But, when we look more closely, these motives of
preference are found to be balanced by others fully as substantial. If
the local authorities and public are inferior to the central ones in
knowledge of the principles of administration, they have the
compensating advantage of a far more direct interest in the result.
A man's neighbours or his landlord may be much cleverer than
himself, and not without an indirect interest in his prosperity, but
for all that his interests will be better attended to in his own
keeping than in theirs. It is further to be remembered, that even
supposing the central government to administer through its own
officers, its officers do not act at the centre, but in the
locality: and however inferior the local public may be to the central,
it is the local public alone which has any opportunity of watching
them, and it is the local opinion alone which either acts directly
upon their own conduct, or calls the attention of the government to
the points in which they may require correction. It is but in
extreme cases that the general opinion of the country is brought to
bear at all upon details of local administration, and still more
rarely has it the means of deciding upon them with any just
appreciation of the case. Now, the local opinion necessarily acts
far more forcibly upon purely local administrators. They, in the
natural course of things, are permanent residents, not expecting to be
withdrawn from the place when they cease to exercise authority in
it; and their authority itself depends, by supposition, on the will of
the local public.
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