TOWNSHIP. The public lands of the Unit ed States are surveyed first into tracts called townships, being in extent six miles square. The subdivisions of a township are called sections, each a mile square and containing six hundred and forty acres ; these are sub divided into quarter-sections, and from that into lots of forty acres each. This plan of subdividing the public lands was adopted by act of congress of May 18, 1796.
In Pennsylvania, a subdivision of a county, having minor governmental powers. They do not, under existing laws possess municipal powers; Pennsylvania R. R. v. Pass. Ry., 167 Pa. 62; 31 Atl. 468, 27 L. R. A. 766, 46 Am. St: Rep. 659. By recent acts in that state first class townships have been created, with more complete organization.
In the old English period, the households of a township had the common and undivided use of the waste land, but this use could be limited and appor tioned by the community. This waste land stretched usually over a great part of the territory assigned to the township, and the reclaiming of this land for purposes of exclusive cultivation and enjoyment was subjected to restrictive rules ; the scarce and high ly valued meadows were assigned under strict rules of proportionate division and redivision ; the arable, which formed the most important, and the most conspicuous portion of the whole, lay in scattered strips in the various fields and spots of the village, so that every holding presented a bundle of these strips equal to other bundles of the same denomina tion ; everybody had to conform to the same rules and methods in regard to the rotation and cultiva tion of crops, and when these had been gathered the strips relapsed into the state of an open field in common use. The homesteads and closes around
them were kept under separate management, but had been allotted by the community and could in some cases be subjected to reallotment. If this is a correct general description of the main system in operation in the course of the thousand years from 500 till 1500 A. D., and extending many of its inci dents to even later times, one can scarcely escape the conclusion that whatever inroads the individual and the state may have made upon it, and whatever bias legal theory may have shown towards more definite and individualistic conceptions, the average English householder of the Middle Ages lived under conditions in which his power of fres disposal and free management was hemmed in on all sides by customs and rules converging towards the concep tions of a community of interests and rights be tween all the household shares of a village. Vino gradoff, Growth of the Manor 165.
The activity of the township during the 13th cen tury, as a unit of police organization, was develop ed later by legislation, ending in 1285, when the con stabulary and militia took the form they were to keep during the rest of the Middle Ages. 1 Poll. & Alaitl. 551. • See