Centralized government

“ But if a government really centralized supposes a people highly civilised, the tendencies of such a government (whatever be the form of the sovereignty) will be beneficent in the main. The notions of the people about the ends of government, and about the means of attaining them, will be enlightened and just. As holding the same notions, or in its own despite, the government will aim at the ends sanctioned by a commanding opinion; and the administrative authorities, as its obedient instruments, will keep to the line of duties which is set to them by government and people. ”

“ I. Centralization, as it is commonly conceived, is mistaken for over-governing. A centralized government, according to the same conception, is an over-regulating, over-restraining, over-protecting government;—paternal, as its friends would call it; a pestilent busy-body, as it would be called by its enemies. We think that this is the conception which is commonly associated with the word; and our impression is confirmed by two of the books whose titles we have prefixed to this Article—De la Liberté du Travail, by Mr Dunoyer; and Notes of a Traveller, by Mr Laing. ”

“ But in a country whose government is centralized, the administrative system is highly regular. A high civilisation, therefore, is an imperative moral condition of centralization. In imperfectly civilized countries whose governments are apparently centralized, (as, for example, Russia,) the centralization is merely formal. In such a country, the administrative authorities, however perfect their arrangement, are not practically dependent on the sovereign power; since the end of the elaborate and well-meant system is defeated or thwarted by causes lying in the barbarity of the nation. ”

“ It appears, therefore, that where a government is really centralized, it governs by maxims which are good in themselves, and which are also consecrated by a formidable public opinion. But since constitutional securities for good government rest immediately on the same moral power, those maxims are equivalent, in no inconsiderable degree, to these more formal guarantees; insomuch, that a government which is not popular in form, but which is really or effectually centralized, will be administered in the spirit of governments which are popular in form and substance. ”

“ Meanwhile, under the stimulant of applied science, centralization went on resistlessly, and the cost of administration is proportionate to centralization. To bear the burden of a centralized government taxes must be equal and movement free, but here was a rapidly centralizing nation, the essence of whose organism was that taxes should be unequal and that movement should be restricted. ”

“ Now, if their constitution and functions tend strongly to make them dependent on the supreme one, the government is centralized; if their constitution and functions have not that tendency, the government is not centralized; and if, in consequence of this structural defect, they tend strongly to independence of the supreme one, they partake more or less of the nature of sovereign powers. The degree of the tendency to dependence, and the degree of the opposite tendency, which are marked by the opposed terms 'centralized' and 'uncentralized,' cannot be determined exactly by general expressions. ”

“ That the two things have no natural connexion, follows with equal clearness from this consideration: by abstaining from over-governing, as far as the prejudices of their subjects will allow them to abstain from it, centralized governments (like other governments) would consult their own interests. This will appear sufficiently from a short summary of the evils which a government brings upon itself by excessive meddling. 1. By needlessly extending its functions, it wantonly aggravates its necessarily heavy labours, and becomes proportionally incompetent to its proper duties. ”

“ There is centralized authority in full play. There a function of government claiming to be supreme, removed from the original source of sovereignty to an unmeasurable distance, entrenched in irresponsibility, endeavoring gradually to absorb all the organized powers around it. Sir, it requires but little sagacity to discern the danger and to foresee the consequences. ”

“ In the long run the police power will be exercised most advantageously for all concerned by local authority.
The present tendency toward centralization cannot go on indefinitely. A point must be reached sooner or later when an over-centralized government becomes intolerable and breaks down of its own weight. ”

“ The obvious truth is, that the over-governing imputed to centralization descends from states of society in which centralization was impossible. It comes from the crude conceptions of the legitimate province of government, which were naturally entertained by the middle ages and the ages immediately following them—ages which were just as incapable of centralized and regular government, as of conceiving the advanced science and the advanced industry which (like centralization) are products of a high civilization. ”

“ It is merely looking facts in the face, and realizing that centralization in business has already come and can not be avoided or undone, and that the public at large can only protect itself from certain evil effects of this business centralization by providing better methods for the exercise of control through the authority already centralized in the National Government by the Constitution itself. ”

“ By this system what to-day is GOVERNMENT will no longer be anything but administration; all France is centralized, so far as concerns ecclesiastical functions; the country, by the mere fact of its electoral initiative, governs itself in matters of eternal life as well as in those of this world. And one may already see that if it were possible to organize the entire country in temporal matters on the same bases, the most perfect order and the most vigorous centralization would exist without there being anything of what we to-day call constituted authority or government. ”

“ Modern democrats have been long divided into Centralists and Federalists—the one party seeking to give to the democratic republic they contemplate a strongly centralized form of government, and the other preferring to leave the local communes comparatively independent and sovereign, and free, if they choose, to unite themselves in convenient federations. ”

“ Local self-government, with impartial suffrage, will guard the rights of all citizens more securely than any centralized power. The public welfare requires the supremacy of the civil over the military authority, and the freedom of person under the protection of the habeas corpus. We demand for the individual the largest liberty consistent with public order, for the state self-government, and for the nation a return to the methods of peace and the constitutional limitations of power. ”

“ Thus a small number of men can control it in enormous masses, and so it comes to pass that, in a community like the United States, a few men, or even, in certain emergencies, a single man, may become clothed with various of the attributes of sovereignty. Sovereign powers are powers so important that the community, in its corporate capacity, has, as society has centralized, usually found it necessary to monopolize them more or less absolutely, since their possession by private persons causes revolt. ”

“ This system of centralization has almost neutralized the advancement of the nation, in a knowledge of the usages and objects of the political liberty that the French have obtained, by bitter experience, from other sources. It is the constant aim of that portion of the community which understands the action of free institutions, to increase the powers of the municipalities, and to lessen the functions of the central government ”

“ Popular interests have nothing to fear from a measure of Federal centralization, which bestows on the Federal government powers necessary to the fulfillment of its legitimate responsibilities; and the American people cannot in the long run be deceived by pleas which bear the evidence of such a selfish origin and have such dubious historical associations. The rights and the powers both of states and individuals must be competent to serve their purposes efficiently in an economical and coherent national organization, or else they must be superseded. ”

“ Can the people uphold, as against Congress, a President whose mind seems to be so much under the influence of these men that he publicly insults the legislature of the nation? Is the President to be supported because he sustains State Rights against Centralization? The only centralization which is to be feared, in this case, is the centralization of all the powers of the government in its executive branch. Is the President to be supported because he represents the principle of "no taxation without representation"? ”

“ The danger of centralization, greatly to be apprehended while the present condition of things lasts, and growing as it continues, will then have passed away; and, by strictly acknowledging and faithfully performing their constitutional duties, the States will save their rights. ”

“ But if it is certain that the United States will tend to enlarge and strengthen the action of the central government, in proportion to their advance in population and material civilization, one cannot say as yet whether this centralization will be for the benefit of a single Federation or of several. ”

“ Important as are the functions of a State in the administration of local government, especially in resisting an overbearing centralization, they must not be exalted above the Nation in its own appropriate sphere. ”

“ In all places where military operations have completely ended, agrarian reform has been thoroughly carried out and people of all circles have been fully organized, elections based on universal franchise shall be held immediately for the purpose of convening local People's Congresses.
ARTICLE 15. The organs of state power at all levels shall practice democratic centralism. In doing this the main principles shall be: the People's Congresses shall be responsible and accountable to the people; the People's Government Councils shall be responsible and accountable to the People's Congresses. ”

“ Opposition to centralization, and to that dangerous spirit of encroachment which tends to consolidate the powers of all the departments in one, and thus to create, whatever the form of government, a real despotism ”

“ In despotic countries, the principle of centralization actuates everything. Orders are issued from the central authorities, and the minds of the provinces are saved all trouble of thinking for themselves. Where self-government is permitted to each assemblage of citizens, they are stimulated to improve their idea and practice of liberty, and are almost independent of metropolitan usages. ”

“ The old historic question of a centralizing tendency on one and a decentralizing tendency on the other side, or of a strong central power and of local self-government, which the Democratic party, as the advocate of decentralization, was in the habit of advancing as the vital issue of American politics, has also changed so much in some of its most important aspects, that the Democratic party itself would hesitate now to put it forward in the old form. ”

“ To nationalize a people has never meant merely to centralize their government. Little by little a thoroughly national political organization has come to mean in Europe an organization which combined effective authority with certain responsibilities to the people; but the national interest has been just as likely to demand de-centralization as it has to demand centralization. ”

“ We have seen the dux lord as well as judge in his own jurisdiction, and standing as the successor of the military leader chosen by the people, instead of holding the position of king's servant; this place being more properly filled by the gastald, who cared for the fiscal interests of the central power, whose appointee he was. Such a form of government, it can be readily seen, left no room for any strong development of the principle of centralization, and no scope for the exercise of any decided power or even of general supervision by the central authority. ”

“ In what respect and for what purposes an increased Federal power and responsibility is desirable will be considered in a subsequent chapter. In this connection it is sufficient to insist that a more scrupulous attention to existing Federal responsibilities, and the increase of their number and scope, is the natural consequence of the increasing concentration of American industrial, political, and social life. American government demands more rather than less centralization merely and precisely because of the growing centralization of American activity. ”

“ II. The misconception which we have examined confounds centralization with over-governing. By the mistake which we shall now consider, it is deemed incompatible with the substance or spirit of what is commonly called free government.
Where the sovereign power resides in a body of persons, forming a fraction of the society, which may be deemed a large one, the government is popular or democratic; or, at least, the constitution of the government partakes largely of the popular or democratic element. ”

“ The first step, it seems to me, towards governmental reform, is decentralization, with a return to the States, the civic communities and the individual citizens of nine-tenths of the powers and the prerogatives that have been taken from them in defiance of abstract justice, of the principles of free government and of the theory of the workable unit of human scale. In a word we must abandon imperialism and all its works and go back to the Federal Republic. ”