2. The Municipality, or Commune, which, notwithstanding certain objections, is the more convenient word, as it includes the parish as well as the municipality, and which should be regarded as the association for local purposes. As every one knows how greatly the range of State and municipal action for the common good has been extended in recent years, we need not enlarge on this aspect of our subject. But in what we have to say it will be convenient to consider the State and the local body together, as they are really complements of each other. In a well-ordered community there should be no real opposition between the two. Under the conditions which now prevail there can be no nourishing local life except in reasonable relation to an efficient central organ; and the central organ can do its part wisely and effectively only by allowing suitable scope to local energy. No absolute rules can be laid down for the relations of the two to each other; these must be determined by considerations of time and circumstance. But the problem of their opposition under any _régime_ can be a difficulty only for unwise statesmanship. It may not be a new thing in theory, that the State should be an association for the promotion of the common interests of all its members, or that the commune should be an association for the general good of the inhabitants of a locality; but it is practically new. It is only during the last generation that the people who form the majority of every society have received any reasonable consideration from the organs of the State. We have during the last seventy years seen a tardy reversal of the old injustice in our own country, and for some years the movement towards improvement has been growing apace. But our leading statesmen seem even yet to be reluctant or only half willing to advance. The domestic history of recent times is the record of concessions made, not because the leaders of either of our great parties particularly approved of them, but because they were demanded by large sections of voters. In fact the initiative in legislation has now passed from the statesmen to the democracy. We can hardly regard it as the outcome of a reasoned and comprehensive theory of the State when politicians trained in the theory and practice of _laissez-faire_ in 1908 passed an Old Age Pensions Bill, which under certain restrictions gave a pension of 5s. a week to persons over 70.