While in no modern civilized State is the ad ministration wholly centralized. or. on the other hand. wholly decentralized, the two systems are, in their principles and methods, if not in their actual embodiment in practice, so sharply dis criminated as to call for a few words of com parison. Doubtless a centralized administration is capable of a much higher degree of efficiency than is attainable under the other system. For matters of great moment. requiring time for their maturing, and, when ripe, calling for prompt and decisive action, it is indispensable. No government would think of employing an other system in its military and international affairs. Then, too, it achieves a certain uni formity and regularity of aetion. and thus tends to strengthen the established government by giving its administration an impersonal effect of permanence and solidity. On the other hand, these very qualities of regularity and uniformity of action tend to harden into the inflexibility and routine of bureaucratic system, which, I>eing lifted above public opinion and free from any effective eritieism, crystallizes its abuses in the form of hallowed customs, and lends itself too easily to oppression.
The virtues of the system of decentralization are political rather than administrative. It is only under this system that a free government has free play for its varied activities and ex periments. And, though its potential efficiency is not to be compared with that of the system of centralization, it has much to recommend it from the purely administrative point of view. While not adapted to the regulation of interna tional relations, or the carrying out of far reaching measures of policy, its responsiveness to public opinion makes it. an efficient agency for supervising and controlling the far more nu merous and important private and local inter ests of the community. 1 eing local and famil ia r. it is vigilant and sympathetic; and though some of the affairs committed to it may be badly administered, it is probable that the sum-total of its achievement is greater than that of a centralized administration, with its limited knowledge and its indifference to criticism.
The character of the public administration— whether efficient or inefficient, economical or wasteful, pure or corrupt—depends fundamen tally on the conception of the proper aim and purpose of government which prevails. Ex travagance and corruption, and, with them, the inefficiency they engender, flourish under any government, whether popular or autocratic in form, which is maintained for the benefit of the ruler, whether that be a king, an aristocracy. or a political party. And, on the other hand, the honest acceptance of the principle that govern ment is instituted for the benefit of the gov erned lends to produce clean and efficient ad ministration, whatever the external form of the State. It is doubtless to the persistence of the feudal conception of the State that we owe the long era of corrupt and. upon the whole, ineffi cient administration of public affairs which has marked the history of modern States. So long
as the executive head of the State is at once the supreme and the lord paramount, from whom all honor and protection are derived, so long will the offices of administration be re garded as his perquisites. and the treasure de rived from taxation of the people be expended for the gratification of his ambitions and those of his favorites. He may, of his favor, or for iris own purposes, grant a certain measure of efficient administration; but the extravagance and corruption which are inseparable from that system will destroy the efficiency of the govern ment as well.
The profound modification of the theory of government effected by the democratic movement of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, in substituting the welfare of the people at large for that of the governing classes as the end and aim of government, has brought about a corre sponding revolution in its administration. This change became apparent in England upon the accession of William of Orange to the throne in MSS. and in France a hundred years later, in the Revolution; but owing to the development of party government in the former country, and the excesses to which that system led, it did not heCOMe effective there until the middle of the last century. It is true that more than one ad ministrative reform had been accomplished in Great Britain—as in the provision of :Magna Charta, requiring all justices, constables, sher iffs, and bailiffs to have knowledge of the laws of the realm; the statute of Edward VI. (1552) forbidding the sale of offices (except the higher judicial offices) ; and the extraordinary law en acted in the twelfth year of Richard 11. (RISS), declaring that "none shall obtain office by suit, or for reward, but upon desert:" yet as late as tile period of the American Revolution the 'spoils system' of the distribution of public office as the reward of party service flourished un checked. In the United States that vicious sys tem did not come into existence until the ad ministration of President Jackson, and it is only now giving place to the system preligured in the statute of Richard IL, above referred to. (See Civit.-SEnvIcE REFoRm; AlERIT SYSTEM.) The more recent development of party government in France has lately fastened the spoils system on the administration of that country; but, upon the whole, in Europe as well as in .America, civil administration has been enormously im proved, in purity and economy as well as in effi ciency, during the last hundred years; while in England and many of the English colonies, and in considerable portions of the administrative system of the United States, it has completely emancipated itself from the taint of corruption and extravagance. (See GOYERNMENT.) For a comparison of administrative systems and meth ods of controlling officers of administration, see Good now, m t re Adm in iNt ra t re La ic (2 vols., New York, 159:3). Consult, also, Eaton, ('fell Service in Urea t Britain (New York, ISSO).