Book Description

Excerpt from Local and Central Government: A Comparative Study of England, France, Prussia, and the United States In all European nations, whatever may have been the previous course of their constitutional history, the persistent and rapid growth of the functions of the state, and the constant assumption of new and onerous duties and responsibilities in the last century, have rendered some attempts at decentralisation and some grants of self- government absolutely necessary, if the national administration is to be carried on with success. Experience, ancient and modern alike, has shown conclusively that a completely centralised bureaucracy - that is, a self-recruiting body of officials working from a single centre, and responsible only to itself - cannot carry on indefinitely the administration of a large country; it tends to ignore the varieties of local conditions, to become stereotyped in its ideas and methods, and overburdened; and sooner or later a breakdown becomes inevitable. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.