LOCAL GOVERNMENT IN GERMANY AND FRANCE.* ACCORDING as his readers

are pessimistically or optimistically inclined, Sir Robert Morier's admirable little book will suggest a series of very different reflections. The pessimists will feel drawn to denounce a state of things under which a man capable of taking such wise and statesmanlike views upon the great questions of the age, and of helping us so greatly to acquire the moral and intellectual temper in which those questions can best be met, is sent into perpetual foreign exile, and debarred all opportunity of assisting his fellow-countrymen in the actual tasks of government. The

• (1). Local Government in England and Germany. An Essay reprinted from the Cobden Club Scrim on Local Government. By the Right Hon. Sir Robert Mortar, 0.0.B., G.C.M.G.. LL.D., &o. London Camell and Co.. Limited.— (2). Department (County) Councils, Local Management, and Taxation in France. By Thomas Barclay, LL.B., of Lilloolo's Inn, Esq , Barrister-at-Law. Reprinted from the Times. London : Stevens and Sons.

optimists, on the other hand, will feel it a subject of more than ordinary congratulation that the nation has secured a repre- sentative of such force and capacity to manage its relations with so important a foreign Power as Russia. For ourselves, we share both the sense of regret that Sir Robert Morier has not been kept at home to help us solve the great problems, legisla- tive and administrative, that surround us, and the feeling of Satisfaction that England has so worthy an Ambassador abroad ; though undoubtedly, in reading his pamphlet on Local Government—originally written for the Cobden Club in 1875, and now reprinted—the sense of loss is apt to be the stronger. In the main, Sir Robert Morier's work deals with the Prussian system of Local Government estab- lished by the law of 1871. Its most valuable feature, however, consists in the general observations with which it abounds. These are as true, as important, and we fear as little attended to as they were in 1875 ; and thus the reprinting of the essay exactly as it was given to the world thirteen years ago is more than justified. If the republication is un- fortunately too late to influence the actual provisions of the Local Government Bill, at any rate it is not too late to do what is even more important—to affect the spirit in which it is to be worked and administered.

The moral which Sir Robert Morier enforces—a moral borrowed from Professor Gneist, but amplified, vitalised, and made practical in the borrowing—is that freedom and self- government are not to be obtained off-hand by breaking up a country into districts and sub-districts, and then placing them in organic relation with each other and with " the national or Imperial centre." He quotes from Professor Gneist to show —what is undoubtedly the truth—that England is a free country because throughout her history the people have been harnessed to the State to do its work, and have not been broken up into a series of semi-independent fragments con- cerned solely with private and local affairs. We must attempt in this connection to summarise Sir Robert Morier's masterly disquisition upon the three systems, which, according to him, are now striving for mastery in regard to local government in every modern society. These are, he says,—(1), The social system ; (2), the bureaucratic system ; (3), the system of self- government. The social system places society above the State, and, so to speak, seeks to clothe public servants in the livery of social corporations,—these corporations being interests, such as the landed interest, the moneyed interest, the labour interest, &c. " The social system looks upon man not as the subject or citizen of a particular State, but as a unit of the human race, equipped with certain inalienable congenital rights, and no corresponding duties Man comes into the world a higher

kind of political marsupial, with a pouch full of blank voting. papers, and his political activity through life consists in filling up these papers. He is to get himself and his interests repre- sented, and his representatives are to do his work." Sir Robert Morier sums up the results of the social system thus :—" A

local voting body, a talking superintending body, a paid execu- tive body, such is the modern social idea of government."

Bureaucratic government is next defined as placing the State above Society, and looking upon Society " as the raw material to be administered." Self-government, on the other hand, " looks upon Society and the State as one and indivisible, as together constituting one body, only looked at from different sides." The object it endeavours to attain is " that in some form or other all the governed shall, according to the measure of their ability, take a personal share in the public work (not 'necessarily in the public talk), and that all the governors shall fall amongst the ranks of the governed." In this con- text Sir Robert Morier quotes the maxims of Aristotle :—" The virtue of the perfect citizen is this,—that he is able both to govern admirably and to be governed admirably:" " They only can govern well who themselves are governed." The ideal franchise of such a system would be " household suffrage, in which every householder should have a distinct share of the public work assigned to him, and rigorously exacted at his hands." With such a cramped and ineffectual resume of Sir Robert Morier's analysis as preface, we must now quote the very remarkable series of reflections which he makes in the following passage :-

" There are two important streams of public opinion in England respecting the relations between Society and the State, both of which appear to us to be wrong, and wrong because they start from abstract principles which stand in diametrical opposition to the concrete historical foundations on which our English Common- wealth has been built up. The one looks upon the State as a necessary evil, to be thrust as much as possible into the back- ground, its wings cut, and its claws trimmed. It pins its faith on voluntaryism, and believes that all that is required for the attain- ment of the highest social and political ideals is the most absolute Jaime faire, the most uncompromising liberty of co-operation and association for every conceivable purpose, whether of a public or of a private kind. It ignores the centripetal forces of the State, the incomparably greater reserve forces which the State exercises as the collective Ego than any which can be exercised by even the most powerful associations of individual Egos. It only sees in the State a gigantic jobmaster. The other stream, fully recognising the forces inherent in the State, wishes to utilise them to the utmost, and to thrust upon the State the business of Society. It -sees in the State an incomparable maid-of-all-work, and wishes to -secure her services for the benefit of Society. It strives to harness the State to social interests in exactly the same fashion that the medieval corporations endeavoured to do in their day. Both -systems have this in common, that they altogether ignore the obligation of Society to do the work of the State. The one is full of energy, and wishes to do everything itself, and to be bound by no constraining jubeo or prohibeo. The other is lazy and phlegmatic, and wishes to throw its own business on the shoulders of the State. The one leads to disintegration, the other to bureaucracy. Both are the determined enemies of self-government of the old English type. For self-government is a hard taskmaster; it expects every man to do his duty, not optionally and according to his views of the way it ought to be done, but as a public obligation and according to the views of the State upon the matter. Far be it from us to disparage the great results that have been obtained by voluntaryism; it is only the abuse, not the use, of the force that we deprecate. We regard it as an invaluable servant, but as an indifferent master. We have pointed out what the running riot of this principle led to in medieval Germany. We need only point to the London charities to show the mischief it is capable of working amongst ourselves."

To those who feel inclined to assent to Sir Robert Morier's doctrines as to self-government, the motive spirit of the present Local Government Bill need give no cause of anxiety. The Bill, looked at in its decentralising capacity, is distinctly making the people do the work of government themselves,— harnessing Society to do the work of the State. Many of the functions performed by the London bureaucracy will now be carried out on the spot by the County and District Councils. At the same time, however, these Councils will not be private, independent bodies, but simply Boards of the governed, which will carry out the work of the State with which they are entrusted by way of delegation.

We are loth to leave Sir Robert Morier's essay without saying something as to the practical suggestions he has to make in regard to Local Government, and especially as to the passages in which he insists that the administration of the Poor-Laws and the maintenance of the public peace are branches of government which especially ought to be carried out on the principles of self-government. " They were," he says, " those which used to be the most typical of English self-goverment; they are those which the tendencies of modern Society have most completely bureaucratised." In the case of poor-relief, Sir Robert Mosier suggests that, fol- lowing a Prussian model, the administration should be minutely subdivided until it can be finally carried out, not by paid officials, but by members of the wage-earning class who live among and know from personal observation the circumstances of those who seek relief. As to police, Sir Robert Morier would revive in an efficient form the voluntary constabulary which used to exist in our parishes. In each parish in the ‘county, and in each street in towns, he would have a certain number of respectable householders sworn in as permanent special constables, and bound to assist the paid police in case of need. " Establish in each locality an overseer of the poor as a public officer, and half-a-dozen petty special constables, selected de melioribus hominibus of the classes who dwell in these lanes and alleys, and the State and Society are once more reunited, the omnipresence of the State is once more restored!'

We have left ourselves little space to say anything as to the very interesting account which Sir Robert Morier's book contains of Prussian Local Government. At the present moment, the account given of the Kreistag, or County

Parliament, will naturally most immediately attract the reader's attention. The following is his description of the manner in which that body is elected:— "For the elections to the Kreistag, three distinct electoral colleges are formed, which, with the peculiarities of the method of election, betray a certain affiliation to the superseded medieval parliaments and to government by Estates. The first college comprises the towns ; the second, the larger properties, i.e., such properties as pay not less than seventy-five thalers a year in land and house tax ; the third, the townships and such properties as pay less than seventy-five thalers a year land and house tax.

Each college elects its own representatives. The municipal assembly and the municipal executive board together elect the town representatives. The proprietors of the large estates elect theirs by a process of direct voting. In regard to the townships, the system of double election in use in the elections to the Prussian Parliament has been introduced. The village assemblies eleet the electors, and these, with the owners of the smaller pro- perties paying less than seventy-five thalers land and house tax. whose votes are direct, together elect the representatives of the townships."

Besides this body there is a County Board, which consists of six persons, elected by the Kreistag and the Landrath,—a Government functionary, but chosen from among the principal

landowners. To describe either its functions or those of the Kreistag would, however, be impossible here, since to do so must necessarily involve an account of the whole Prussian bureaucratic system which exists side by side with the un- official bodies created by recent legislation. The fact of the election being by means of electoral colleges practically, if not theoretically based on class divisions, shows that it could not—in this respect at least—afford an example for England, where the idea of the existence of distinct classes of society is contrary to the whole policy of our customs and our law. Except in the case of some four hundred Peers of the United Kingdom, the Common Law can perceive no difference in status between one subject and another.

With so much of criticism, we must take leave of a work which for depth of thought and power of expression can com- pare with any political writing of our time. No reader can master Sir Robert Morier's pages without feeling that the writer knows how to view society as a whole, and to grasp the essentials of the actual political phenomena before him. Hardest feat of all, he can draw from history teachings to support his conclusions without sinking into the pedant's fault of attempting to bind the living with the grave-clothes of the dead. He knows that it is the spirit in which our fore- fathers worked their institutions which we want to preserve, not the mere accidental and external framework of their society. Hence his book, in whatever light we view it, is a contribution of special value to the discussion of the great and pressing problems of modern government.

Mr. Barclay's pamphlet, consisting of articles reprinted from the Times, gives his readers a fairly definite description of French Departmental Government. Until the war, the Conseils Generous had little or no power. Since that time, however, their functions have been considerably enlarged, and they now possess a final control over a very large number of subjects, such as departmental property, roads, local public works, local railway construction, the management and regula- tion of lunatic asylums, pauper children, and a certain amount of supervision of the municipal and communal councils. The power of the Prefect, however, still remains very large. The system of taxation is very characteristic of the French love of symmetry and neatness. The Councils' revenues are collected along with the State taxes, by the imposition of additional

centimes added to each franc levied by means of the land, the personal, the door and window, and the trade taxes :— " These centimes are divided into three classes,—(l), Ordinary

or Parliamentary aggislatif) centimes ; (2), extraordinary centimes ; and (3), special centimes. The Parliamentary centimes are voted annually by Parliament, and place the administration of the department beyond the risk of being brought to a standstill through the vagaries of any general Council."

That it will be ever possible to borrow anything from the French system, is, we think, doubtful. The principle of taxation adopted in France would, however, undoubtedly be a convenient one, did English fiscal conditions allow of its adoption. Since, however, they do not, it is not likely that- even in this respect we shall ever be able to make use of the example given us by our neighbours across the Channel.