HEREDITY AND POLITICS 147 



the appropriate Government office, sometimes on the 

 motion of a small minority of ratepayers who represent 

 the traditions of the old "governing class." In such 

 cases, at least, a better result would have been reached 

 at an expenditure of one-tenth the time and money 

 by the direct action of the older system of local 

 government by the county magistrates, in spite of 

 popular witticisms at the expense of the " Great 

 Unpaid." Doubtless, as F. W. Maitland said, to be 

 great and yet unpaid is, to some ways of thinking, a 

 piece of aristocratic insolence. 



When the local bodies are satisfactory, the divergence 

 of aim between them and the Government departments 

 still continues. Even the county councils are subject to 

 constant interference and harassing restriction emanat- 

 ing from the central authorities, until the heart is taken 

 out of all individual local effort and initiative, and 

 the government of the county passes increasingly into 

 the hands of paid officials, local and imperial, who soon 

 learn how to manipulate the strings of the dejected 

 elected bodies. 



The late Professor Maitland, one of the most 

 sound as well as the most brilliant of English his- 

 torians, called attention to the certain appearance 

 of this especial difficulty when, in 1888, proposals 

 were laid before the country for replacing the ad- 

 ministration of county affairs through the justices by 

 a scheme of local' government through representatives 

 of the people, elected on to county, district and 

 parish councils. 



"The average justice of the peace," 1 he wrote, "is 



1 "The Shallows and Silences of Real Life," Collected Papers, vol. i. 



