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The city of Washington is governed by a small commission, and is acknowledged to be one of our best-governed cities. While this commission originated in an entirely different way from that of the commission form of government, successful administration under its rule is a valid answer to the argument that small commissions are suited only to the administration of small cities.
Boston has the deserved reputation of being one of the best-governed cities in America, yet some of its important streets seldom see a municipal watering-cart, dust flies in clouds both summer and winter, and myriads of life-endangering bicycles shoot through its thoroughfares at night without lamps.
Ratepayers have to be squeezed to find the necessary funds for the increasing outgoings; but best-governed cities in the world must pay a price for their advantages and pre-eminence, and the citizens thank the gods that they have men who will devote thought and energy to laying out public money, and fervently hope that this may be done wisely and well.
"This is a misfortune," added Critobulus, "that arrives not among private men only; for dissensions, nay, even wars, will happen sometimes, to break out in the best-governed republics, where virtue is in the highest repute, and where vice is held in the utmost contempt.
But the jest is by no means a ben trovato; the member of gibbets being inversely as the perfection of social institutions; and if any one object, that England, while it is the best-governed country in Europe its envy and admiration is also a hanging community par excellence, I must beg to remind him of the intense interest which an English public feels in the victims of capital punishment, in the Thurtells and the Fauntleroys; as also of the universal conviction prevailing in England, that the gallows is a short and sure cut to everlasting happiness.
The richest, best-governed hive will give the signal; to be followed, some days after, by the little and less prosperous republics. Only the poorest, weakest colonies those whose mother is very old and almost sterile will preserve their males till the approach of winter, so as not to abandon the hope of procuring the impregnation of the virgin queen they await, and who may yet be born.
Now, when we reflect that such a region has become one of the richest, most fertile, and best-governed countries in the world, we understand how justly Holland is called the conquest of man. But it should be added that it is a continuous conquest.
It has a sawmill, stores, and churches of the Baptist, Presbyterian, Methodist, and Roman Catholic denominations. Being the headquarters of the Canadian Northwest mounted police, it is one of the best-governed towns on the American continent.
The Indian townships are better managed than those of the Spaniards and Mestizos; the plazas are kept freer from weeds, and the roads in good order. Probably nowhere but in tropical America can it be said that the introduction of European civilisation has caused a retrogression; and that those communities are the happiest and the best-governed who retain most of their old customs and habits.
But let them know again that, for all the wariness can be used, it may yet befall a discreet man to be mistaken in his choice, and we have plenty of examples. The soberest and best-governed men are least practised in these affairs; and who knows not that the bashful muteness of a virgin may oft-times hide all the unliveliness and natural sloth which is really unfit for conversation?
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