Of these, 212, or
more than one fourth of the whole, related to cities and villages. The
808 acts, when printed, filled about 2,000 octavo pages; and of these
the 212 acts filled more than 1,500 pages. This illustrates what
I said above about the vast quantity of details which have to be
regulated in municipal government. Here we have more than three
fourths of the volume of state-legislation devoted to local affairs;
and it hardly need be added that a great part of these enactments were
worse than worthless because they were made hastily and
without due consideration,--though not always, perhaps, without what
lawyers call _a_ consideration.[13]
[Footnote 13: Nothing could be further from my thought than to cast any
special imputation upon the New York legislature, which is probably a
fair average specimen of law-making bodies. The theory of legislative
bodies, as laid down in text-books, is that they are assembled for the
purpose of enacting laws for the welfare of the community in
general. In point of fact they seldom rise to such a lofty height of
disinterestedness. Legislation is usually a mad scramble in which the
final result, be it good or bad, gets evolved out of compromises and
bargains among a swarm of clashing local and personal interests.
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