It is but a small portion of the public business of a country which
can be well done or safely attempted by the central authorities; and
even in our own government, the least centralized in Europe, the
legislative portion at least of the governing body busies itself far
too much with local affairs, employing the supreme power of the State
in cutting small knots which there ought to be other and better means
of untying. The enormous amount of private business which takes up the
time of Parliament and the thoughts of its individual members,
distracting them from the proper occupations of the great council of
the nation, is felt by all thinkers and observers as a serious evil,
and, what is worse, an increasing one.
It would not be appropriate to the limited design of this treatise to
discuss at large the great question, in no way peculiar to
representative government, of the proper limits of governmental
action. I have said elsewhere [9] what seemed to me most essential
respecting the principles by which the extent of that action ought to
be determined. But after subtracting from the functions performed by
most European governments those which ought not to be undertaken by
public authorities at all, there still remains so great and various an
aggregate of duties, that, if only on the principle of division of
labor, it is indispensable to share them between central and local
authorities. Not solely are separate executive officers required for
purely local duties (an amount of separation which exists under all
governments), but the popular control over those officers can only be
advantageously exerted through a separate organ. Their original
appointment, the function of watching and checking them, the duty of
providing or the discretion of withholding the supplies necessary for
their operations, should rest, not with the national Parliament or the
national executive, but with the people of the locality. That the
people should exercise these functions directly and personally is
evidently inadmissable. Administration by the assembled people is a
relic of barbarism opposed to the whole spirit of modern life; yet so
much has the course of English institutions depended on accident, that
this primitive mode of local government remained the general rule in
parochial matters up to the present generation; and, having never been
legally abolished, probably subsists unaltered in many rural parishes
even now. There remains the plan of representative sub-Parliaments for
local affairs, and these must henceforth be considered as one of the
fundamental institutions of a free government. They exist in England
but very incompletely, and with great irregularity and want of system;
in some other countries much less popularly governed, their
constitution is far more rational. In England there has always been
more liberty but worse organization, while in other countries there is
better organization but less liberty. It is necessary, then, that, in
addition to the national representation, there should be municipal and
provisional representations; and the two questions which remain to be
resolved are, how the local representative bodies should be
constituted, and what should be the extent of their functions.
In considering these questions, two points require an equal degree of
our attention: how the local business itself can be best done, and how
its transaction can be made most instrumental to the nourishment of
public spirit and the development of intelligence. In an earlier part
of this inquiry I have dwelt in strong language--hardly any language
is strong enough to express the strength of my conviction--on the
importance of that portion of the operation of free institutions which
may be called the public education of the citizens. Now of this
operation the local administrative institutions are the chief
instrument. Except by the part they may take as jurymen in the
administration of justice, the mass of the population have very little
opportunity of sharing personally in the conduct of the general
affairs of the community. Reading newspapers, and perhaps writing to
them, public meetings, and solicitations of different sorts addressed
to the political authorities, are the extent of the participation of
private citizens in general politics during the interval between one
Parliamentary election and another. Though it is impossible to
exaggerate the importance of these various liberties, both as
securities for freedom and as means of general cultivation, the
practice which they give is more in thinking than in action, and in
thinking without the responsibilities of action, which with most
people amounts to little more than passively receiving the thoughts of
some one else. But in the case of local bodies, besides the function
of electing, many citizens in turn have the chance of being elected,
and many, either by selection or by rotation, fill one or other of the
numerous local executive offices. In these positions they have to act
for public interests, as well as to think and to speak, and the
thinking can not all be done by proxy. It may be added that these
local functions, not being in general sought by the higher ranks,
carry down the important political education which they are the means
of conferring to a much lower grade in society. The mental discipline
being thus a more important feature in local concerns than in the
general affairs of the state, while there are not such vital interests
dependent on the quality of the administration, a greater weight may
be given to the former consideration, and the latter admits much more
frequently of being postponed to it than in matters of general
legislation and the conduct of imperial affairs.
The proper constitution of local representative bodies does not
present much difficulty. The principles which apply to it do not
differ in any respect from those applicable to the national
representation. The same obligation exists, as in the case of the more
important function, for making the bodies elective; and the same
reasons operate as in that case, but with still greater force, for
giving them a widely democratic basis; the dangers being less, and the
advantages, in point of popular education and cultivation, in some
respects even greater. As the principal duty of the local bodies
consists of the imposition and expenditure of local taxation, the
electoral franchise should vest in all who contribute to the local
rates, to the exclusion of all who do not. I assume that there is no
indirect taxation, no _octroi_ duties, or that, if there are, they are
supplementary only, those on whom their burden falls being also rated
to a direct assessment. The representation of minorities should be
provided for in the same manner as in the national Parliament, and
there are the same strong reasons for plurality of votes; only there
is not so decisive an objection, in the inferior as in the higher
body, to making the plural voting depend (as in some of the local
elections of our own country) on a mere money qualification; for the
honest and frugal dispensation of money forms so much larger a part of
the business of the local than of the national body, that there is
more justice as well as policy in allowing a greater proportional
influence to those who have a larger money interest at stake.
In the most recently established of our local representative
institutions, the Boards of Guardians, the justices of peace of the
district sit _ex officio_ along with the elected members, in number
limited by law to a third of the whole. In the peculiar constitution
of English society, I have no doubt of the beneficial effect of this
provision. It secures the presence in these bodies of a more educated
class than it would perhaps be practicable to attract thither on any
other terms; and while the limitation in number of the _ex officio_
members precludes them from acquiring predominance by mere numerical
strength, they, as a virtual representation of another class, having
sometimes a different interest from the rest, are a check upon the
class interests of the farmers or petty shopkeepers who form the bulk
of the elected guardians. A similar commendation can not be given to
the constitution of the only provincial boards we possess, the Quarter
Sessions, consisting of the justices of peace alone, on whom, over and
above their judicial duties, some of the most important parts of the
administrative business of the country depend for their performance.
The mode of formation of these bodies is most anomalous, they being
neither elected, nor, in any proper sense of the term, nominated, but
holding their important functions, like the feudal lords to whom they
succeeded, virtually by right of their acres; the appointment vested
in the crown (or, speaking practically, in one of themselves, the lord
lieutenant) being made use of only as a means of excluding any one who
it is thought would do discredit to the body, or, now and then, one
who is on the wrong side in politics. The institution is the most
aristocratic in principle which now remains in England; far more so
than the House of Lords, for it grants public money and disposes of
important public interests, not in conjunction with a popular
assembly, but alone. It is clung to with proportionate tenacity by our
aristocratic classes, but is obviously at variance with all the
principles which are the foundation of representative government. In a
County Board there is not the same justification as in Boards of
Guardians for even an admixture of _ex officio_ with elected members,
since the business of a county being on a sufficiently large scale to
be an object of interest and attraction to country gentlemen, they
would have no more difficulty in getting themselves elected to the
Board than they have in being returned to Parliament as county
members.
In regard to the proper circumscription of the constituencies which
elect the local representative bodies, the principle which, when
applied as an exclusive and unbending rule to Parliamentary
representation, is inappropriate, namely community of local interests,
is here the only just and applicable one. The very object of having a
local representation is in order that those who have any interest in
common which they do not share with the general body of their
countrymen may manage that joint interest by themselves, and the
purpose is contradicted if the distribution of the local
representation follows any other rule than the grouping of those joint
interests. There are local interests peculiar to every town, whether
great or small, and common to all its inhabitants; every town,
therefore, without distinction of size, ought to have its municipal
council. It is equally obvious that every town ought to have but one.
The different quarters of the same town have seldom or never any
material diversities of local interest; they all require to have the
same things done, the same expenses incurred; and, except as to their
churches, which it is probably desirable to leave under simply
parochial management, the same arrangements may be made to serve for
all. Paving, lighting, water supply, drainage, port and market
regulations, can not, without great waste and inconvenience, be
different for different quarters of the same town. The subdivision of
London into six or seven independent districts, each with its separate
arrangements for local business (several of them without unity of
administration even within themselves), prevents the possibility of
consecutive or well-regulated co-operation for common objects,
precludes any uniform principle for the discharge of local duties,
compels the general government to take things upon itself which would
be best left to local authorities if there were any whose authority
extended to the entire metropolis, and answers no purpose but to keep
up the fantastical trappings of that union of modern jobbing and
antiquated foppery, the Corporation of the City of London.
Another equally important principle is, that in each local
circumscription there should be but one elective body for all local
business, not different bodies for different parts of it. Division of
labor does not mean cutting up every business into minute fractions;
it means the union of such operations as are fit to be performed by
the same persons, and the separation of such as can be better
performed by different persons. The executive duties of the locality
do indeed require to be divided into departments for the same reason
as those of the state--because they are of divers kinds, each
requiring knowledge peculiar to itself, and needing, for its due
performance, the undivided attention of a specially qualified
functionary. But the reasons for subdivision which apply to the
execution do not apply to the control. The business of the elective
body is not to do the work, but to see that it is properly done, and
that nothing necessary is left undone. This function can be fulfilled
for all departments by the same superintending body, and by a
collective and comprehensive far better than by a minute and
microscopic view. It is as absurd in public affairs as it would be in
private, that every workman should be looked after by a superintendent
to himself. The government of the crown consists of many departments,
and there are many ministers to conduct them, but those ministers have
not a Parliament apiece to keep them to their duty. The local, like
the national Parliament, has for its proper business to consider the
interest of the locality as a whole, composed of parts all of which
must be adapted to one another, and attended to in the order and ratio
of their importance. There is another very weighty reason for uniting
the control of all the business of a locality under one body. The
greatest imperfection of popular local institutions, and the chief
cause of the failure which so often attends them, is the low calibre
of the men by whom they are almost always carried on. That these
should be of a very miscellaneous character is, indeed, part of the
usefulness of the institution; it is that circumstance chiefly which
renders it a school of political capacity and general intelligence.
But a school supposes teachers as well as scholars: the utility of the
instruction greatly depends on its bringing inferior minds into
contact with superior, a contact which in the ordinary course of life
is altogether exceptional, and the want of which contributes more than
any thing else to keep the generality of mankind on one level of
contented ignorance. The school, moreover, is worthless, and a school
of evil instead of good, if, through the want of due surveillance, and
of the presence within itself of a higher order of characters, the
action of the body is allowed, as it so often is, to degenerate into
an equally unscrupulous and stupid pursuit of the self-interest of its
members. Now it is quite hopeless to induce persons of a high class,
either socially or intellectually, to take a share of local
administration in a corner by piecemeal, as members of a Paving Board
or a Drainage Commission. The entire local business of their town is
not more than a sufficient object to induce men whose tastes incline
them, and whose knowledge qualifies them for national affairs, to
become members of a mere local body, and devote to it the time and
study which are necessary to render their presence any thing more than
a screen for the jobbing of inferior persons, under the shelter of
their responsibility. A mere Board of Works, though it comprehend the
entire metropolis, is sure to be composed of the same class of persons
as the vestries of the London parishes; nor is it practicable, or even
desirable, that such should not form the majority; but it is important
for every purpose which local bodies are designed to serve, whether it
be the enlightened and honest performance of their special duties, or
the cultivation of the political intelligence of the nation, that
every such body should contain a portion of the very best minds of the
locality, who are thus brought into perpetual contact, of the most
useful kind, with minds of a lower grade, receiving from them what
local or professional knowledge they have to give, and, in return,
inspiring them with a portion of their own more enlarged ideas, and
higher and more enlightened purposes.
A mere village has no claim to a municipal representation. By a
village I mean a place whose inhabitants are not markedly
distinguished by occupation or social relations from those of the
rural districts adjoining, and for whose local wants the arrangements
made for the surrounding territory will suffice. Such small places
have rarely a sufficient public to furnish a tolerable municipal
council: if they contain any talent or knowledge applicable to public
business, it is apt to be all concentrated in some one man, who
thereby becomes the dominator of the place. It is better that such
places should be merged in a larger circumscription. The local
representation of rural districts will naturally be determined by
geographical considerations, with due regard to those sympathies of
feeling by which human beings are so much aided to act in concert, and
which partly follow historical boundaries, such as those of counties
or provinces, and partly community of interest and occupation, as in
agriculture, maritime, manufacturing, or mining districts. Different
kinds of local business require different areas of representation. The
Unions of parishes have been fixed on as the most appropriate basis
for the representative bodies which superintend the relief of
indigence; while, for the proper regulation of highways, or prisons,
or police, a large extent, like that of an average county, is not more
than sufficient. In these large districts, therefore, the maxim, that
an elective body constituted in any locality should have authority
over all the local concerns common to the locality, requires
modification from another principle, as well as from the competing
consideration of the importance of obtaining for the discharge of the
local duties the highest qualifications possible. For example, if it
be necessary (as I believe it to be) for the proper administration of
the poor-laws that the area of rating should not be more extensive
than most of the present Unions, a principle which requires a Board of
Guardians for each Union, yet, as a much more highly qualified class
of persons is likely to be obtainable for a County Board than those
who compose an average Board of Guardians, it may, on that ground, be
expedient to reserve for the County Boards some higher descriptions of
local business, which might otherwise have been conveniently managed
within itself by each separate Union.
Besides the controlling council or local sub-Parliament, local
business has its executive department. With respect to this, the same
questions arise as with respect to the executive authorities in the
state, and they may, for the most part, be answered in the same
manner. The principles applicable to all public trusts are in
substance the same. In the first place, each executive officer should
be single, and singly responsible for the whole of the duty committed
to his charge. In the next place, he should be nominated, not elected.
It is ridiculous that a surveyor, or a health officer, or even a
collector of rates should be appointed by popular suffrage. The
popular choice usually depends on interest with a few local leaders,
who, as they are not supposed to make the appointment, are not
responsible for it; or on an appeal to sympathy, founded on having
twelve children, and having been a rate-payer in the parish for thirty
years. If, in cases of this description, election by the population is
a farce, appointment by the local representative body is little less
objectionable. Such bodies have a perpetual tendency to become
joint-stock associations for carrying into effect the private jobs of
their various members. Appointments should be made on the individual
responsibility of the chairman of the body, let him be called mayor,
chairman of Quarter Sessions, or by whatever other title. He occupies
in the locality a position analogous to that of the prime minister in
the state, and under a well organized system the appointment and
watching of the local officers would be the most important part of his
duty; he himself being appointed by the council from its own number,
subject either to annual re-election, or to removal by a vote of the
body.
From the constitution of the local bodies, I now pass to the equally
important and more difficult subject of their proper attributions.
This question divides itself into two parts: what should be their
duties, and whether they should have full authority within the sphere
of those duties, or should be liable to any, and what, interference on
the part of the central government.
It is obvious, to begin with, that all business purely local--all
which concerns only a single locality--should devolve upon the local
authorities. The paving, lighting, and cleansing of the streets of a
town, and, in ordinary circumstances, the draining of its houses, are
of little consequence to any but its inhabitants. The nation at large
is interested in them in no other way than that in which it is
interested in the private well-being of all its individual citizens.
But among the duties classed as local, or performed by local
functionaries, there are many which might with equal propriety be
termed national, being the share belonging to the locality of some
branch of the public administration in the efficiency of which the
whole nation is alike interested: the jails, for instance, most of
which in this country are under county management; the local police;
the local administration of justice, much of which, especially in
corporate towns, is performed by officers elected by the locality, and
paid from local funds. None of these can be said to be matters of
local, as distinguished from national importance. It would not be a
matter personally indifferent to the rest of the country if any part
of it became a nest of robbers or a focus of demoralization, owing to
the maladministration of its police; or if, through the bad
regulations of its jail, the punishment which the courts of justice
intended to inflict on the criminals confined therein (who might have
come from, or committed their offenses in, any other district) might
be doubled in intensity or lowered to practical impunity. The points,
moreover, which constitute good management of these things are the
same every where; there is no good reason why police, or jails, or the
administration of justice should be differently managed in one part of
the kingdom and in another, while there is great peril that in things
so important, and to which the most instructed minds available to the
state are not more than adequate, the lower average of capacities
which alone can be counted on for the service of the localities might
commit errors of such magnitude as to be a serious blot upon the
general administration of the country. Security of person and
property, and equal justice between individuals, are the first needs
of society and the primary ends of government: if these things can be
left to any responsibility below the highest, there is nothing except
war and treaties which requires a general government at all. Whatever
are the best arrangements for securing these primary objects should be
made universally obligatory, and, to secure their enforcement, should
be placed under central superintendence. It is often useful, and with
the institutions of our own country even necessary, from the scarcity,
in the localities, of officers representing the general government,
that the execution of duties imposed by the central authority should
be intrusted to functionaries appointed for local purposes by the
locality. But experience is daily forcing upon the public a conviction
of the necessity of having at least inspectors appointed by the
general government to see that the local officers do their duty. If
prisons are under local management, the central government appoints
inspectors of prisons, to take care that the rules laid down by
Parliament are observed, and to suggest others if the state of the
jails shows them to be requisite, as there are inspectors of factories
and inspectors of schools, to watch over the observance of the Acts of
Parliament relating to the first, and the fulfillment of the
conditions on which state assistance is granted to the latter.
But if the administration of justice, police and jails included, is
both so universal a concern, and so much a matter of general science,
independent of local peculiarities, that it may be, and ought to be,
uniformly regulated throughout the country, and its regulation
enforced by more trained and skillful hands than those of purely local
authorities, there is also business, such as the administration of the
poor-laws, sanitary regulation, and others, which, while really
interesting to the whole country, can not, consistently with the very
purposes of local administration, be managed otherwise than by the
localities. In regard to such duties, the question arises how far the
local authorities ought to be trusted with discretionary power, free
from any superintendence or control of the state.
To decide this question, it is essential to consider what is the
comparative position of the central and the local authorities as
capacity for the work, and security against negligence or abuse. In
the first place, the local representative bodies and their officers
are almost certain to be of a much lower grade of intelligence and
knowledge than Parliament and the national executive. Secondly,
besides being themselves of inferior qualifications, they are watched
by, and accountable to an inferior public opinion. The public under
whose eyes they act, and by whom they are criticized, is both more
limited in extent and generally far less enlightened than that which
surrounds and admonishes the highest authorities at the capital, while
the comparative smallness of the interests involved causes even that
inferior public to direct its thoughts to the subject less intently
and with less solicitude. Far less interference is exercised by the
press and by public discussion, and that which is exercised may with
much more impunity be disregarded in the proceedings of local than in
those of national authorities. Thus far, the advantage seems wholly on
the side of management by the central government; but, when we look
more closely, these motives of preference are found to be balanced by
others fully as substantial. If the local authorities and public are
inferior to the central ones in knowledge of the principles of
administration, they have the compensatory advantage of a far more
direct interest in the result. A man's neighbors or his landlord may
be much cleverer than himself, and not without an indirect interest in
his prosperity, but, for all that, his interests will be better
attended to in his own keeping than in theirs. It is further to be
remembered that, even supposing the central government to administer
through its own officers, its officers do not act at the centre, but
in the locality; and however inferior the local public may be to the
central, it is the local public alone which has any opportunity of
watching them, and it is the local opinion alone which either acts
directly upon their own conduct, or calls the attention of the
government to the points in which they may require correction. It is
but in extreme cases that the general opinion of the country is
brought to bear at all upon details of local administration, and still
more rarely has it the means of deciding upon them with any just
appreciation of the case. Now the local opinion necessarily acts far
more forcibly upon purely local administrators. They, in the natural
course of things, are permanent residents, not expecting to be
withdrawn from the place when they cease to exercise authority in it;
and their authority itself depends, by supposition, on the will of the
local public. I need not dwell on the deficiencies of the central
authority in detailed knowledge of local persons and things, and the
too great engrossment of its time and thoughts by other concerns to
admit of its acquiring the quantity and quality of local knowledge
necessary even for deciding on complaints, and enforcing
responsibility from so great a number of local agents. In the details
of management, therefore, the local bodies will generally have the
advantage, but in comprehension of the principles even of purely local
management, the superiority of the central government, when rightly
constituted, ought to be prodigious, not only by reason of the
probably great personal superiority of the individuals composing it,
and the multitude of thinkers and writers who are at all times engaged
in pressing useful ideas upon their notice, but also because the
knowledge and experience of any local authority is but local knowledge
and experience, confined to their own part of the country and its
modes of management, whereas the central government has the means of
knowing all that is to be learned from the united experience of the
whole kingdom, with the addition of easy access to that of foreign
countries.
The practical conclusion from these premises is not difficult to draw.
The authority which is most conversant with principles should be
supreme over principles, while that which is most competent in details
should have the details left to it. The principal business of the
central authority should be to give instruction, of the local
authority to apply it. Power may be localized, but knowledge, to be
most useful, must be centralized; there must be somewhere a focus at
which all its scattered rays are collected, that the broken and
colored lights which exist elsewhere may find there what is necessary
to complete and purify them. To every branch of local administration
which affects the general interest there should be a corresponding
central organ, either a minister, or some specially appointed
functionary under him, even if that functionary does no more than
collect information from all quarters, and bring the experience
acquired in one locality to the knowledge of another where it is
wanted. But there is also something more than this for the central
authority to do. It ought to keep open a perpetual communication with
the localities--informing itself by their experience, and them by its
own; giving advice freely when asked, volunteering it when seen to be
required; compelling publicity and recordation of proceedings, and
enforcing obedience to every general law which the Legislature has
laid down on the subject of local management. That some such laws
ought to be laid down few are likely to deny. The localities may be
allowed to mismanage their own interests, but not to prejudice those
of others, nor violate those principles of justice between one person
and another of which it is the duty of the state to maintain the rigid
observance. If the local majority attempts to oppress the minority, or
one class another, the state is bound to interpose. For example, all
local rates ought to be voted exclusively by the local representative
body; but that body, though elected solely by rate-payers, may raise
its revenues by imposts of such a kind, or assess them in such a
manner, as to throw an unjust share of the burden on the poor, the
rich, or some particular class of the population: it is the duty,
therefore, of the Legislature, while leaving the mere amount of the
local taxes to the discretion of the local body, to lay down
authoritatively the mode of taxation and rules of assessment which
alone the localities shall be permitted to use. Again, in the
administration of public charity, the industry and morality of the
whole laboring population depends, to a most serious extent, upon
adherence to certain fixed principles in awarding relief. Though it
belongs essentially to the local functionaries to determine who,
according to those principles, is entitled to be relieved, the
national Parliament is the proper authority to prescribe the
principles themselves; and it would neglect a most important part of
its duty if it did not, in a matter of such grave national concern,
lay down imperative rules, and make effectual provision that those
rules should not be departed from. What power of actual interference
with the local administrators it may be necessary to retain, for the
due enforcement of the laws, is a question of detail into which it
would be useless to enter. The laws themselves will naturally define
the penalties, and fix the mode of their enforcement. It may be
requisite, to meet extreme cases, that the power of the central
authority should extend to dissolving the local representative council
or dismissing the local executive, but not to making new appointments
or suspending the local institutions. Where Parliament has not
interfered, neither ought any branch of the executive to interfere
with authority; but as an adviser and critic, an enforcer of the laws,
and a denouncer to Parliament or the local constituencies of conduct
which it deems condemnable, the functions of the executive are of the
greatest possible value.
Some may think that, however much the central authority surpasses the
local in knowledge of the principles of administration, the great
object which has been so much insisted on, the social and political
education of the citizens, requires that they should be left to manage
these matters by their own, however imperfect lights. To this it might
be answered that the education of the citizens is not the only thing
to be considered; government and administration do not exist for that
alone, great as its importance is. But the objection shows a very
imperfect understanding of the function of popular institutions as a
means of political instruction. It is but a poor education that
associates ignorance with ignorance, and leaves them, if they care for
knowledge, to grope their way to it without help, and to do without it
if they do not. What is wanted is the means of making ignorance aware
of itself, and able to profit by knowledge; accustoming minds which
know only routine to act upon, and feel the value of principles;
teaching them to compare different modes of action, and learn, by the
use of their reason, to distinguish the best. When we desire to have a
good school, we do not eliminate the teacher. The old remark, "As the
schoolmaster is, so will be the school," is as true of the indirect
schooling of grown people by public business as of the schooling of
youth in academies and colleges. A government which attempts to do
every thing is aptly compared by M. Charles de Rémusat to a
schoolmaster who does all the pupils' tasks for them; he may be very
popular with the pupils, but he will teach them little. A government,
on the other hand, which neither does any thing itself that can
possibly be done by any one else, nor shows any one else how to do any
thing, is like a school in which there is no schoolmaster, but only
pupil-teachers who have never themselves been taught.