It was such a spirit, no doubt, that guided the development of the county system in an eastern state, which the writer studied a few years ago. In the course of this effort the interrelations of officers in a typical unit were diagrammed--with the result shown in frontispiece. It was found, for instance, that the county clerk who was “directly responsible to the people” was given duties to perform under some twenty different laws, the enforcement of which under the constitution was charged upon the governor as the chief executive of the state. In fulfillment of these obligations he was found to be under the direction, among others, of the superintendent of banking, the superintendent of insurance, the commissioner of excise and the secretary of state. For the routine of his office he was answerable to the local board of supervisors. The sheriff, who “took his orders from the people,” was found to be answerable to the supervisors, the surrogate and the county judge. The district attorney was put down as subject to at least three minor state officers besides the governor and the board of supervisors. The county treasurer looked up (or was supposed to) to the state commissioner of excise, the state board of tax commissioners, the commissioner of education, the comptroller and the state treasurer. And in all this wilderness of conflicting responsibility there was, be it reiterated, no single officer who could be called the executive. The governor, it is true, had power to remove and fill vacancies, but even this negative control was conditioned by the fact that there were sixty-one counties in the state, that some of them were hundreds of miles from the capital and that the governor was charged with a thousand other responsibilities besides looking after the counties. It was true that the state comptroller was given power to examine into the fiscal affairs of the various counties, but this safeguard was of limited value in practice, owing to the small number of examiners which the legislature provides. No, the ingenious Anglo-Saxon mind had discovered a substitute for efficient personal supervision! If a given officer were to go wrong or neglect his duties, then the supervisors were authorized to go to the district attorney and persuade him, if possible, to take action on the officer’s bond or to institute a criminal prosecution. If the district attorney was negligent in the matter, the supervisors might go to the governor with charges of neglect of duty. But if the original officer in question was just lazy, slow or inefficient, then everybody simply could wait “till he got round” to doing his duty.