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tinguished men, local citizenship was the sine qua non of citizenship of the United States; whereas, according to the definition in the Slaughter House cases, there may be citizenship of the United States without any local citizenship whatever. Mr. Reverdy Johnson gave pointed expression to the views of those who, following out Calhoun and Curtis, deemed the fourteenth amendment to have created citizenship of the United States, when he said:

I am, however, by no means prepared to say, as I think I have intimated before, that being born within the United States, independent of any new constitutional provision on the subject, creates the relation of citizen to the United States.1

The great weight of opinion, however, is to the effect that citizenship of the United States was not created but simply declared by the fourteenth amendment. Mr. Howard and Mr. Trumbull both so contended in the Senate; likewise Mr. Henderson, of Missouri, who said:

Those persons who are to be made citizens by this amendment are the persons and none others who have ever been citizens of the United States, under a fair and rational interpretation of the constitution, since its adoption in 1789 [sic].2

It may properly be observed, in concluding, that there doubtless never has been a time in the history of the government when a person not either a negro or an Indian, born within the United States, whether a citizen of some state or territory or not, could not in a just case have secured for himself for the asking the protection of the federal power in his rights of safety and property, at least upon the high seas or in a foreign country. If so, citizenship of the United States, as now authoritatively defined, was not created by the fourteenth amendment to the constitution, but has always existed since the adoption of the constitution itself.

IRVING BERDINE RICHMAN.

1 Congressional Globe, 1st Sess. 39th Cong. p. 2893.

2 Ibid. p. 3033.

IN

LOCAL GOVERNMENT IN PRUSSIA. II.

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N the preceding number of the POLITICAL SCIENCE QUARTERLY the attempt was made to trace very briefly the history of local government in Prussia during the present century and to sketch the prominent characteristics of the reform movement of 1872-1883. It was shown that for the purposes of local administration the country is divided into provinces — which in their turn are subdivided into government districts—and into circles. In each of these divisions are placed authorities, some charged with administrative business affecting the country as a whole, some with matters of purely local concern. It is now proposed to examine these authorities in detail and to consider how far the new organization guarantees to the people that self-government which was one of the main ends of the reform. The local authorities may be classified as provincial and circle authorities.

I. Provincial Authorities.

The historical development of institutions in Germany has brought about a partition in the work of administration. While in England the absolutism of the early Norman monarchy crushed out all local autonomy and reduced the divisions of the kingdom to the position of mere administrative circumscriptions, without juristic personality and without affairs of their own to manage, administrative circumscriptions in which all administration was attended to by royal officers, — in Germany there were many important districts which were regarded as public corporations, having their own duties to perform and their own officers — not in any sense royal officers — to discharge these duties. During the period of greatest centralization these local corporations had a certain degree of autonomy and a certain sphere of action which was recognized as their own—as distinct from the sphere of action belonging to

the central government. They had their own officers to attend. to their own business. The central government, likewise, had its administrative districts - - which often were not co-terminous with the districts of these local corporations - and its officers, who were charged with that part of the work of administration which was held to concern the country as a whole. As the purpose of the reform of 1872 was to decentralize the administration of government, this distinction of the two spheres of administrative work has not been abolished but has rather been accentuated. More matters have been recognized as belonging to the purely local administration of the provinces and circles. Prussia has therefore at the present time, contrary to the condition of things in England and in this country, on the one hand a well recognized sphere of local action in which the local corporations have considerable autonomy, and on the other hand a sphere of state action in which the central government, if it does not act directly, still has very large powers of control. The existence of these two spheres of action and, in some cases, of a separate set of authorities for each sphere, makes the system of local government very complicated, and its presentation a work of great difficulty. The reform of 1872 has endeavored to simplify matters: the divisions for the purposes of general state administration have in all cases been made co-terminous with the divisions for the purposes of local administration, and the authorities for the two spheres of administrative action have in some cases been consolidated into one authority. In the province, however, all attempts at such consolidation were unsuccessful; so that in our examination of the provincial authorities we must distinguish between what are called the Behörden der allgemeinen Landesverwaltung, i.e. the authorities for central administration, and the Organe der Provinzialverbände, i.e. the organs or authorities for local administration. Among the authorities for the general administration of the country are to be mentioned:

The Governor (Oberpräsident). This officer is appointed and dismissed by the king at his pleasure. He is a member of what is called the higher administrative service, i.e. he must

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have passed through the required training, receives a large salary and devotes his entire time to his work. He is thus a purely professional officer. He is the agent of all the executive departments of the central government at Berlin and, as such agent, must report to each of them every year and execute any commands which they may send him. These officers, according to the original intention of Stein and Hardenberg, were to be permanent representatives of the central government, and their decisions were to be regarded as the decisions of the ministers;1 but at the time the late reform was undertaken they had obtained for themselves, as a result of later legislation and of administrative practice, the position of a hierarchical instance immediately between the central executive departments and the governments" in the government districts, with the deplorable result that in many administrative matters there were five instances of appeal.2 For this reason the demand was made that the office be abolished. But there were so many objections to complying with such a demand that it was decided to retain the office, assigning to it, however, the position which Stein and Hardenberg had originally marked out for it. The central executive departments were relieved of many matters of detail, and the decision of these matters in last instance was intrusted to the provincial governors. In several cases, it is true, the governors are still to be regarded as an intermediate instance in the administrative hierarchy between the ministers and the lower authorities; but their characteristic position is now that of permanent representatives of the ministers in the provinces, from whose decision there is no appeal. As representatives of the ministers in the provinces, the governors are intrusted with considerable discretion of action in times of extraordinary danger from war or other causes. They exercise either in second or first instance (but always at the same time in last instance) very large powers of supervision over the actions of subordinate central officers and authorities, as well as over the administra

1 Memorial presented to the lower house of the Prussian legislature in January, 1875; cited in Stengel, Organisation der Preussischen Verwaltung, p. 317. 3 Instruction of Dec. 31, 1825.

2 Ibid. p. 318.

tion of the local affairs of various important municipal corporations, such as the province, the circle and certain of the larger cities.1 As representatives of the central government they also appoint the justices of the peace (Amtsvorsteher).2 They attend to the administration of all business which interests the entire province or more than one government district. For example: they issue a long series of police ordinances; supervise the churches; transact all business which relates to an entire army corps; act as the presidents of a series of provincial councils or boards, such as the provincial council, the provincial school board and the provincial board of health.

The Provincial Council. Up to 1875, when the late reform was introduced into the provincial administration, the governor, himself a professional officer, transacted the business of the central government in the province unchecked in the performance of his duties by the control of any popular authority. But one of the main objects sought by the reform was the introduction of a lay element into the administration of affairs affecting the country as a whole. This end was attained by the formation of the provincial council. This body consists of

the governor, as its president; a single councillor of a professional character, i.e. one who satisfies all the requirements for entrance into the higher administrative service, who is salaried and who devotes his entire time to his work; and five lay councillors, citizens of the province, i.e. ordinary citizens without any professional education and unsalaried. The professional councillor is appointed by the minister of the Interior, and his term of office is practically for life. The lay members of the council are appointed by the provincial committee - a popular body - from among the citizens of the province eligible for the position of member of the provincial diet. Their term of office

1 Allgemeines Landesverwaltungsgesetz of July 30, 1883, § 10; Kreisordnung of 1872, § 177; Zuständigkeitsgesetz of July 26, 1880, § 7.

2 K. O. of 1872, §§ 56–58.

* With the consent of the provincial council, of which later. A. L. V. G. §§ 137, 139.

4 Loening, Deutsches Verwaltungsrecht, p. 83, with authorities cited.

5 Ibid.

6 Instruction of 1825, § 3; A. L. V. G. § 10.

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