This may have been partly for mutual protection.

They were lovers of law and order.
The Township.[Footnote: See American Political Ideas, pp.

31-63.]--The derivation of the word "township" shows us to whom we are indebted for the institution itself.

The word is derived from the Anglo-Saxon _tun-scipe_.
_Tun_ meant hedge, ditch or defense; and _scipe_, which we have also in landscape, meant _what may be seen_.

Around the village before mentioned was the _tun_, and beyond were the fields and meadows and woodlands, the whole forming the tun scipe or township.
To administer justice and to take any other action for the common good, the freemen gathered in _folk-moot_ around the moot hill or the sacred tree.
Though the proceedings of these assemblies differed in detail from those of our town meetings, both contain the great principle of local self government.
The County.[Footnote: See American Political Ideas, pp.