The Newport Charter

Extract

Newport, with the exception of three years, was until 1853 administered under the town-meeting system. It had, in 1784, made a trial of a city charter, but it was so unsatisfactory that it reverted to the town meeting three years later. The reason of this reversion in March, 1787, as given in Rhode Island Schedules for 1786-1790, is worth quoting. The petition to the Legislature complained that since the incorporation, about two years since, they had “experienced many Inconveniences and Indignities unknown to them before said Incorporation, injurious to their Property and civil Lilberty and incompatible with the Rights of Freemen: That the Choice of the Mayor, Aldermen and Common Council is effected by a few leading, influential Men, who when chosen, have the Appointment of all the City Officers, independent of the Sufferages of the People, which they conceive to be a Derogation of those Rights and Immunities, which Freemen are indisputably entitled to, and for which so much Blood and Treasure has (sic) been exhausted.” It reads uncommonly like a complaint of to-day.

The “town meeting” may thus be taken as Newport's form of government for two hundred and more years. In 1853, when a new trial of a charter was made, the place had about 12,000 inhabitants, half its present number. That it was still not too large for the town-meeting system is showtn by the fact that Boston remained a town until 1822, at which time it had 43,000 population. Brookline, perhaps the most admirably administered community in the United States, remains a town, although with a population of 25,000, and an electorate of about 4,100.