as a rule resolved to remain so in their own districts all their life long, and sympathized with the joys and sorrows of the district.  Today the post of provincial president is the lowest step in the ladder of the higher administration, sought after by young “assessors” who have a justifiable ambition to make a career.  To obtain it they have more need of ministerial favor than of the goodwill of the local population, and they attempt to win this favor by conspicuous zeal, and by “taking it out of” the official commissioners of the so-called local administration, or by carrying out valueless bureaucratic experiments.  Therein lies for the most part the inducement to overburden their subordinates in the local self-government system.  Thus self-government means the aggravation of bureaucracy, increase in the number of officials, and of their powers and interference in private life.

It is only human nature to be more keenly sensitive to the thorns than to the roses of every institution, and that the thorns should irritate one against the existing state of things.  The old government officials, when they came into direct contact with the governed population, showed themselves to be pedantic, and estranged from the practical working of life by their occupation at the green table; but they left behind them the impression of toiling honesty and conscientiously for justice.  The same thing cannot be assumed in all their degrees of the wheels in the machine of the self-government of today in those country districts where the parties stand in acute opposition to each other; goodwill towards political friends, frame of mind as regards opponents, readily become a hindrance to the impartial maintenance of institutions.  According to my experiences in earlier and more recent times, I should, for the rest, not like to allow impartiality, when comparing judicial and administrative decisions, to the former alone, not at least in every instance.  On the contrary, I have preserved an impression that judges of small local courts succumb more easily to strong party influences than do administrative officials; nor need we invent any psychological reason for the fact that, given equal culture, the latter should a priori be considered less just and conscientious in their official decisions than the former.  But I certainly do assume that official decisions do not gain in honesty and moderation by being arrived at collectively; for apart from the fact that, in the case of voting by majority, arithmetic and chance take the place of logical reasoning, that feeling of personal responsibility, in which lies the essential guarantee for the conscientiousness of the decision, is lost directly it comes about by means of anonymous majorities.