Under ideal home-rule conditions the county will have been brought face to face with the obligation to stand on its own feet. It will look about for appropriate means to redeem that obligation. The electorate will be made responsible for its collective conduct by virtue of accurate representation in the county’s council. Responsibility will first be secured in the very make-up of the governing body, which is the source of power in any popular government. No stereotyped uniform plan of organization will do; no slavish copying of the “New England” type, or the “southern” type: counties differ too widely for that. But natural and legitimate cleavages of public opinion will be recognized and represented. Minor geographical divisions which have a distinct identity may be given a separate voice in the county board, but if the county is a geographical and social unit, the form of the governing body will reflect the fact. And if the county is co-extensive with a city, that circumstance will be given due weight. But the county board will be something more than an epitomized electorate. It will be clothed, as such bodies rarely are, with the power not only to discover what the people want, but to translate their wishes into deeds of administration. Instead of working as now through alien instruments in the person of independent officials, it will control the operating mechanism of the county, which will be of its own selection. Shall we take away from the people the power to choose the sheriffs, the county clerk, the surveyor, the superintendent of the poor? Yes, take away the selection, but reinforce their control. Abandon the separation of powers? Yes, do away with the three-ring (or perhaps twelve- or twenty-ring) circus, and get down to the serious business of government. For business never was successfully organized except on the principle that the head controls the tail and all that intervenes. In terms of law, the county board, subject of course to state legislative and administrative supervision, will exercise all the powers of the corporation, including those of appointment, of revenue raising and of appropriation.