CENTRALIZATION, a term which has lately come into general use for expressing a tendency to administer, by the sovereign or the central government, matters which had been previously under local management. We cannot properly use the term towards an established despotism, for there everything is already directed from the center. The legitimate application is to a state of change from local to central management—a change in the opposite direction would, on the same principle, be called localization. Of this latter change, however, it can scarcely be said that we have any recent example, unless it may be found in the systems of self-government lately communicated to some of the British colonies. Ever since the existing European states began to grow out of the chaos of the fall of the Roman empire, there has been a continued progress in cen tralization. That empire itself was, however, the greatest instance of C. which the world has yet seen. In it the numerous municipalities and other local organizations originally existing in Italy, and communicated to the colonies, were entirely centralized. The empire, such as it had been in the days of Constantine, was the type after which the European monarchs, such of them especially as became more powerful than their neigh bors, were ever striving; and a few of them, such as Charlemagne, and, long afterwards, Charles V., seemed to have almost restored it. In this country, we trace C. from the time when there were about a dozen kings in Britain, and perhaps as many in Ireland, till the united kingdom came under the rule of one monarch. A. subsidiary C. at the same time made silent progress, absorbing the feudal power of the aristocracy and the municipal privileges of the corporations. In other countries—as, for instance, in France, notwithstanding her desperate struggles for freedom, this process of C. has tended to a pure irresponsible despotism. With so sad a result before their eyes, a distrust of C. has not unnaturally been felt by some inhabitants of Great Britain. But
the British constitution possesses a grand remedy, which turns the process to good use instead of mischief. While administrative authority has becu centralizing in the crown, the controlling power of parliament has been increasing at a more rapid ratio, so that the vesting of a function in the crown or central government, means the putting it under the control of parliament, and especially of the people's representatives in the house of commons. There is nothing done in any of the offices under the government for which a secretary of state, or some other member of the ministry, may not at any time be called to account in parliament. The efficiency of this control was in a manner proved by one or two instances in which offices with central powers were created, without being connected with any of the great state departments. There were, for instance, the English poor-law board, and the board of health. Both created much discontent and out cry about C., and it was found necessary to transfer their functions to the great govern ment departments, the heads of which are immediately responsible to parliament. It is not the policy of this country in any case to abolish local management, but rather to aid and direct it from the central authority. The constituents of local bodies are often dis inclined to watch or control them, and the business falls into the hands of incapable or designing men, or is otherwise mismanaged. A very little central help—especially from a quarter where the proceedings of other bodies of the same kind are known— remedies such defects. One of the methods in which the government has of late been in use to exercise its central power, has been been by the appointment of inspectors, who make reports which arc laid before parliament. This is, in reality, nothing more than a method of concentrating public opinion on the proceedings inspected and reported on, and as such it is very efficacious.