ge and constantly increasing. As a rule, the first class is
salaried, the second is not; the non-professionals being simply
citizens who, moved by considerations of a civic and social nature,
give their services without prospect of pecuniary reward. The
principle of the system is, as Ashley characterizes it, that of
government by experts, checked by lay criticism and the power of the
purse, and effectively controlled by the central authorities. And,
although the details of local governmental arrangements vary
appreciably from state to state, this principle, which has attained
its fullest realization in Prussia, may be said to underlie local
government throughout the Empire in general.

V. LOCAL GOVERNMENT: AREAS AND ORGANS

*287. The Province.*--Aside from the cities, which have their special
forms of government, the political units of Prussia, in the order of
their magnitude, are: (1) the Provinz, or province; (2) the
Regierungsbezirk, or district; (3) the Kreis, or circle; (4) the
Amtsbezirk, or court jurisdiction; and (5) the Gemeinde, or commune.
Of these, three--the first, third, and fifth--are spheres both of the
central administration and of local self-government; two--the second
and fourth--exist for administrative purposes solely. Of provinces
there are twelve: East Prussia, West Prussia, Brandenburg, Pomerania,
Silesia, Posen, Westphalia, Saxony, Hanover, the Rhine Province,
Schleswig-Holstein, and Hesse-Nassau.[393] Unlike the French and (p. 269)
Italian departments, the Prussian provinces are historical areas,
of widely varying extent and, in some instances, of not even wholly
continuous territory. Thus Hanover is, geographically, the kingdom
once united with the crown of Great Britain, Schleswig-Holstein
comprises the territories wrested from Denmark in 1864, Saxony is the
country taken from the kingdom of Saxony at the close of the
Napoleonic wars, and Posen represents Prussia's ultimate acquisition
from the Polish partitions of the eighteenth century.

[Footnote 393: For all practical purposes the city
of Berlin and the district of Hohenzollern form
each a province. If they be counted, the total is
fourteen.]

In the organization of the province the separation of functions
relating to the affairs of the kingdom (_Staatsgeschaefte_) from those
which relate only to matters of a local nature is carried out rigidly.
In the ci