Municipal passed the first Municipal Corporations Act,1 justly regarded Corporations Act, 1835; its leading features; two amend as the basis of English municipal freedom in its modern form. By the terms of that act the franchise was given to all inhabitant ratepayers; magisterial powers were taken away from the aldermen, and the tenure of elective officers shortened; provision was made for the honest administration of corporate funds and for an efficient discharge of municipal duties; and all exemptions, restrictions, and trading monopolies were abolished. So imperfect, however, was this tentative measure that after forty- after forty-two amendments in subsequent enactments it was deemed necessary to recast and condense the whole subject into the complete municipal code embodied in the Municipal Corporations Act,2 1882, said to be one of the best drafted acts upon the statute-book. There the titles of municipal corporations are fixed, the franchise for both men and women defined, Act, 1882; the rights and duties of burgesses, the duties of mayors, the general powers of the governing body known as the council, the manner in which borough justice shall be administered, and the manner in which new municipalities may be created clearly set forth. ments, whole subject recast and condensed into Municipal Corporations Municipal ed to the And here the fact must be emphasized that these Municipal Corts Corporations Acts have never been extended to the City of not extend- London, which still retains its ancient constitution embodied City of in one hundred and twenty charters, supplemented by about London; it retains its fifty general and a mass of local acts. The ancient city thus ancient con- constituted occupies, however, within municipal and parliamenand bound- tary boundaries only 671 statute acres, with a population esti stitution aries; mated in 1896 at 31,148.3 The corporation, which within these narrow limits exercises nearly all local authority, performs its governed functions through three assemblies, the court of aldermen, by three assemblies the court of common council, and the court of common hall, charter over each of which the lord mayor presides. The charter * granted by William the granted to the city by William the Norman was addressed to Norman ; William the bishop, Gosfrith the portreeve, and all the burgesses, French and English; but the portreeve in due time received the Norman title of bailiff, which in 1189 was changed 1 5 & 6 Will. IV. c. 76. 2 45 & 46 Vict. c. 50. 8 See article on London in Whitaker's Almanack, 1897. "And I do you to wit that I will that ye two be worthy of all the laws that ye were worthy of in King Edward's day."— Stubbs, Select Charters. p. 83. granted by lative and court of London guished surround the "Me into that of mayor.1 In the charter granted by King John in charter 12152 a direction was contained that the mayor should be John; chosen annually, a precept which has since been carefully observed. The chief legislative and executive organ of the chief legiscorporation is the court of common council, the successor of executive the popular assembly of early times known as the folkmoot, organ, which consists of 26 aldermen chosen in as many wards for common council; life, and of 240 common councilmen elected annually in the several wards in different proportions. With this statement City of clearly in view, it will be more easy to distinguish the ancient must be City of London from that great and growing surrounding dis- distintrict of which it is the heart, called in statutes the Metropolis, from vast whose boundaries are difficult to define because they vary for ing district different purposes. If, however, we limit the term "Metro- known as polis" to the vast settlement that has agglomerated itself tropolis;" outside of the city walls within the limits of what is known as the Metropolitan Police District, we have an area extending its area and over a radius of fifteen miles from Charing Cross which, ex- population. clusive of the City of London, contained in 1891 a population of 5,596,101, with a ratable value in 1895-96 of £38,716,378.4 Between 1805 and 1855 the population of greater London Growth of swelled from a million to two millions and a half;5 and be- London; tween 1855 and 1891 that aggregate grew into the five millions and a half ascertained by the census of 1891. The rising tide of humanity that thus spread beyond the walls of the ancient city into the disorderly mass of townships, manors, parishes, and extra-parochial places surrounding it found therein only such forms of organization as their antiquated and disconnected systems of local self-government provided. The only common head to which this outlying population could look lack of was crown and parliament, from which it derived a metropo- organizamunicipal litan police force that kept fairly good order, and a govern- tion in ment commission of sewers which provided an imperfect sys- districts; tem of drainage, that emptied its pollution into the Thames in such a way as at times to obstruct navigation. To remedy 1 In the mean time, however, was granted the charter of Henry I. Fædera, vol. i. p. 11. As to the status of London under that charter, see vol. i. P. 458. 2 Stubbs, Select Charters, p. 314. 8 See Shaw, Municipal Government in Great Britain, p. 229. 4 See article on London in Whitaker's Almanack, 1897. 5 Shaw, Municipal Government in Great Britain, p. 235. greater outlying of the old corporation; registry of vital statistics in 1838; Metropolis Management Act, 1855; selfishness this wretched condition of things, the corporation of London offered to do nothing, for fear that an extension of its system of government beyond its ancient limits would result in depriving it of its monopoly of exclusive privileges. The task of giving municipal organization to the new creation devolved, therefore, upon the central government, which in 1838 first recognized the fact that London embraced the outlying districts by the provisions then made for the registry of vital statistics. The first rudiments, however, of a municipal constitution were contained in the Metropolis Management Act of 1855,2 which created within an area practically identical with that of the Registrar-General's District as extended a central authority called the Metropolitan Board of Works. At that date local affairs within the area thus organized were managed by seventy-eight parishes, twenty-three of which were considered large and populous enough to continue under the control of single vestries, while the remaining fifty-five were grouped in fifteen districts, governed by boards elected by the vestries functions of of the combined parishes. To these vestries and district. boards were confided under a somewhat uniform system the local functions that the parishes had immemorially exercised, including street-making, local sewerage, sanitary administration, watering and paving streets, and the removal of nuisances, vestries and district boards; Metropolitan Board -functions that have never been taken away. The Metroof Works; politan Board of Works, consisting of one representative from each district board or vestry and three from the corporation of the City of London, was charged primarily with the task of constructing a system of trunk sewers, an enterprise too vast of course for the petty boards and vestries to undertake with any hope of success. From that time onward effort after effort was made by leading English statesmen to develop the germ embodied in the act of 1855 into a great and complete municipal system. Foremost among such attempts stands that Sir William of Sir William Harcourt, who as Home Secretary in Mr. GladHarcourt's stone's cabinet introduced in 1884 a measure that proposed to create a sort of federalized municipal government for greater London, which was to be divided into thirty-nine administra measure of 1884; 1 "In 1838 the wider area came to be definitely known as the RegistrarGeneral's District."— Ibid., p. 233. 2 18 & 19 Vict. c. 120. 3 M. D. Chalmers, Local Govern ment, Citizen Ser. p. 144. ernment tive areas under the control of a great central council, to be composed of two hundred and forty members. The ancient City of London was to be considered only as one of the thirtynine areas, to which a large representation was to be given in recognition of its historical importance and great property interests. Nothing, however, was actually done until 1888, when parliament, in enacting the Local Government Act1 of that Local Govyear, found it convenient to treat all the great urban commu- Act, 1888; nities of England as separate counties for administrative purposes. In that way the area embraced within the jurisdiction of the superseded Metropolitan Board of Works was transferred to the administrative county of London, whose governing body London is an elected county council, endowed with functions analagous council in many respects to those exercised by the governing bodies of and its other great towns. The measure is, however, a very imperfect one. county functions; As the most recent writer upon the subject has tersely act of 1888 an imperexpressed it: "Thus the City of London and its functions fect one; remained practically untouched, and the parish vestries and district boards continued to exercise their accustomed jurisdiction in minor affairs."2 In order to place such vestries and boards upon a broad popular basis, by restoring the right of local self-government to the main body of townsmen, by whom it was no doubt exercised in earlier times, Mr. Henry Fowler, as president of the Local Government Board in Mr. Gladstone's last cabinet, introduced the "Local Government Bill, Local GovEngland and Wales," which became law in 1894.3 By that Bill, 1894. act, which does for the townships or civil parishes of England what the Municipal Corporations Act of 1835 did for the larger towns, the election of London vestries is regulated through provisions that make all resident citizens, men and women, eligible for election by an electorate composed of all whose names appear on the parliamentary or county council rolls.1 ernment A somewhat detailed account has already been given of the Decline of township as the modern parish, and of the manner in which the parish; 151 & 52 Vict. c. 41. 2 Shaw, Municipal Government in Great Britain, p. 242. See the scheme for a complete unification of the Metropolis described in Appendix III. of that work. 3 56 & 57 Vict. c. 73. 4 For the latest and best commentary, see The Local Government Act, 1894, by Macmorran and Dill, 3d ed. 1896. as the agent of the state under the Elizabeth (1601); results of that act as they appeared in 1834; system remodelled by the act of 1834; its composite machinery has been applied, first to church and 8 the parish made to the special functions the parish was thus called upon to perform as the agent chosen by the state for the execution of the great act of Elizabeth (1601),1 upon which the English great act of system of poor relief rested until it was superseded by the Poor Law Amendment Act, 1834.2 A special student of the subject has declared that "this was the state of things down to the reform of 1834. The public funds were regarded as a regular part of the maintenance of the labouring people engaged in agriculture, and were administered by more than 2000 justices, 15,000 sets of overseers, and 15,000 vestries, acting always independently of each other, and very commonly in opposition, quite uncontrolled, and ignorant of the very rudiments of political economy In the hope of improving that unfortunate condition of things, the reformed parliament passed the act of 1834, whereby the poor law administration was remodelled and its control vested in a central commission, made permanent in 1847 as the Poor Law Board, which, under Law Board; the presidency of a responsible minister eligible to a seat in the house of commons, possessed among its other ample powers the right of grouping parishes for poor law purposes into unions, subject to the control of boards of guardians. Thus was the individual parish as such stripped of its most important function by the creation of a new statutory system, emaffected by bodying the vitally important principle that a leading branch of local administration was thereafter to be moulded and directed after the French fashion by a central bureau at London, whose powers over the local unions embraced not only their creation but their dissolution. Then through two sets of causes, — one lay, the other ecclesiastical,-what is known as the civil parish was in many localities separated from the ecclesiastical; and rated from "since the abolition of compulsory church rates by the act of 1868, the ecclesiastical parish has ceased to be of much practical importance for purposes of local government. It is almost the Poor guardians; how the parish as such was the new statutory system; a central bureau at London; how the civil parish was sepa the ecclesi astical; 1 See above, p. 189, et seq. 2 4 & 5 Will. IV. c. 76. Cf. Nicholl's Hist. of the Eng. Poor Law; Report of the Poor Law Commissioners in 1834; and the Sixth Report of the Poor Law Commission in 1839. 8 T. W. Fowle, The Poor Law, Citizen Ser. pp. 73, 74. 4 Traill, Central Government, Citizen Ser. p. 134. 5 See chap. iv., "The Union," in Chalmers, Local Government, Citizen Ser. pp. 51-60. |