Locally elected leaders know their constituents better than authorities at the national level and so should be well positioned to provide the public services local residents want and need.

I need not dwell on the deficiencies of the central authority in detailed knowledge of local persons and things … but in comprehension of the principles even of purely local management, the superiority of the central government, when rightly constituted, ought to be prodigious … the knowledge and experience of any local authority is but local knowledge and experience, confined to their own part of the country and its modes of management, whereas the central government has the means of knowing all that is to be learnt from the united experience of the whole kingdom, with the addition of easy access to that of foreign countries.