Excerpt from Lectures on the Principles of Local Government: Delivered at the London School of Economics, Lent Term 1897 This series of lectures was designed to set forth, if possible, the lines upon which the principles of local government should be studied. At present, principles of local government are not, in this country, considered at all. There is a vague sort of idea that local government is a good thing for Parliament to occupy itself with, but there is no serious attempt to consider it as a subject which is governed by principles and not by fancy, which should not therefore be left to the sudden energy of Parliaments desiring to be busy with something new. I cannot, and do not, pretend that my effort is anything more than an effort in the right direction. If it turns out to be that, if it should prove to be useful in directing attention to the subject, and bringing about a general desire to ascertain and formulate the principles of local government, sufficient success will have attended it. In the limits of a term it has not been possible to discuss all the stages of my arguments so as to show the evidence upon which they are founded; and accordingly it will appear as if the method adopted to set the matter before my hearers were purely and simply the a priori method of the analytical jurists. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.