action. The king, however, is not bound by the list so presented, but may make his selection from persons not nominated by the diet. The landrath receives a comparatively large salary and devotes his entire time to his work. 3 The Circle Committee, also, is an agent as well for the central as for the local administration of the circle.2 It occupies in the administrative district of the circle the same position that the district committee occupies in the government district and the provincial council in the province. That is, it has certain executive functions to perform and exercises a nonprofessional or lay control over the actions of the professional landrath. In so far it acts as an authority of the central administration. As agent of the circle as a municipal corporation, it occupies the same position in the circle that the provincial committee occupies in the province. That is, it is the discretionary executive of the circle and has under its direction the landrath, who, as has been said, attends to the detailed administration of the circle as a municipal corporation. It conducts the administration of the circle in accordance with the resolutions of the circle diet, which body finally decides how the circle administration shall be conducted. The circle committee is, as has been intimated, a distinctively lay authority. It is composed of the landrath as its president and of six members chosen by the circle diet from among the members of the circle. The term of service is six years, and the office is obligatory in that a fine is imposed for refusal to serve for at least half the regular term. As an authority for the central administration, it has under its direction the various justices of the peace, who, it will be remembered, are appointed by the governor of the province. As the executive authority of the circle as a municipal corporation, it has under its direction the landrath and all the other circle officers. It has been explained in the preceding article that the men who directed the reform legislation in Prussia regarded with ap 1 K. O. § 74. 2 Ibid. § 130. 8 Stengel, pp. 339, 392. 4 K. O. §§ 134, 137. 6 Ibid. § 131. 7 Ibid. § 133. 8 Ibid. § 8. proval the English administrative system as then existing, and intended to copy to a certain extent English models in the new organization which they formed. The circle committee is a good example of this desire and of its accomplishment. It was modelled largely upon the English petty and special sessions of the peace. It performs in Prussia many of the duties, especially those of a police character, which its English prototype performed in England. Thus it is the general rural licensing authority, is a highway authority, and acts as the supervisory instance over the actions of the Prussian justice of the peace - which office is likewise constructed upon the English model. The Justice of the Peace is one of the most important of the officers established by the reform. One of the chief concrete ends of the reform movement was to do away with the institution of the hereditary magistracy, which existed especially in the eastern provinces of the kingdom and under which the local police was administered by the large landholders. The purpose of the reform was to abolish this, almost the last relic of feudalism, and to put the local police into the hands of officers appointed by the king, — who, at the same time, should not be professional in character but, like the English justices of the peace, should be chosen from society at large, should be obliged to serve, and should receive no salary for the discharge of these public duties. The office was to be honorary. As Dr. Gneist says: The principal end of the law [i.e. the circle law of 1872] was, after the analogy of the English justices of the peace, to attract into the service of the state the well-to-do and intelligent classes. With this end in view the territory was divided into 5658 small divisions, each of which embraced a number of manors and townships with an average population of 1500 inhabitants. In each of these divisions are a justice of the peace and a deputy, who are appointed in the name of the king by the governor of the province from a list drawn up and presented to him by the circle diet. . . . The duties of the justice of the peace consist principally in the administration of the police of his division. It is he who takes police measures against vagrants, administers poor relief, prevents violations of the law; he interposes in disputes between master and servants; he watches over the application of the building, health ways. and game laws and the laws passed to preserve order in hotels and public places; he supervises the maintenance and the police of highHis orders are sanctioned by short terms of imprisonment; while he can, in necessary cases, order provisional arrest without encroaching upon the ordinary jurisdiction of the criminal courts. He supervises the daily action of the executive officers of the police force and has the right to amend all acts of theirs which in his judgment are inexpedient or incorrect. . . . The justice has under his orders the mayors of the townships and the personnel of the gendarmerie. He himself is not put under the disciplinary power of the landrath but under that of a sort of a judicium parium-the circle committee - with a right of appeal from their decision to the courts of justice.1 In the ten This experiment seems to have proved a success. years immediately following the introduction of the reform there was only one case of the dismissal of a justice of the peace from office for corrupt administration. Of course the personnel of the justices of the peace must to a large extent be the same as that of the old police system; that is, the larger landholders will hold the offices. The great object of the reform, as we have seen, was to force this class of persons into the service of the government; the appointee is therefore obliged to assume the duties of the office for at least half of the full term of six years. But there is a great difference between a hereditary and an appointed magistracy, even when the class from which the magistrates are taken remains the same. The power of appointment possessed by the governor enables the government to exclude from the office any person who is notoriously actuated by class motives. Further, the control possessed by the circle committee, which has the right to remove a justice of the peace and which is not composed exclusively of representatives of the landholding classes, must tend to restrain any justice of the peace from yielding too much to class feeling. The only other officers we need consider are the Dorfschulzen or town mayors. It has already been said that most of the political functions of local government and also most of its important economical functions are attended to by the provincial and circle authorities. The rural communes are there 1 Gneist, in Revue générale, etc. p. 252. See also K. O. §§ 48, 58, 59. fore little more than organizations for the regulation of the purely prudential matters of an agricultural community, such as common pasturage and tillage, and for the administration of a very few public services, such as the most unimportant roads, the schools and the churches. These matters are attended to by assemblies, sometimes composed, like our town meetings, of all the electors of the communes, sometimes formed of representatives of the electors of the communes.1 These assemblies have the general power of controlling and regulating prudential matters of purely local interest.2 The decisions of the assembly are enforced by executive officers, viz. the village mayor and two Schöffen.3 During the old feudal days before the reform-the days of what the Germans call "patrimonial government"-these offices, like the police offices, were often hereditary. That is, either the office of mayor was attached to the possession of some piece of landed property, or the lord of the manor had the right to appoint the mayor. Under the new legislation all such customs have been done away with, and the mayors and schöffen are now elected by the communal assemblies. Their choice, however, must be approved by the landrath;5 for the mayors, besides being the executive officers of the communes, have the general administration of the police of the state. As police officer, the mayor has the right to order temporary arrest and to impose small fines for the violation of his orders.6 Service in this office is obligatory and unpaid.7 Somewhat similar to the local organization of the commune is that of the manor. The manor exists only in those portions of Prussia which have not as yet been completely freed from the influence of the feudal régime. It is nothing more than a commune which belongs wholly to some one person. In the manor, in addition to the private rights which would ordinarily result from the possession of property, the lord has certain Loening, p. 165. 2 Ibid. p. 169. 3 Ibid. p. 170. 4 K. O. §§ 22-24. 5 The landrath's veto, however, must be approved by the circle committee. K. O. 7 Ibid. §§ 8, 25, 28. § 26. • Ibid. §§ 29, 30. 8 Stengel, p. 234. rights and duties of a semi-political character. Thus he acts as mayor; but as mayor he is subject to the same control as the ordinary mayor, that is, he is a subordinate officer of the justice of the peace. As the justice of the peace is now subjected to the control of the circle committee, there is no longer the same danger as formerly that these semi-political feudal powers will be abused. One of the great obstacles to the development of an energetic and efficient local government in the communes and manors is that they are frequently of small size. To obviate this trouble, the reform legislation permits and encourages the union of communes and manors and the transfer of their functions to the new corporation thus formed. The new division formed by such a union must be co-terminous with the division of the justice of the peace (the Amtsbezirk). When such a union is established, there is provision made for the formation of an assembly for the division, known as the Amtsausschuss or division committee. It should be noted that this body exists in all the divisions; but it never attains the same importance in those divisions to which the duties of the communes and manors have not been transferred, since its functions in such a case are simply to control the police administration of the justice of the peace.1 In England a similar control is obtained in a different way in matters of importance two or more justices must act in concert. Such are the officers in the circle who, while attending to the current administration of the circle as a municipal corporation, at the same time discharge, in the main as subordinates of the provincial authorities, functions affecting the central administration of the state. It now becomes necessary to take up the most important authority of the circle as a municipal corporation, viz. the circle diet, to which reference has already been made. The Circle Dict. The formation and the functions of this body are of great importance, not only because of its influence 1 K. O. §§ 48, 50, 51, 52, 53. |