The high station of the Presidency can only be reached at an advanced period of life, and the other federal functionaries are generally men who have been favored by fortune, or distinguished in some other career.

Such cannot be the permanent aim of the ambitious.

But the township serves as a centre for the desire of public esteem, the want of exciting interests, and the taste for authority and popularity, in the midst of the ordinary relations of life; and the passions which commonly embroil society change their character when they find a vent so near the domestic hearth and the family circle.
In the American States power has been disseminated with admirable skill for the purpose of interesting the greatest possible number of persons in the common weal.

Independently of the electors who are from time to time called into action, the body politic is divided into innumerable functionaries and officers, who all, in their several spheres, represent the same powerful whole in whose name they act.

The local administration thus affords an unfailing source of profit and interest to a vast number of individuals.
The American system, which divides the local authority among so many citizens, does not scruple to multiply the functions of the town officers.