From such considerations it seems that local government, because it is on a small scale and because the people will presumably be more able and willing to watch the details of its operation, should be the sphere in which extension of functions has the most chance of success. The more the citizen feels that government is close to him and amenable to his will, the more, other things equal, he should be inclined to trust it and to put himself into it. In spite of much disappointing experience, it seems reasonable to expect that small units, dealing with the every-day interests of the people, will, in the long run, enlist an ample share of their capacity and integrity. And yet the nearness of the whole to the will of the member is psychical, not spatial, so that if the citizen for some reason feels closer to the central government and trusts it more, he may be more willing to aggrandize it. In the United States the people often have more interest and confidence in the federal system than in their particular states and cities; one reason being that the constant enlargement of private organization—as in the case of railways and the so-called trusts—puts it beyond the power of local control. Of course there is a natural sphere of development for each of the various phases of government. Municipal socialism has the great advantage over other sorts of state extension of being optional by small units, and of permitting all sorts of diversity, experiment and comparison. There is nothing in it of that deadening uniformity and obliteration of alternatives involved in the blanket socialism of the central state. The evils we suffer from private monopolies—against which we may always invoke the state if not other competitors—are as nothing compared with those to be feared from an all-embracing state-monopoly; and I feel sure that common-sense, a shrewd attachment to the principle of “checks and balances,” and the spirit of local individuality will preserve the English-speaking nations, at least, from serious danger of the latter. In countries like France, where there is a great traditional preponderance of the central authority, it may be among the possibilities, though the probable decline of war—the main cause of mechanical consolidation—should work in the opposite direction.