And, except when there is a very strong motive
to job these appointments, there is always a strong one to appoint the
fittest person; being the one who gives to his chief the most useful
assistance, saves him most trouble, and helps most to build up that
reputation for good management of public business which necessarily
and properly redounds to the credit of the minister, however much
the qualities to which it is immediately owing may be those of his
subordinates.
Chapter 15
Of Local Representative Bodies.
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 centralised
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.
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