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 cannot 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.
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