Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 04.djvu/886

* CIVIL ADMINISTKATION. 780 CIVIL CHURCH LAW. The virtues of the system of decentralization are political rather than administrative. It is only under this system that a free government has free play for its varied activities and ex- periments. And, though its potential efficiency is not to be compared willi that of the system of centralization, it lias nuich to recommend it from the purely administrative point of view. While not adapted to the regulation of interna- tional relations, or the carrying out of far- reaching measures of policy, its responsiveness to public opinion makes it an efficient agency for supervising and controlling the far more nu- merous and important private and local inter- ests of the community. Being local and famil- iar, it is vigilant and sj'mpathetic; and though some of the affairs committed to it may be badly administered, it is probable that the sum-total of its achievement is greater than that of a centralized administration, with its limited knowledge and its indill'ercnce to criticism. The character of the iniblic administration — whether efficient or inclUcient, economical or wasteful, pure or oirrupt — depends fundamen- tally on the concept i(jn of the proper aim and purpose of government which prevails. Ex- travagance and corruption, and, with them, the inefficiency they engender, flourish under any government, whether popular or autocratic in form, which is maintained for the benefit of the ruler, whether that be a king, an aristocracy, or a political party. .Vnd, on the other hand, the honest acceptance of the principle that govern- ment is instituted for the benefit of the gov- erned tends to produce clean and efficient ad- ministration, whatever the external form of the State. It is doubtless to the persistence of the feudal conception of the State that we owe the long era of corrupt and. ipon the whole, ineffi- cient administration of public aft'airs which has marked the history of modern States. So long as the executive head of the State is at once the supreme land-owner and the lord paramount, from wliom all honor and protection are derived, so long will the offices of administration be re- garded as his perquisites, and the treasure de- rived from taxation of the people be expended for the gratification of his amliitions and those of his favorites. He niaj', of his favor, or for his own purposes, grant a certain measure of efficient administration : but the extravagance and corruption which are inseparable from that system will destroy the efficiency of the govern- ment as well. The profound modification of the theory of government cfTected by the democratic movement of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, in substituting the welfare of the jjeople at large for that of the governing classes as the end and aim of government, has lirouglit a1>out a corre- sponding rcvohilion in its administraticm. Tliis change l)ocaiiie apparent in Knglaiid u[iori the accession of William of Orange to the throne in 1088. and in France a liundred years later, in the Revolution; but owing to the development of party government in the former country, and the excesses to which that system led, it did not become effective there until the middle of the last century. It is true that more than one ad- ministrative reform had been accomplished in Great Britain — as in the provision of Magna Charta, requiring all justices, constables, sher- iffs, and bailiffs to have knowledge of the laws of the realm; the statute of Edward VI, (1552) forbidding the sale of offices (except the higher judicial ofiices) ; and the extraordinary law en- acted in the twelftli year of Richard 11. (1388), declaring that "none shall obtain office by suit, or for rewani, but ujion desert;" yet as late as the period of the American Revolution the 'spoils system' of the distribution of public office as the reward of |)arty service nourished un- checked. In the United States that vicious sys- tem did not come into existence until the ad- ministration of I'resident .lackson, ;ind it is only now giving place to the system prefigured in the statute of Richard It., above referred to, (See Civil-Servick Reform; Merit System.) The more recent development of party government in France has lately fastened the spoils system on the administration of that country; but, upon the whole, in Europe as well as in America, civil administration has been enormously im- proved, in purity and economy as well as in effi- ciency, during the last himdred years; while in England and many of the Englisli cidoiiics. and in consideralile portions of the administrative .system of the United States, it has completely emancipated itself from the taint of corruption and extravagance. (See Government.) For a comparison of administrative sy.stems and meth- ods of controlling officers of administration, see Goodnow, Couiparatirc Adniinis-trative Laic (2 vols.. New York, 1893). Consult, also, Eaton, Civil Service in Qreat Britain (New York, 1880). CIVIL CHURCH LAW, American. The body of law which defines the ecclesiastical function of the State, and maintains the civil status of the religious bodies within the United States, The status of the American churches is without a parallel in Christendom, in that in no other State do all organizations for the pur- poses of religion bear exactly the same legal relation to the civil authority. This liody of law has been developing during the life of the American people as a nation, and has become one of the fundamental principles of their politi- cal pliilosophy. It is to be found (1) in pro- visions of the Federal and State constitutions ; (2) in statute legislation; (3) in the decisions of the State and Federal courts, which now in- clude about one thousand leading cases in these matters. The Ecclesiastica.1, Function of the Ameri- can St..te. Althcmgh there is within the United States no church or churches by law established, yet the American State has an ecclesiastical function to perform. Formulated in its briefest terms, this ecclesiastical function is to cause it to he legally jiossilile and also convenient for all residents, whether citizens, subjects, or aliens within the jurisdiction of the AnK'rican govern- ments, to sustain voluntary ecclesiastical rela- tions. In other States, it is regarded as a proper function of the civil jiower to provide for definite ecclesiastical relations; and the aggregate of those relations so siH'cifically provided for is re- garded as constituting an ecclesiastical estab- lishment. In either case, the civil power has an ecclesiastical function: but the difference in the two concepts is this, that the development of the individuars sphere of speech and action has in the. ierican State completely included the sphere of speech and action for all purposes of religion, and has correspondingly altered the na-