regulated the conduct of life
within its boundaries according to its own views of what was conducive
to the order, the well-being, the contentment, the progress, of its
own people. It has been the belief of practically all intelligent
observers of our national life that this individuality and
self-dependence of the States has been a cardinal element in the
promotion of our national welfare and in the preservation of our
national character. In a country of such vast extent and natural
variety, a country developing with unparalleled rapidity and
confronted with constantly changing conditions, who can say how great
would have been the loss to local initiative and civic spirit, how
grave the impairment of national concord and good will, if all the
serious concerns of the American people had been settled for them by a
central government at Washington ? In that admirable little book,
"Politics for Young Americans," Charles Nordhoff fifty years ago
expounded in simple language the principles underlying our system of
government. Coming to the subject of "Decentralization," he said:

Experience has shown that this device [decentralization] is of
extreme importance, for two reasons: First, it is a powerful and
the best means of training a people to efficient political action
and the art of self-government; and, second, it presents constant
and important barriers to the encroachment of rulers upon the
rights and liberties of the nation; every subdivision forming a
stronghold of resistance by the people against unjust or wicked
rulers. Take notice that any system of government is excellent in
the precise degree in which it naturally trains the people in
political independence, and habituates them to take an active part
in governing themselves. Whatever plan of government does this is
good--no matter what it may be called; and that which avoids this
is necessarily bad.

What Mr. Nordhoff thus set forth has been universally acknowledged as
the cardinal merit of local self-government; and in addition to this
cardinal merit it has been recognized by all competent students of our
history that our system of self-governing States has proved itself of
inestimable benefit in another way. It has rendered possible the
trying of important experiments in social and governmental policy;
experiments which it would have been sometimes dangerous, and still
more frequently politically impossible, to inaugurate on a natio