I have said elsewhere* 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
labour, it is indispensable to share them between central and local
authorities. Not only 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. In some
of the New England States these functions are still exercised directly
by the assembled people; it is said with better results than might
be expected; and those highly educated communities are so well
satisfied with this primitive mode of local government, that they have
no desire to exchange it for the only representative system they are
acquainted with, by which all minorities are disfranchised.
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