Abstract

A New Experiment of the Government

The District of Columbia is now practically merged in the City of Washington. According to the form and theory of Congressional legislation, perhaps the reverse of this has been done, and the city been merged in the new territory. Taking them both, however, for what they really are a city and its suburbs, they present probably the most curious problem or experiment of city government that can be found at home or abroad. When the seat of government was moved from Philadelphia to certain farms and forests on the northerly bank of the Potomac, a mile or two below the village of Georgetown, it was intended that a town should grow up which should rot be to America what Paris was to France, the controlling centre of power and influence, but which should form the mere habitation of the federal government, and be restricted to that one object, much as Oxford and Cambridge are given up to the universities and kept free from the bustle of traffic and in the quiet of university towns.