LOCOMOTION AND ADMINISTRATION
And so it is no effectual answer to my general argument to say that a revision of administrative areas always has been and always will be a public necessity. To a certain extent that always has been and always will be true, but on a scale in no way comparable to the scale on which, because of these particular inventions, it is true to-day. This need in its greatness is a peculiar feature of the present time, and a peculiar problem of the present time. The municipal areas that were convenient in the Babylonian, ancient Egyptian, or Roman empires were no larger and no smaller than those that served the purpose of seventeenth-century Europe, and I believe it is highly probable—I think the odds are in favour of the belief—that the most convenient administrative areas of the year 2000 will be no larger and no smaller than those for many subsequent centuries. We are, in this respect, in the full flow of a great and permanent transition. And the social and political aspect of the change is this steadily increasing proportion of people—more especially in our suburban areas—who are, so far as our old divisions go, delocalised. They represent in fact a community of a new sort, the new great modern community, which is seeking to establish itself in the room of the dwindling, little, highly localised communities of the past.
Now what are the practical consequences of this large and increasing non-local element in your old local government areas? First, there is this. The non-local people do not follow, have neither the time nor the freedom nor the stimulus of sufficient interests to follow local politics. They are a sort of Outlanders.
292
