What is local self-government? Briefly, that without any
interference from without, every citizen should manage his
own personal affairs in his own way, according to his own
pleasure; that every town should manage its own town affairs
in the same manner and under the same restriction; every
county its own county affairs, every State its own State
affairs. But the independent exercise of this autonomy, by
personal and corporate individuals, has one fundamental
condition, viz.: the maintenance of all these
individualities intact, each in its own sphere of action,
with its rights uninfringed and its freedom uncurtailed in
that sphere, yet each also preserving its just relation to
all the rest in an all comprehensive social organization.
Every citizen would thus stand, as it were, in the center of
several concentric and enlarging circles of relationship to
his kind; he would have duties and rights in each relation,
not only as an individual but also as a member of town,
county, State and national organization. His local
self-government will be at his highest possible point of
realization, when in each of these relations his individual
duties are discharged and his rights maintained.

On the other hand, what is centralization?

It is such a disorganization of this well-balanced,
harmonious and natural system as shall result in the
absorption of all substantial power by a central authority,
to the destruction of the autonomy of the various
individualities above mentioned; such as was produced, for
instance, when the _municipia_ of the Roman empire lost
their corporate independence and melted into the vast
imperial despotism which prepared the way for the collapse
of society under the blows of Northern barbarism. Such a
centralization must inevitably be produced by decay of that
stubborn stickling for rights, out of which local
self-government has always grown. That is, if individual
rights in the citizen, the town, the county, the State,
shall not be vindicated as beyond all price, and defended
with the utmost jealousy, at whatever cost, the spirit of
lib