then by Acts of Assembly, towns were "erected" in a great number of places situated upon the water and selected, apparently, with little reference to any previous exhibition of a tendency to municipal growth, and with equally little reference to any expressions of desire upon the part of the inhabitants. That the success of this policy was hardly proportionate to the efforts made in its behalf is indicated by the statement made at a later time, that "the settlers, and now the Government call town any place where as many houses are as are individuals required to make a riot, that is twenty, as fixed by the Riot Act." Indeed, these "fiat" towns were in nearly every case total failures. Harvy-town, Herrington and many similar creations have passed into oblivion, and now only serve as institutional fossils for the political palæontologist. As Jefferson said of Virginia, "there are other places at which the laws have said there shall be towns: but nature has said there shall not."

Among these shadow-towns of early Maryland were some of particular interest to the history of Baltimore. The settlement upon