American Institutions and Their Influence. Alexis de Tocqueville
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The authority which represents the state ought not, I think, to waive the right of inspecting the local administration, even when it does not interfere more actively. Suppose, for instance, that an agent of the government was stationed at some appointed spot, in the county, to prosecute the misdemeanors of the town and county officers, would not a more uniform order be the result, without in any way compromising the independence of the township? Nothing of the kind, however, exists in America; there is nothing above the county courts, which have, as it were, only an accidental cognizance of the offences they are meant to repress.
{This note seems to have been written without reference to the provision existing, it is believed in every state of the Union, by which a local officer is appointed in each county, to conduct all public prosecutions at the expense of the state. And in each county, a grand-jury is assembled three or four times at least in every year, to which all who are aggrieved have free access, and where every complaint, particularly those against public officers, which has the least color of truth, is sure to be heard and investigated.
Such an agent as the author suggests would soon come to be considered a public informer, the most odious of all characters in the United States; and he would lose all efficiency and strength. With the provision above mentioned, there is little danger that a citizen, oppressed by a public officer, would find any difficulty in becoming his own informer, and inducing a rigid inquiry into the alleged misconduct.—American Editor.}
{110} China appears to me to present the most perfect instance of that species of well-being which a completely central administration may furnish to the nations among which it exists. Travellers assure us that the Chinese have peace without happiness, industry without improvement, stability without strength, and public order without public morality. The condition of society is always tolerable, never excellent. I am convinced that, when China is opened to European observation, it will be found to contain the most perfect model of a central administration which exists in the universe.
{111} A writer of talent, who, in the comparison which he has drawn between the finances of France and those of the United States, has proved that ingenuity cannot always supply the place of a knowledge of facts, very justly reproaches the Americans for the sort of confusion which exists in the accounts of the expenditure in the townships; and after giving the model of a departmental budget in France, he adds: "We are indebted to centralisation, that admirable invention of a great man, for the uniform order and method which prevail alike in all the municipal budgets, from the largest town to the humblest commune." Whatever may be my admiration of this result, when I see the communes of France, with their excellent system of accounts, plunged in the grossest ignorance of their true interests, and abandoned to so incorrigible an apathy that they seem to vegetate rather than to live; when, on the other hand, I observe the activity, the information, and the spirit of enterprise which keeps society in perpetual labor, in those American townships whose budgets are drawn up with small method and with still less uniformity, I am struck by the spectacle; for to my mind the end of a good government is to ensure the welfare of a people, and not to establish order and regularity in the midst of its misery and its distress. I am therefore led to suppose that the prosperity of the American townships and the apparent confusion of their accounts, the distress of the French communes and the perfection of their budget, may be attributable to the same cause. At any rate I am suspicious of a benefit which is united to so many evils, and I am not averse to an evil which is compensated by so many benefits.
{112} See Appendix I.
{113} See Appendix K.
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