hands of a single elected body, a council; the doctrine of separation of executive and legislative powers finds no more acceptance in municipal than in county and other local organization. The borough council consists of councilors, aldermen, and a mayor, sitting as one body. The councilors, varying in number from nine to more than a hundred, are elected by practically the entire adult population, male and female, for terms of three years, one third retiring annually. In small boroughs they are usually elected on a general ticket, in large ones by districts or wards. Since 1907 women have been eligible, and many have been elected. The aldermen, to the number of one third of the councilors, are chosen by the council for six years, one half retiring triennially. They may be taken from outside the council, but most of them are selected from the more experienced councilors, making it necessary to hold " by-elections" to fill the vacancies. Legally the aldermen differ from the ordinary councilors only in the manner of their election and the length of their term. Being, however, as a rule more experienced, they are likely to hold the principal committee chairmanships and to have exceptional influence in the shaping of policies. The system makes it possible, also, to draw into the council men of high qualifications who would not seek election, or be likely to be elected, by the people at large.

The mayor is elected for one year by the council, either from its own membership or from outside. He is not the head of a separate branch of government, as is the mayor of an American city, but merely the presiding officer of the council and the official representative of the borough on state occasions. He cannot appoint or remove officers, control the departments, or veto ordinances. Hence he need not be a man of executive ability or experience. As matters go, it is far more important that he be a person of some wealth, and of leisure; for the chief demands upon him will be of a social and philanthropic nature, and a salary is rarely provided. If he is willing, he is likely to be reëlected a number of times. Reëlections of councilors and aldermen are also numerous, resulting in a continuity of service and an accumulation of experience quite unknown to the American city council, where the doctrine of rotation in office still rules.

The council meets in the town hall monthly, fortnightly, or weekly, according as the amount of business demands. The larger part of its work, however, is transacted through committees, which are elected by the council, and presided over by

chairmen whom the committees themselves choose. Under national law there must be a "watch," i.e., police, committee, and a committee on education. Other committees are created at the council's discretion, and the number varies from six or seven in small boroughs to twenty or twenty-five in large ones. Practically all matters brought up in the council are referred to some committee; and since they are there considered in all due detail, and normally by the councilors who are best informed on the subject in hand, committee recommendations are almost certain to be adopted.

The council comprises, in the fullest sense, the government of the borough; hence it exercises substantially all of the powers (save that of electing the councilors themselves) that come to the borough from the common law, from general and special acts of Parliament, and from provisional orders. These powers fall into three main classes: legislative, financial, and administrative. The council makes by-laws, or ordinances, relating to all sorts of matters streets, police, health, traffic control, etc. - subject only to the power of the Ministry of Health to disallow ordinances on health and a few other subjects if that authority finds them objectionable. It acts as custodian of the "borough fund" (consisting of receipts from public property, franchises, fines, fees, etc.); levies "borough rates" of so many shillings or pence per pound on the rental value of real property, in order to obtain whatever additional revenue is needed; draws up and adopts the annual budget; makes all appropriations; and borrows money on the credit of the municipality in so far as the central authorities permit. Finally, it exercises control over all branches of strictly municipal administration. This it does, first, by appointing, on a non-partisan basis, the staff of permanent salaried officials - clerk, treasurer, engineer, public analyst, chief constable, medical officer, etc. who carry on the daily work of the borough government, and, second, by constant supervision of these officials and their subordinates, exercised through the committees having to do with the various branches of business. Thus the education committee not only receives and considers legislative proposals relating to education; it interviews candidates for educational positions, makes nominations to the council, and in the name of the council inspects and directs the work of the educational authorities. The rôle of committees thus becomes scmething very different from, and much more important than, anything of the kind in the government of the cities of the United States.

The Government of London. The unique governmental arrangements of London are the product partly of historical survival and partly of special and comparatively recent legislation. Technically, the "city" of London is still what it was centuries ago, i.e., an area with a government of its own comprising about one square mile on the left bank of the Thames. A series of measures covering a period of somewhat more than fifty years, however, has drawn the entire region occupied by the metropolis - geographically, parts of the three counties of Middlesex, Surrey, and Kent-into a carefully coördinated scheme of local administration. London was untouched by the Municipal Corporations Act of 1835, and the changes which brought into being the governmental system of the present day began to be introduced only with the adoption of the Metropolis Management Act of 1855. The government of the City was left unchanged, but the surrounding parishes, hitherto governed independently by their vestries, were at this time brought for certain purposes under the control of a central authority known as the Metropolitan Board of Works. The Local Government Act of 1888 went a step farther. The Board of Works was abolished, extra-city London was transformed into an administrative county of some 121 square miles, and upon the newly created London county council (elected by the ratepayers) was conferred a varied and highly important group of powers. Finally, in 1899 the London Government Act simplified the situation by sweeping away a mass of surviving authorities and jurisdictions and creating twenty-eight metropolitan boroughs, each with mayor, aldermen, and councilors such as any provincial borough possesses, although with powers specially defined and, on the side of finance, somewhat restricted. Within each borough are urban parishes, each with its own vestry.

The situation to-day, therefore, is briefly this. At the center of the metropolitan area stands the historic City, which is geographically in, but not politically of, the municipality. It is the heart of the English financial and business world, but it has a resident population of not above thirty thousand; and its government, composed of Lord Mayor, Court of Aldermen, and Court of Common Council, presents a singular combination of ancient and modern features. Outside of the City are twentyeight contiguous metropolitan boroughs, which in their organization are a cross between ordinary boroughs and urban districts. Coextensive with these geographically, and exercising a large amount of control over them, is the administrative county of

London, with its one hundred and eighteen councilors and its nineteen aldermen, presided over by an elective chairman. And sweeping far out into the surrounding areas are the jurisdictions of the Metropolitan Water Board and the Metropolitan Police Board; the authority of the latter extends over all parishes within fifteen miles of Charing Cross, an area of almost seven hundred square miles.1

1 For excellent descriptions of the government of London see Munro, Government of European Cities, 339-379 (bibliography, 395-402), and Lowell, Government of England, II, 202-232. Valuable works are G. L. Gomme, Governance of London: Studies on the Place Occupied by London in English Institutions (London, 1907); ibid., The London County Council: its Duties and Powers according to the Local Government Act of 1888 (London, 1888); A. MacMorran, The London Government Act (London, 1899); A. B. Hopkins, Boroughs of the Metropolis (London, 1900); and J. R. Seager, Government of London under the London Government Act (London, 1904). An informing article is G. L. Fox, "The London County Council," in Yale Rev., May, 1895.

The best work on the general subject of English local government is J. Redlich, and F. W. Hirst, Local Government in England, 2 vols. (London, 1903). There are several convenient manuals, among them P. Ashley, English Local Government (London, 1905); W. B. Odgers, Local Government (London, 1899), based on the older work of M. D. Chalmers; E. Jenks, Outline of English Local Government (2d ed., London, 1907); R. S. Wright and H. Hobhouse, Outline of Local Government and Local Taxation in England and Wales (3d ed., London, 1906); and R. C. Maxwell, English Local Government (London, 1900). The subject is treated admirably in Lowell, Government of England, II, Chaps. xxxviii-xlvi, and a portion of it in W. B. Munro, Government of European Cities (New York, 1909), Chap. iii (full bibliography, pp. 395-402). There are good sketches in Ashley, Local and Central Government, Chaps. i and v, and Marriott, English Political Institutions, Chap. xiii. The task of reform is described in H. J. Laski, The Problem of Administrative Areas (Northampton, 1918). A valuable group of papers read at the First International Congress of the Administrative Sciences, held at Brussels in July, 1910, is printed in G. M. Harris, Problems of Local Government (London, 1911). A useful compendium of laws relating to city government is C. Rawlinson, Municipal Corporation Acts and Other Enactments (9th ed., London, 1903). Two appreciative surveys by American writers are A. Shaw, Municipal Government in Great Britain (New York, 1898), and F. Howe, The British City (New York, 1907). On the subject of municipal trading the reader may be referred to Lowell, Government of England, II, Chap. xliv, and Lord Avebury, Municipal and National Trading (London, 1907). Among works on poor-law administration may be mentioned T. A. Mackay, History of the English Poor Law from 1834 to the Present Time (New York, 1900); P. T. Aschrott and H. P. Thomas, The English Poor Law System, Past and Present (2d ed., London, 1902); and S. and B. Webb, English Poor Law Policy (London, 1910). The best treatise on educational administration is G. Balfour, Educational Systems of Great Britain and Ireland (2d ed., London, 1904). Finally must be mentioned C. Gross, Bibliography of British Municipal History (New York, 1897), an invaluable guide to the voluminous literature of an intricate subject.

CHAPTER XIV

POLITICAL PARTIES SINCE THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

Importance and Uses of Party. It may be set down as an axiom that political parties are not only an inevitable but a necessary and proper adjunct of any scheme of popular government. The moment the people set about deciding upon public policy, or electing representatives to formulate and execute such policy, differences of view appear; and out of these differences of view political parties arise. There is, of course, hardly anything that has been more abused than party organization and spirit. Party principles, party programs, party committees and managers, party treasuries, party propaganda - all have been brought into frequent disrepute; so that, as one writer has wittily remarked, while men may be willing to die for party, they seldom praise it. None the less, political parties afford perhaps a clearer index than anything else of the political capacity and advancement of a nation. "The most gifted and freest nations politically are those that have the most sharply defined parties. . . . Wherever political parties are non-existent, one finds either a passive indifference to all public concerns, born of ignorance and incapacity, or else one finds the presence of a tyrannical and despotic form of government, suppressing the common manifestations of opinion and aspiration on the part of the people. Organized, drilled, and disciplined parties are the only means we have yet discovered by which to secure responsible government, and thus to execute the will of the people." 2

The uses of political parties in a democracy are fivefold. First, they enable men who think alike on public questions to unite in support of a common body of principles and policies and to work together to bring these principles and policies into actual operation. Second, they afford a useful, if not indispensable,

1 Low, Governance of England (new ed.), 119.

2 P. O. Ray, Introduction to Political Parties and Practical Politics (new ed., New York, 1917), 9-10. See the comment on this subject in A. Esmein, Eléments de droit constitutionnel français et comparé (4th ed., Paris, 1906), 168-178.