All that is needful is to give a
sufficiently large sphere of action to the local authorities. Under
one and the same central government there may be local governors,
and provincial assemblies for local purposes. It may happen, for
instance, that the people of different provinces may have
preferences in favour of different modes of taxation. If the general
legislature could not be depended on for being guided by the members
for each province in modifying the general system of taxation to
suit that province, the Constitution might provide that as many of the
expenses of the government as could by any possibility be made local
should be defrayed by local rates imposed by the provincial
assemblies, and that those which must of necessity be general, such as
the support of an army and navy, should, in the estimates for the
year, be apportioned among the different provinces according to some
general estimate of their resources, the amount assigned to each being
levied by the local assembly on the principles most acceptable to
the locality, and paid en bloc into the national treasury. A
practice approaching to this existed even in the old French
monarchy, so far as regarded the pays d'etats; each of which, having
consented or been required to furnish a fixed sum, was left to
assess it upon the inhabitants by its own officers, thus escaping
the grinding despotism of the royal intendants and subdelegues; and
this privilege is always mentioned as one of the advantages which
mainly contributed to render them, as some of them were, the most
flourishing provinces of France.
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