eral supervision; indeed, it clothes them with their
authority. Townships and counties have no sovereignty; the state, on
the other hand, has many elements of sovereignty, but it does not use
them to obliterate or unduly restrict the control of the townships
and counties over their own administrative work. It leaves the local
governments to administer themselves. As a rule there is only just
enough state supervision to harmonize the working of so many local
administrations. Such a system of government comes as near as possible
toward making all American citizens participate actively in the
management of public affairs. It generates and nourishes a public
spirit and a universal acquaintance with matters of public interest
such as has probably never before been seen in any great country.
Public spirit of equal or greater intensity may have been witnessed
in small and highly educated communities, such as ancient Athens or
mediaeval Florence, but in the United States it is diffused over an
area equal to the whole of Europe. Among the leading countries of the
world England is the one which comes nearest to the United States
in the general diffusion of enlightened public spirit and political
capacity throughout all classes of society.

[Sidenote: Instructive contrast with France.]
A very notable contrast to the self-government which has produced such
admirable results is to be seen in France, and as contrasts are
often instructive, let me mention one or two features of the French
government. There is nothing like the irregularity and spontaneity
there that we have observed in our survey of the United States.
Everything is symmetrical. France is divided into eighty-nine
_departments_, most of them larger than the state of Delaware,
some of them nearly as large as Connecticut, and the administration
of one department is exactly like that of all the others. The chief
officer of the department is the prefect, who is appointed by
the minister of the interior at Paris. The prefect is treasurer,
recruiting officer, school superintendent, all in one, and he appoints
nearly all inferior officers. The department has a council, elected
by universal suffrage, but it has no power of assessing taxes. The
central legislature in Paris decides for it how much money it shall
use and how it shall raise it. The department council is not even
allowed to express its views on political matters; it can only attend
to purely local details of adminis