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 demoralisation, owing
to the maladministration of its police; or if, through the bad
regulations of its gaol, the punishment which the courts of justice
intended to inflict on the criminals confined therein (who might
have come from, or committed their offences 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 everywhere; there is no good reason why police, or gaols,
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.
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