462 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



While it would be uncivil and to a great extent misleading, and 

 might be considered unpatriotic to assert that our republican form of 

 government, so admirable in the nation at large, has in practise broken 

 down in the great cities, calling attention to manifest truth can harm 

 no one, however sensitive ; to a very considerable extent New York City 

 is denied one of the first essentials of republicanism — home rule; in 

 many respects it is governed as a conquered province from Albany. 

 Perhaps some — or even all — of these denials are inevitable ; at all events 

 they are legal, and the good citizen is bound to submit gracefully, how- 

 ever much he may deplore the fact that some of the most cherished 

 guarantees of democracy are absent in metropolitan life. He may con- 

 sole himself with the knowledge that legislation entirely appropriate to 

 rural neighborhoods is utterly impracticable as applied to a city of 

 nearly five million inhabitants, closely, and in sections stiflingly clus- 

 tered, of many races and faiths and of countless diversities of habit. 

 ISTot only do the laws by which the metropolis is governed emanate 

 largely from sources exterior to itself, but these laws are continually 

 changing. Unlike the national administration, which is in essentials 

 simple and comparatively stable, that of the city is extremely complex, 

 the laws which it is the duty of the police to enforce being not only 

 intricate, but are being tampered with and altered continually. The 

 conditions in these respects that have prevailed and still do prevail are 

 sufficiently perplexing to confuse and demoralize almost any body of 

 men on earth; that they have not demoralized further than they have 

 the police force is greatly creditable to their self-control, sagacity and 

 respect for constituted authority. 



In order to understand the exact nature of the very radical change 

 which it is my purpose to outline, something in the way of both com- 

 parison and contrast between the national and civic administration may 

 well be considered. Especially ought these comparisons and contrasts 

 to be clearly understood between the regular army (the police of the 

 nation) and the police force, which may be considered as the army of 

 the city. 



The civilization of the western world, the Teutonic race having been 

 always in the van of progress, has achieved at least one lesson ]3erfectly 

 learned — the deplorable results of irresponsible power and the neces- 

 sity for those limitations upon the will of an executive to be summed 

 up in one comprehensive phrase — the law. In America, as we know, 

 the limitations have for their source a written constitution, to be in- 

 terpreted by an unprejudiced judiciary, and directed by congress. 



But in the course of the broadening of freedom this curious para- 

 dox is disclosed, that while parliaments and congresses have grown 

 continually more and more mindful of the people's will, the strength 

 of the executive of that will has l)een continually enlarged. In the 



