is that state agency cannot be depended upon for public service, and this necessitates a federal duplication of administrative agency adding to the cost of government. No matter how great a transfer of function from state to federal authority takes place, state office-holders multiply to the extent of party ability to provide places for them, while the expansion of federal function involves a rapid increase of the federal pay-roll. In this respect the situation is peculiar. In other federal governments for instance, Germany and Switzerland transfer of function from state to federal authority means no more than a change in the site of the authority. The same functionaries who acted under state authority continue to act under federal authority.1 Hence nothing more than a question of administrative expediency is involved when it is proposed to federalize any service, and in Switzerland the proposal is apt to come from the states themselves, to avoid boundary embarrassments among themselves. In this way, the control of dikes and forests has been put upon federal authority, and at

government. The experience of Germany and Switzerland shows that this is not so. Some indications of tendency in that direction in Germany were soon repressed. (See Lowell, "Government and Parties in Continental Europe," Vol. I, p. 282, etc.) The true cause of the force of that tendency in the United States is the misrepresentative character of the state governments. The courts are exercising the proper function of legislative assemblies, and, as usually happens in the development of vicarious function, it is poorly performed and is accompanied by dangerous stresses.

1 According to the statement made in No. 36 of The Federalist, it seems that it was expected that a similar use of state agency might be made by the United States. But no tendency of the kind has been manifested in the practice of the federal government.

present the tendency is to centralize similarly the control and development of water-power. In Australia and Canada there is a similar disposition to treat all such questions from the standpoint of administrative economy and convenience, which indeed is the sensible way to look at them. Government exists for the public welfare and should be disposed with regard to the public welfare.

Circumstances have aroused the people to the fact that trying to get along with as little government as possible means defect in means of protecting public interests. In the states, actual sovereignty has passed largely from public trusteeship to private ownership. The corporation is stronger than the state. To use one of Burke's thrilling phrases, "it is not from impotence that we are to expect the tasks of power." People instinctively turn to the federal government for relief, and the federal government is responding. But, because of the circumstances that have been noted, this expansion of federal function involves far more than assumption of jurisdiction. It means the substitution of federal government for state government, resembling the process, in inverse order, by which national government was substituted for imperial government in Europe during the Middle Ages. Instead of involving merely adjustments of federal and state jurisdiction as in other existing systems of federal government, the process is moving towards an ouster of state authority from the field of government. If duplication of function goes on, if administrative responsibilities of state functionaries are taken over by federal authority leaving them in the position of use

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less drones, only the cost of state government will be left without corresponding benefit, and eventually the people will obtain relief from that burden. While no term may be set for the duration of the process, history warrants the conclusion that such must be the result, unless the process now going on be arrested.

The constitutional aspects of the situation are so profoundly important that I could not omit noting them, although it does not come within the scope of these lectures to pursue the subject any farther in this direction. I shall now proceed to make some categorical mention of present tendencies as regards the national finances.

1. Increase in the Number of Federal Office-Holders

It appears from statements compiled under the direction of the appropriation committees, in the first session of the 60th Congress, that the number of new offices created in excess of those abolished aggregated 10,682 (16,824 new, 6142 abolished), with salaries aggregating $9,087,987.50. During the same session the compensation attaching to 129,928 offices was increased by an aggregate of $9,146,575.20. Reductions of compensation were made in the case of two offices, the aggregate being $420. Thus in a single session the increase of government expenditure on account of salaries aggregated $18,234,142.70.1

The Official Register for 1909 (commonly known as the Blue Book) contains a list of federal office-holders,

1 Senate Document No. 536, 60th Congress, 1st Session, pp. 616,

aggregating 370,065. In 1816 the number was 6327; in 1863, 49,212. From 1871 to 1881 the number increased from 53,917 to 107,095. In 1899 the number was 208,215; so in the decade to 1909, the number was increased by 161,850, or over 16,000 a year.

This increase is the subject of party recrimination, but it is safe to say that it will continue. The opposition offers no remedy but that of reducing the exercise of governmental function, and that the people will not tolerate. The source lies beyond the reach of party action in Congress so long as conditions are as they are. The true nature of the case was exactly stated by Elihu Root in an address delivered at the dinner of the Pennsylvania Society in New York, December 12, 1906. He remarked:

"The intervention of the National Government in many of the matters which it has recently undertaken would have been wholly unnecessary if the States themselves had been alive to their duty toward the general body of the country. It is useless for the advocates of State rights to inveigh against the supremacy of the constitutional laws of the United States or against the extension of National authority in the fields of necessary control where the States themselves fail in the performance of their duty. The instinct for self-government among the people of the United States is too strong to permit them long to respect any one's right to exercise a power which he fails to exercise. The Governmental control which they deem just and necessary they will have. It may be that such control would better be exercised in particular instances by the governments of the States, but the people will have the control they need either from the States or from the National Government; and if the States fail to furnish it in due measure, sooner or later constructions of the Constitution will be found to vest the power where it will be exercised - in the National Government."

2. Increased State Demands on the Federal Treasury

This was the subject of a memorial address delivered by Chairman Tawney of the House Appropriations Committee at Gettysburg, May 30, 1907. He observed:

"When any State increases its appropriations for any purpose, every legislator knows that that means an increase in the direct tax upon the people. Moreover, he knows that the people know this and that they watch with zealous care the tax rate which they must pay in cash from their own pockets. The legislator is slow to expose himself needlessly to the criticism and disapprobation of his constituents. Therefore needed legislation is postponed because of the expense it involves, and the Federal Government is appealed to, whenever possible, through the President, through the people's Representatives in Congress, and through the various Departments and bureaus of the Government."

He remarked that twenty-five years ago much of this federal intervention would not have been tolerated by the states now applying for it. He gave the following instances of the results of state mendicancy :

"The recent surrender by the Southern States of the exercise of the right reserved to them by the Constitution to maintain, control, and regulate local quarantine, primarily because of the expense incident to the maintenance of an efficient State quarantine; the practical surrender to the Federal Government recently made by the State of Maryland of sovereignty over her oyster beds, that the State might be relieved of the cost of an accurate and necessary survey; the Federal inspection of the products of private manufacturing establishments and the sanitary inspection and control of the establishments themselves; the Federal inquiry into the physical, mental, and social conditions surrounding woman and child labor in all local industrial occupations, with a view

1 Reprinted in the Congressional Record, 60th Congress, 1st Session, Vol. 42, No. 126.