THE MULTIPLICATION OF LEGISLATURES.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 52, 20 January 1872, Page 3

THE MULTIPLICATION OF LEGISLATURES.

The following from the “ Pall Mall Gazette,” with reference to what it considers to have been one of the main causes of the state of corruption into which the municipal Government of New York has of late fallen, is worthy of attention in a country like our own, where the question of local v. central Government is pre eminently the question of the day : A few, though not all, of the causes which have led to or facilitated this extraordinary series of frauds, deserve notice on this side of the Atlantic. One of them has unquestionably been the extensive multiplication in the United States of administrative bodies formed on the parliamentary model. It is remarkable that this accumulation of Parliament on Parliament was especially admired by De Tocqueville, who has no words too strong for the value of a system which began by giving a popular organization to the township, and went on to apply the same mode of government to larger and larger territorial areas, till it culminated in the Congress of the United States. But institutions

which possibly deserve much of De Tocqueville’s praise, so long as they are confined to populations comparatively poor and of comparatively simple manners, are proving extremely ill-adapted to so much of the American people as is collected in great and wealthy cities. In the first place, an excessive number of popular bodies cannot be properly watched. Most Englishmen find it quite enough to observe the proceedings of Parliament, and at most take some small degree of interest besides in their own borough council or parish vestry. But a citizen of New York may have his comfort and fortune most seriously affected at any moment by the votes of at least three assemblies—the Congress of the United States, the Legislature of his own State, and the Common Council of New York. It is impossible that public attention should be strongly or continuouslyattracfed to all these bodies, and it is acknowledged by Americans of New York, that the corruption generally attributed to the Legislature at Albany, and unanimously imputed to the New York Corporation, is mainly the consequence of the_. secrecy with which their pioceedings are surrounded through public indifference and neglect. Again, it is one of the defects of popular government, which has not perhaps been as much noticed as it ought to be, that it requires the co-operation of so very large a number of persons. Just, however, as the quantity of interest and. attention which is available for the supervision of popular bodies is limited, so also the quantity of honesty which is available for filling them with men beyond temptation is limited. The American system requires a great many men to work it, who shall also be extremely honest men, and the simple truth is that they are not to be found.