Note 422 — Chapter VI

It has been argued (Gneist, Constit. Communale, tr. Hippert, i. 263; v. 275) that the State created local government in the towns as a method of developing better administration, and that it was therefore only accidentally and as a secondary consequence that independence and local liberties came in the wake of this administrative system. The facts, however, of their story make it perfectly clear that municipal liberties were of natural growth, and sprang out of local needs rather than out of Court statecraft.