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 administration.

The smallest civil division in France is the commune, which may be either rural or urban.  The commune has a municipal council which elects a mayor; but when once elected the mayor becomes directly responsible to the prefect of the department, and through him to the minister of the interior.  If these greater officers do not like what the mayor does, they can overrule his acts or even suspend him from office; or upon their complaint the President of the Republic can remove him.

[Sidenote:  In France whether it is nominally a despotic empire or a republic at the top, there is scarcely any self-government at the bottom.  Hence government there rests on an insecure foundation.] Thus in France people do not manage their own affairs, but they are managed for them by a hierarchy of officials with its head at Paris.  This system was devised by the Constituent Assembly in 1790 and wrought into completeness by Napoleon in 1800.  The men who