of
the want of administrative perfection in the United States, and says, "We
are indebted to centralization, that admirable invention of a great man,
for the uniform order and method which prevails alike in all the municipal
budgets (of France) from the largest town to the humblest commune." But,
says De Tocqueville,--

"Whatever may be my admiration of this result, when I see the
communes (municipalities) 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 these 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 insure the welfare of a people_, and not
to establish order and regularity in the midst of its misery and its
distress."[1]

The italics are my own; but it will be seen that he uses a phrase almost
identical with Mr. Parkman's, and that he uses it to show that there is
something to be looked at beyond good laws,--namely, the beneficial effect
of self-government. In another place he comes back to the subject again:--

"It is incontestable that the people frequently conducts public
business very ill; but it is impossible that the lower order should
take a part in public business without extending the circle of their
ideas, and without quitting the ordinary routine of their mental
acquirements; the humblest individual who is called upon to
cooperate in the government of society acquires a certain degree of
self-respect; and, as he possesses authority, he can command the
services of minds much more enlightened than his own. He is
canvassed by a multitude of applicants, who seek to deceive him in a
thousand different ways, but who instruct him by their deceit....
Democracy does not confer the most skilful kind of government upon
the people; but it produces that which the most skilful governments
are frequently unable to awaken, namely, an all-pervading and
restless activity, a superabundant force, and an energy which is
inseparable from it, and which may, under favorable circumstances,
beget