increase of over 100 per cent, possibly as much as 130 per cent. The total debt of cities with a population exceeding 7500 was, in 1880 (in round numbers), $710,000,000 (£142,000,000); that of smaller municipalities, $56,000,000.

Another

This striking difference between the cities and the States may be explained in several ways. One is that cities cannot repudiate, while sovereign States can and do.1 Another may be found in the later introduction into State Constitutions of restrictions on the borrowing powers of municipalities. But the chief cause is to be found in the conditions of the government of great cities, where the wealth of the community is largest, and is also most at the disposal of a multitude of ignorant voters. Several of the greatest cities lie in States which did not till recently, or have not even now, imposed adequate restrictions on the borrowing power of city councils. Now city councils are not only incapable administrators, but are prone to such public improvements as present opportunities for speculation, for jobbery, and even for wholesale embezzlement.

1 In some parts of New England the city, town, or other municipal debt is also the personal debt of every inhabitant, and is therefore an excellent security.

CHAPTER XLIV

THE WORKING OF STATE GOVERNMENTS

THE difficulty I have already remarked of explaining to Europeans the nature of an American State, viz. that there is in Europe nothing similar to it, recurs when we come to inquire how the organs of government which have been described play into one another in practice. To say that a State is something lower than the nation but greater than a municipality, is to say what is obvious, but not instructive; for the peculiarity of the State is that it combines some of the features which are to Europeans characteristic of a nation and a nation only, with others that belong to a municipality.

The State seems great or small according to the point of view from which one regards it. It is vast if one regards the sphere of its action and the completeness of its control in that sphere, which includes the maintenance of law and order, nearly the whole field of civil and criminal jurisprudence, the supervision of all local governments, an unlimited power of taxation. But if we ask, Who are the persons that manage this great machine of government; how much interest do the citizens take in it; how much reverence do they feel for it? the ample proportions we had admired begin to dwindle, for the persons turn out to be insignificant, and

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the interest of the people to have steadily declined. The powers of State authorities are powers like those of a European parliament; but they are wielded by men most of whom are less distinguished and less respected by their fellows than are those who fill the city councils of Manchester or Cologne. Several States exceed in area and population some ancient European monarchies. But their annals may not have been illumined by a single striking event or brilliant personality.

A further difficulty in describing how a State government works arises from the endless differences of detail between the several States. The organic frame of government is similar in all; but its functional activities vary according to the temper and habits, the ideas education and traditions of the inhabitants of the State. A European naturally says, "Select a typical State, and describe that to us." But there is no such thing as a typical State. Massachusetts or Connecticut is a fair sample of New England, Minnesota or Iowa of the NorthWest; Georgia or Alabama shows the evils, accompanied no doubt by great recuperative power, that still vex the South; New York and Illinois the contrast between the tendencies of an ignorant city mob and the steady-going farmers of the rural counties. But to take any one of these States as a type, asking the reader to assume what is said of it to apply equally to the other thirtyseven commonwealths, would land us in inextricable confusions. I must therefore be content to speak quite generally, emphasizing those points in which the colour and tendencies of State governments are much the same over the whole Union, and begging the European reader to remember that illustrations drawn, as they must be drawn, from some particular State, will not necessarily be true of some other State

government, because its life may go on under different conditions.

The State governments, as has been observed already, bear a family likeness to the National or Federal government, a likeness due not only to the fact that the latter was largely modelled after the systems of the old thirteen States, but also to the influence which the Federal Constitution has exerted ever since 1789 on those who have been drafting or amending State Constitutions. Thus the Federal Constitution has been both child and parent. Where the State Constitutions differ from the Federal, they invariably differ in being more democratic. It still expresses the doctrines of 1787. They express the views of later days, when democratic ideas have been more rampant, and men less cautious than the sages of the Philadelphia Convention have given legal form to popular beliefs. This difference, which appears not only in the mode of appointing judges, but in the shorter terms which the States allow to their officials and senators, comes out most clearly in the relations established between the legislative and the executive powers. The national executive, as we have seen, is disjoined from the national legislature in a way strange to Europeans. Still, the national executive is all of a piece. The President is supreme; his ministers are his subordinates, chosen by him from among his political associates. They act under his orders; he is responsible for their conduct. But in the States there is nothing even distantly resembling a cabinet. The chief executive officials are directly elected by the people. They hold by a title independent of the State governor. They are not, except so far as special statute may provide, subject to his directions, and he is not responsible for their conduct, since he can

some

not control it. As the governor need not belong to the party for the time being dominant in the legislature, so the other State officials need not be of the same party as They may even have been elected at a different time, or for a longer period.

the governor.

A European, who studies the mechanism of State government—very few Europeans so far having studied it-is at first puzzled by a system which contradicts his preconceived notions. "How," he asks, "can such machinery work? One can understand the scheme under which a legislature rules through officers whom it has, whether legally or practically, chosen and keeps in power. One can even understand a scheme in which the executive, while independent of the legislature, consists of persons acting in unison, under a head directly responsible to the people. But will not a scheme, in which the executive officers are all independent of one another, yet not subject to the legislature, want every condition needed for harmonious and efficient action? They obey nobody. They are responsible to nobody, except a people which only exists in concrete activity for one election day every two or three years, when it is dropping papers into the ballot-box. Such a system seems the negation of a system, and more akin to chaos."

In his attempts to penetrate this mystery, our European receives little help from his usually helpful American friends, simply because they do not understand his difficulty. Light dawns on him when he perceives that the executive business of a State is such as not to need any policy, in the European sense, and therefore no harmony of view or purpose among those who manage it. Everything in the nature of State policy belongs to the legislature, and to the legislature alone.

Compare the Federal President with the State