The principal business of the
central authority should be to give instruction, of the local
authority to apply it. Power may be localised, but knowledge, to be
most useful, must be centralised; there must be somewhere a focus at
which all its scattered rays are collected, that the broken and
coloured lights which exist elsewhere may find there what is necessary
to complete and purify them. To every branch of local administration
which affects the general interest there should be a corresponding
central organ, either a minister, or some specially appointed
functionary under him; even if that functionary does no more than
collect information from all quarters, and bring the experience
acquired in one locality to the knowledge of another where it is
wanted. But there is also something more than this for the central
authority to do. It ought to keep open a perpetual communication
with the localities: informing itself by their experience, and them by
its own; giving advice freely when asked, volunteering it when seen to
be required; compelling publicity and recordation of proceedings,
and enforcing obedience to every general law which the legislature has
laid down on the subject of local management.
That some such laws ought to be laid down few are likely to deny.
The localities may be allowed to mismanage their own interests, but
not to prejudice those of others, nor violate those principles of
justice between one person and another of which it is the duty of
the State to maintain the rigid observance.
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