Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 06.pdf/247

 220

Massachusetts towns not until 1851. The powers exercised by police officers used to be in the hands of the constable, the tithingman, the warden, and the watchman. The London police force was not organized until 1829, its predecessors being parish officers, local constables, and miscellaneous indescribables. The Boston police force in the modern sense began in 1854, in the au tocratic act of a Knownothing mayor. The great Mayor Quincy used the term police in the sense of sanitation, and made the city marshal superintendent of sewers, believing that sewers and marshals were intended to promote the public health. The Boston charter of 1854 vested "the administration of police " in the mayor and aldermen. The usual interpretation of the phrase is " man agement of the police force"; but Chief Justice Shaw, who wrote the clause, meant the " administration of the government powers vested in the city." Apparently the modern city was incorporated for rea sons of police, and yet the term police of ficer was not evolved until about sixty or fifty years ago. Bentham, who was good at coining terms, complained that there was not a good name for the force that had for its object the prevention of mischief and crime. If the term "police" came from the French, the term " alderman" is purely Eng lish and originated in England. It is very honest English, and corresponds to the Latin "senior " and the Greek " presbyter," but was applied to secular officers only, dividing into the modern "earl" and the less noble " alderman." When gilds came up, their head was usually called " alder man," and from England the term passed to the European continent. London had twenty-five aldermen as early as 1200, and the number has never been changed. They are still called the court of aldermen, and the early aldermen were very generally ex ecutive as well as judicial officers. The term "mayor" came after the Conquest,

and replaced the Saxon " reeve " or " port reeve." The term " portreeve " has nothing to do with harbor, but means town reeve as distinct from the king's reeve or sheriff. The spelling of mayor is apparently Spanish, but possibly due to the accident that the early writers used a y where we use an i. The term " reeve," which occurs in sheriff, hogreeve, and other forms, is more difficult. It is the Anglo-Saxon gerefa. The first meaning of this Anglo-Saxon term is com panion or associate, and suggests the deri vation of the obscure term from ravo, which meant roof. At any rate the Anglo-Saxon gerefa was borrowed, apparently from the Franks, and is yet to be fully traced (Grimm, Weist. 753). It has nothing to do with the German Graf, as Skeat is right in pointing out. But the term " reeve " is not confined to England. By-law, of course, means town law, the word by being the same as in Whitby, Derby, Rugby and many others. But the term " inhabitant" is difficult. The Massa chusetts Constitution of 1780 undertook to define the term, but did not remove the difficulty. It runs through the great treatise of Merewether & Stephens as no other term, and yet comes out wholly un determined. In Boston the inhabitants are incorporated, but they are not defined. The Colony of Massachusetts incorporated " the freemen of every town" (1 Mass. Rcc. 172), and treated mere inhabitants as inferiors. Municipal suffrage is now associated with citizenship, but until 1811 an alien could vote at Boston town meetings, provided he had paid a tax and acquired inhabitancy. As cities depend on immigration from the country, the term " inhabitant" becomes im portant to every city, for only inhabitants are corporators, and persons not legal in habitants are not entitled to poor-relief. The term " inhabitants," as a law term, ap pears to have originated in Lombardy after the northern invasion. The invaders, after whom Lombardy is named, were aliens who