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
entrusted 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
gaols 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 fulfilment of
the conditions on which State assistance is granted to the latter.
But, if the administration of justice, police and gaols 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 skilful 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, cannot consistently with the very
purposes of local administration, be, managed otherwise than by the
localities.
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