The Economy of Local Rates 175 
parks, and such like things: a government which had 
to decide about such matters between the claims of 
London, Liverpool, Berwick and Penzance, Stoke- 
Marshall (the residence of the cantankerous but 
influential Lord A.) and Pedlington-by-the-Sea (the 
favourite holiday resort of the popular Mr. B.), to say 
nothing of Edinburgh, Glasgow, Dublin and Belfast, 
with perhaps Calcutta and Capetown thrown in, would 
soon succumb to excessive mental strain and wide- 
spread dissatisfaction. And of course a necessary 
accompaniment of separate government is a separate 
exchequer and separate taxation: a government which 
is allowed to spend what it likes must raise its own 
funds. Local taxation, often looked on as an engine 
of socialism, is from the side of the national govern- 
ment to be regarded as a concession to individualism. 
It allows the local authority the same kind of freedom 
that the individualist arrangements with regard to 
labour and property allow to the individual. More- 
over, just as the individual is required by law to do 
certain things which he would shirk if not compelled, 
and left free to do or leave undone many other things 
of equal or greater importance which self-interest will 
induce him to do, so the local authority is required by 
law to provide certain services to the satisfaction of 
the national government and left free to perform other 
equally important ones or not as it pleases, everyone 
understanding that “local self-interest” will usually 
induce the performance of these others. 
We must beware, of course, that we do not thought- 
lessly assume that “local self-interest ” will necessarily 
tend to the common good of the whole community, 
whether that whole community is to be conceived as