这种容易产生混乱的状态，也许可以说明尼布尔的这样一种说法。他说：“自由绝对是更多地取决于行政管理而不是取决于宪法”。乍看起来这种说法似乎基本上是正确的。显然在有关自由的具体实施方面，其方便条件的确更多地是取决于行政安排而不是宪法保障，虽然只有宪法保障才能维护自由的存在。但是（再仔细思考一下）即使只分析到这里，难道这种情况就是真实的么？自由并不存在于简易的职能行动之中，正如同智慧并不存在于安适与活力之中一样，而安适和活力是与一个强壮的人的四肢活相联系的。存在于人的心目中或宪法中起支配作用的各种原则，才是自由或者奴役状态的最活跃的原动力。因为依赖和屈服并没有带着锁链，它们都是从慈父船体贴入微的政府每一个改善工作条件的计划中体现出来的，因而它们并不因此就会转变为自由。自由并不能在远离宪法原则的情况下生存下来，而且任何一种行政管理，不管它的方法是多么完善和自由，只要它是以不自由的统治原则为基础的，那它就不可能给予人们以一种比赝品式的自由更多的东西。    A clear view of the difference between the province of constitutional law and the province of administrative function ought to leave no room for misconception; and it is possible to name some roughly definite criteria upon which such a view can be built. Public administration is detailed and systematic execution of public law. Every particular application of general law is an act of administration. The assessment and raising of taxes, for instance, the hanging of a criminal, the transportation and delivery of the mails, the equipment and recruiting of the army and navy, etc., are all obviously acts of administration; but the general laws which direct these things to be done are as obviously outside of and above administration. The broad plans of governmental action are not administrative; the detailed execution of such plans is administrative. Constitutions, therefore, properly concern themselves only with those instrumentalities of government which are to control general law. Our federal constitution observes this principle in saying nothing of even the greatest of the purely executive offices, and speaking only of that President of the Union who was to share the legislative and policy-making functions of government, only of those judges of highest jurisdiction who were to interpret and guard its principles, and not of those who were merely to give utterance to them.

在经过这样一番比较研究之后，我们便可以充分地给予民主这样一种荣誉，即对于影响公共福利的一切重大问题，它是用辩论的方式最后加以决定的，它是在大多数人意志的基础之上建立其政策框架的。但是对于一切政府，我们却只可能找到一种进行良好行政管理的规则。在与行政管理职能有关的各个方面，一切政府都具有很强的结构方面的相似性。不仅如此，如果各种政府想成为同样有用和有效率的政府，他们就“必须”在结构上有高度相似之处。不管在动机、服务、能力方面的差距是如何巨大，一个自由人和奴隶一样，具有同样的生理器官，同样的活动要素。君主国家和民主国家，尽管其他方面彼此有根本上的差别，然而实际上却都有许多相同的工作需要加以照管。    After such study we could grant democracy the sufficient honor of ultimately determining by debate all essential questions affecting the public weal, of basing all structures of policy upon the major will; but we would have found but one rule of good administration for all governments alike. So far as administrative functions are concerned, all governments have a strong structural likeness; more than that, if they are to be uniformly useful and efficient, they must have a strong structural likeness. A free man has the same bodily organs, the same executive parts, as the slave, however different may be his motives, his services, his energies. Monarchies and democracies, radically different as they are in other respects, have in reality much the same business to look to.

另一方面，有一些国家在它们的行政管理受到自由理论的影响之前，就已经跨入了制定宪法和进行民众改革的时期。在这些国家中，行政管理的改进处于迟滞和半途而废的状态。一旦当某个国家开始从事制定宪法的事业之时，它将会发现要停止这一工作，并为公众建立一个能手而又经济的行政管理机关是极端困难的。这种对宪法进行修修补补的工作，看来似乎是永无止境的。所制定的常规性宪法很难在持续十年的时间内不作修改和补充，因此详细论证行政管理的时刻一直姗姗来迟。    Among those nations, on the other hand, which entered upon a season of constitution-making and popular reform before administration had received the impress of liberal principle, administrative improvement has been tardy and half-done. Once a nation has embarked in the business of manufacturing constitutions, it finds it exceedingly difficult to close out that business and open for the public a bureau of skilled, economical administration. There seems to be no end to the tinkering of constitutions. Your ordinary constitution will last you hardly ten years without repairs or additions; and the time for administrative detail comes late.

那么。请允许我说，巨大的权力和不受限制的自由处置权限在我看来似乎是承担责任的不可缺少的条件。在碰到优良或恶劣的行政管理的时候，必须能够较容易地对公众的注意力加以诱导，使之对于一个人究竟应该是加以颂扬或谴责做出判断。只要权力并不是不负责任的，那它就绝没有危险性。如果权力被加以诱导，使得许多人各享有一分，那它就很容易受到监督和接受质询。如果一个人为了保持其职务，必须取得公开而且真正的成功。并且如果与此同时，他感觉到自己已被授予以任意处置的巨大自由权力时，那么他的权力越大，他就越不可能滥用此种权力，他就会更加受到鼓舞，更加头脑清醒和更加被这种权力所激励。而他的权力越小，他就会感到他的职位无疑是既模糊又不引人注意的，他就越容易堕落到不负责任的状态之中去。    And let me say that large powers and unhampered discretion seem to me the indispensable conditions of responsibility. Public attention must be easily directed, in each case of good or bad administration, to just the man deserving of praise or blame. There is no danger in power, if only it be not irresponsible. If it be divided, dealt out in shares to many, it is obscured; and if it be obscured, it is made irresponsible. But if it be centered in heads of the service and in heads of branches of the service, it is easily watched and brought to book. If to keep his office a man must achieve open and honest success, and if at the same time he feels himself entrusted with large freedom of discretion, the greater his power the less likely is he to abuse it, the more is he nerved and sobered and elevated by it. The less his power, the more safely obscure and unnoticed does he feel his position to be, and the more readily does he relapse into remissness. Just here we manifestly emerge upon the field of that still larger question,-the proper relations between public opinion and administration.

并且全民的意见正在稳步地扩展成为一种关于国家职责的新观念。与此同时，政府的职能日益变得更加复杂和更加困难，在数量上也同样大大增加。行政管理部门将手伸向每一处地方以执行新的任务。例如政府在邮政事务方面的效用、廉价服务和成就，使政府较早地实现了对电报系统的控制。或者说，在收购或建造电报和火车路线方面，即使我们的政府并不遵循欧洲各国政府走过的道路，但却没有任何人会怀疑我们的政府必须采取某种方式，使自己能够支配各种有支配力的公司。除旧有的国家铁路委员会之外，政府又新设立了全国铁路特派员，这意味着行政管理职能的一种非常重要而巧妙的扩充。不管州政府或联邦政府决定对各大公司有什么样的权力，都必须小心谨慎和承担责任，这样做会需要许多智慧、知识和经验。为了很好完成这些事情必须对其认真研究。而这一切，正如我所说过的那样，还仅仅是那正向政府机构敞开着的许多大门中的一小部分。关于国家以及随之而来的关于国家职责的观念正在发生引人注目的变化，而“关于国家的观念正式行政管理的灵魂”。当你了解国家每天应该作的新事情之后，紧接着就应该了解国家应该如何去做这些事情。    And those views are steadily widening to new conceptions of state duty; so that, at the same time that the functions of government are everyday becoming more complex and difficult, they are also vastly multiplying in number. Administration is everywhere putting its hands to new undertakings. The utility, cheapness, and success of the government’s postal service, for instance, point towards the early establishment of governmental control of the telegraph system. Or, even if our government is not to follow the lead of the governments of Europe in buying or building both telegraph and railroad lines, no one can doubt that in some way it must make itself master of masterful corporations. The creation of national commissioners of railroads, in addition to the older state commissions, involves a very important and delicate extension of administrative functions. Whatever hold of authority state or federal governments are to take upon corporations, there must follow cares and responsibilities which will require not a little wisdom, knowledge, and experience. Such things must be studied in order to be well done. And these, as I have said, are only a few of the doors which are being opened to offices of government. The idea of the state and the consequent ideal of its duty are undergoing noteworthy change; and ""the idea of the state is the conscience of administration."" Seeing every day new things which the state ought to do, the next thing is to see clearly how it ought to do them.

还有哪一个地方，其缺乏哲学头脑的人群的大多数在其构成上比美国还要五花八门呢？为了弄清楚这种国家公众的思想情况，不仅要了解作为旧日主要民族的美国人的思想，并且还要了解爱尔兰人、德国人和黑人的思想。为了替一种新学说找到立足之地，必须去影响各种各样的思想。这些思想由各个种族的模式所铸成，来自产生于各种环境中的偏见，被许许多多各种不同的民族的历史所扭曲，几乎受到地球上每一个温暖或寒冷、开放或封锁地区的影响。    And where is this unphilosophical bulk of mankind more multifarious in its composition than in the United States? To know the public mind of this country, one must know the mind, not of Americans of the older stocks only, but also of Irishmen, of Germans, of negroes. In order to get a footing for new doctrine, one must influence minds cast in every mould of race, minds inheriting every bias of environment, warped by the histories of a score of different nations, warmed or chilled, closed or expanded by almost every climate of the globe.