Great acts of the reformed parlia ments: how the franchise was with the main councils; their hold upon the house of commons also brought about the enactment of that series of statutes through which the ancient system of local self-government has been emancipated from the control of the few and reestablished upon a popular basis. The attempt has heretofore been made to draw out the process through which the simple primitive system of local administration embodied in the township, the borough, the hundred, and the shire, upon which the central government pressed very lightly, was gradually undermined by a series of encroachments that finally resulted in withdrawing the franchise from drawn from the main body of the people and vesting it in local magnates, body of the or in close corporations. Thus it was that in many parishes people; the powers of the vestry, anciently the assembly of the township for ecclesiastical matters only, -in which all rated parishioners had the common law right to assemble for the regulation of all parish affairs, were usurped by a few of the self-elected inhabitants, who assumed not only to act for all, but to pervestries; petuate their existence by self-election.1 In the boroughs, self-elected where the municipal councils were generally self-elected and municipal for life, the tendency was still stronger upon the part of the favored few to exclude the main body of the townspeople from condition of any share in the town government. From the report of the Plymouth, royal commission appointed in 1833 to make a searching inmouth, and quiry into the whole subject, we learn that at Plymouth, in a Ipswich; population of 75,000, there were only 437 freemen, of whom 145 were non-resident; at Portsmouth, in a population of 45,000, there were only 102 freemen; while at Ipswich, less than two per cent., many of whom were paupers, enjoyed corporate privileges. Passing over the obsolete subdivisions known as hundreds, we also find a notable exception to the general rule of representation in local affairs in the county counties by governments, whose administrative control finally passed from appointed the local parliaments known as the county courts to the quarter sessions, composed of the justices of the peace appointed by the crown, generally upon the recommendation of the lord lieutenant.2 As time went on, the strong and simple system of local to be either self-government, once sufficient for all the wants of primitive popular or adequate communities, not only ceased to be popular, but became en2 See above, pp. 192, 193; vol. i. p. 453, et seq. things at Ports government of justices by the crown; system of local selfgovern ment ceased 1 See above, p. 192; vol. i. p. 37, and notes. tirely inadequate to the ever increasing requirements of a progressive society. As the state thus outgrew its immemorial system of local administration an attempt was made to supply the more glaring deficiencies, not only by general legislation relating to local affairs, but also by thousands of local and special acts which apply to particular towns and districts.1 When, therefore, the work of reformation and reorganization its reformbegan, those who were brave enough to undertake it were upon to called upon to keep three objects steadily in view: firstly, to keep three reëstablish local self-government upon a popular basis; sec- steadily in ondly, to supersede the endless local exceptions and anomalies by something like a uniform system; thirdly, to make such additions to the ancient machinery as were peremptorily demanded by the complex wants of modern civilization. ers called things view. pal system; tions engines; It was admitted on all hands that the most vicious and cor- Reform of the municirupt part of the local system was that embodied in the municipal organization of the boroughs, whose charters from a very early period generally granted or confirmed to each the right of sending one or more burgesses to parliament to represent it.2 Thus "a great number of corporations have been pre- corporaserved solely as political engines, and the towns to which they preserved belong derive no benefit, but often much injury, from their as political existence. To maintain the political ascendancy of a party, or the political influence of a family, has been the one end and object for which the powers entrusted to those bodies have been exercised." After the reform bill of 1832 had taken after away these exclusive political privileges from the few and bill of 1832, revested them in the many so far as the right to elect parlia- borough mentary representatives was concerned, steps were immedi- reorganized ately taken to abolish such oligarchies entirely, and to reorgan- popular ize the borough system upon a broad popular basis by vesting the municipal franchise in the rate-paying residents. prelude to that undertaking parliament in 1833 appointed a Royal Commission which, after a thorough investigation of the Royal Com whole subject, reported in 1835; and in the same year was of 1833; 1 "Our local legislation begins with the statute De Officio Coronatoris, passed in 1275, and ends for the present with the Divided Parish Act of 1882. Between these terminal marks the various Acts are scattered up and As a down in wild confusion."- M. D. 2 See above, p. 390. reform system on a broad basis; mission Corporations Act, 1835; its leading features; Municipal passed the first Municipal Corporations Act,1 justly regarded as the basis of English municipal freedom in its modern form. By the terms of that act the franchise was given to all inhabit ant 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. two amend ments, whole subject recast and condensed into Muni cipal Corporations Municipal ed to the it retains its stitution aries; And here the fact must be emphasized that these Municipal 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; 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 estimated in 1896 at 31,148.3 The corporation, which within these narrow limits exercises nearly all local authority, performs its functions through three assemblies, the court of aldermen, the court of common council, and the court of common hall, over each of which the lord mayor presides. The charter 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 governed by three assemblies charter granted by 1 5 & 6 Will. IV. c. 76. 2 45 & 46 Vict. c. 50. 3 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. lative and court of council; into that of mayor.1 In the charter granted by King John in charter granted by 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 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- distinguished trict 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 London surround greater 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.* 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-outlying 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. tion in selfishness this wretched condition of things, the corporation of London of the old corporation; registry of vital statistics in 1838; Metropolis Management Act, 1855; offered to do nothing, for fear that an extension of its system of government beyond its ancient limits would result in depriv ing 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, Metropoli-functions that have never been taken away. The Metroof Works; politan Board of Works, consisting of one representative from vestries and district boards; tan Board 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. Gladmeasure of stone's cabinet introduced in 1884 a measure that proposed to 1884; create a sort of federalized municipal government for greater London, which was to be divided into thirty-nine administra Harcourt's 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. 8 M. D. Chalmers, Local Govern ment, Citizen Ser. p. 144. |