Section 11. Although a number of decisions hold that a county is a municipal corporation, yet the better opinion is that a county is a governmental agency or political subdivision of the State, organized for the purpose of exercising some functions of the State government, whereas a municipal corporation is an incorporation of the inhabitants of a specified region for purposes of local government.3

In some States, counties have been held to be municipal corporations in order to bring them within the provisions of certain statutes and in the broad sense of construction they are made to include such quasi-corporations as counties and towns.4

2 Green County vs. Watson, 7 Okla., 174. "It is created mainly for the interest, advantage and convenience of the people residing within its territorial boundaries, and the better to enable the Government to extend to them the protection to which they are entitled and the more beneficently to exercise over them its powers. All the powers with which the county is intrusted are the powers of the State and all the duties with which they are charged are the duties of the State. If these were not committed to the county they must be conferred on some other governmental agency." People vs. Martin, 178 111., 611. 3 San Mateo County vs. Coburn, 130 Cala., 631. See Dillon on Mun. Corps., Chapter II (Counties. Their Origin And History), Par. 23.

Another primal distinction between the two classes of corporations is that the county officers are not agents or representatives of the county in any such sense or manner as to render the people of the county justly answerable for their neglect; even if the neglect be such as would create a civil liability against a natural person or a municipal or private corporation. In the case of Hamilton Co. vs. Mighels, 7 Ohio State, the court said: "It is undoubtedly competent for the legislature to make the people of a county liable for the official delinquencies of the county commissioners; but this has not yet been done, and we think such liability cannot be derived from the relations of the parties, either on the principles or precedents of the common law."