entrust it to a committee your prospect of getting it done is diminished, and it grows less if you enlarge your committee. By the time you have got a group of committees, independent of one another and working at cross purposes, you have got Dickens's famous Circumlocution Office, where the great object in life was "how not to do it."

Amid the general dissatisfaction over the extravagance and inefficiency of our city governments, people's attention was first drawn to the rapid and alarming increase of city Increase of indebtedness in various parts of the city debts country. A heavy debt may ruin a city as surely as an individual, for it raises the rate of taxation, and thus, as was above pointed out, it tends to frighten people and capital away from the city. At first it was sought to curb the recklessness of city councils in incurring lavish expenditures by giving the mayor a veto power. Laws were also passed limiting the amount of debt which a city would be allowed to incur under any circumstances. Clothing the mayor with the veto power is now seen to have been a wise step; and arbitrary limitation of the amount of debt, though a clumsy expedient, is confessedly a necessary one. But beyond this, it was in some instances attempted to take the management of some departments of city business out of the hands of the city and put them

into the hands of the state legislature. The most notable instance of this was in New York in 1857. The results, there and elsecure the evil where, have been generally regarded as unsatisfactory. After a trial of thirty

Attempt to

by state interference; experience of New York

years the experience of New York has proved that a state legislature is not competent to take proper care of the government of cities. Its members do not know enough about the details of each locality, and consequently local affairs are left to the representatives from each locality, with "log-rolling" as the inevitable result. A man fresh from his farm on the edge of the Adirondacks knows nothing about the problems pertaining to electric wires in Broadway, or to rapid transit between Harlem and the Battery; and his consent to desired legislation on such points can very likely be obtained only by favouring some measure which he thinks will improve the value of his farm, or perhaps by helping him to debauch the civil service by getting some neighbour appointed to a position for which he is not qualified. All this is made worse by the fact that the members of a state government are generally less governed by a sense of responsibility toward the citizens of a particular city than even the worst local government that can be set up in such a city.1

1 It is not intended to deny that there may be instances in

Moreover, even if legislatures were otherwise competent to manage the local affairs of cities, they have not time enough, amid the pressure of other duties, to do justice to such matters. In 1870 the number of acts passed by the New York legislature was 808. Of these, 212, or more than one fourth of the whole, related to cities and villages. The 808 acts, when printed, filled about 2000 octavo pages; and of these the 212 acts filled more than 1500 pages. This illustrates what I said above about the vast quantity of details which have to be regulated in municipal government. Here we have more than three fourths of the volume of statelegislation devoted to local affairs; and it hardly need be added that a great part of these enactments were worse than worthless because they were made hastily and without due considerawhich the state government may advantageously participate in the government of cities. It may be urged that, in the case of great cities, like New York or Boston, many people who are not residents either do business in the city or have vast business interests there, and thus may be as deeply interested in its welfare as any of the voters. It may also be said that state provisions for city government do not always work badly. There are many competent judges who approve of the appointment of police commissioners by the executive of Massachusetts. There are generally two sides to a question; and to push a doctrine to extremes is to make oneself a doctrinaire rather than a wise citizen. But experience clearly shows that in all doubtful cases it is safer to let the balance incline in favour of local self-government than the other way.

tion, though not always, perhaps, without what lawyers call a consideration.1

The experience of New York thus proved that state intervention and special legislation did not mend matters. It did not prevent the shameful rule of the Tweed Ring from 1868 to 1871, when a small band of

Tweed Ring in New York

conspirators got themselves elected or appointed to the principal city offices, and, having had their own corrupt creatures chosen judges of the city courts, proceeded to rob the taxpayers at their leisure. By the time they were discovered and brought to justice, their stealings amounted to many millions of dollars,

1 Nothing could be further from my thought than to cast any special imputation upon the New York legislature, which is probably a fair average specimen of law-making bodies. The theory of legislative bodies, as laid down in text-books, is that they are assembled for the purpose of enacting laws for the welfare of the community in general. In point of fact they seldom rise to such a lofty height of disinterestedness. Legislation is usually a mad scramble in which the final result, be it good or bad, gets evolved out of compromises and bargains among a swarm of clashing local and personal interests. The consideration" may be anything from logrolling to bribery. In American legislatures it is to be hoped that downright bribery is rare. As for log-rolling, or exchange of favours, there are many phases of it in which that which may be perfectly innocent shades off by almost imperceptible degrees into that which is unseemly or dishonourable or even criminal; and it is in this hazy region that Satan likes to set his traps for the unwary pilgrim.

and the rate of taxation had risen to more than two per cent.

ments

The discovery of these wholesale robberies, and of other villainies on a smaller scale in other cities, has led to much discussion of the problems of municipal government, and to many attempts at practical reform. The present is especially a period of experiments, yet New experiin these experiments perhaps a general drift of opinion may be discerned. People seem to be coming to regard cities more as if they were huge business corporations than as if they were little republics. The lesson has been learned that in executive matters too much limitation of power entails destruction of responsibility; the "ring" is now more dreaded than the "one-man power; " and there is accordingly a manifest tendency to assail the evil by concentrating power and responsibility in the

mayor.

The first great city to adopt this method was Brooklyn. In the first place the city council was simplified and made a one-cham

New govern

Brooklyn

bered council consisting of nineteen ment of aldermen. Besides this council of aldermen, the people elect only three city offithe mayor, comptroller, and auditor. The comptroller is the principal finance officer

cers,

1 When Brooklyn was a municipality within itself, and before its consolidation with New York.