ernment county functions; an imper 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 of the superseded Metropolitan Board of Works was transferred to the administrative county of London, whose governing body London is an elected county council, endowed with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. As the most recent writer upon the subject has tersely act of 1888 expressed 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. 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.4 3 A somewhat detailed account has already been given of the township as the modern parish, and of the manner in which 1 51 & 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. 8 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. ernment Decline of the parish; as the agent of the state under the great act Elizabeth (1601); results of that act as they appeared in 1834; of system remodelled by the act of 1834; its composite machinery has been applied, first to church and the parish made to the special functions the parish was thus called upon the Poor Law Board; how the parish as such was affected by the new 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. new police constables. entirely a permissive institution."1 As a part of the police effect of the system, the importance of the parish practically ended when system the act of 1856-the first law for the whole of England upon parish requiring that there should be paid policeman - rendered unnecessary the old parish constables, whose offices were permissively abolished by an act of 1872, as those of the high constables, old officers of the hundred, were in 1869. house's restore constitu sive; to the In 1831, in the midst of the movement for parliamentary Sir J. Hobreform, and four years prior to the passage of the first Muni- Vestry cipal Corporations Act, Sir John Hobhouse secured the enact- Act, 1831; ment of his Vestry Act, which attempted to restore to the attempt to parish its ancient popular constitution through provisions that ancient revived the common law right of every rated parishioner to popular vote for members of the vestry; that directed that the votes tion of the parish; of the electors should be taken by ballot; that every ten-pound householder, with certain exceptions, should be eligible as a vestryman; that no one so chosen should have more than a single vote; that due publication should be made of the accounts of the parish charities; and that the auditors to audit the accounts should be elected. The act was, however, per- act permismissive; it could be adopted only by parishes having more than eight hundred ratepaying inhabitants, and that only after due notice and by a two thirds vote. As the act has been repealed as repealed as regards the Metropolis, to whose populous parishes Metropolis; it had been extensively applied, it is supposed to have had a very limited operation. Not even such a legislative stimulant has failed as the Hobhouse Act could check the tendency of the parish tendency of to become obsolete as an active unit of local administration; parish to it is mainly important at the present day "as the unit for taxa- obsolete; tion and electoral purposes. All rates included in the poor for taxation rate are collected parochially, and the lists of voters for parlia- toral mentary and municipal elections are made out parochially." purposes. While the causes just enumerated were dragging down the Declining ancient parishes and their vestries from their once high estate. of county others were at work which, in the same general way, have ment; 1 Chalmers, Local Government, Citi- ishes of the same name."— Ibid., pp. zen Ser. p. 45. "There are now (1883) 38-40. about 15,000 civil and 13,000 ecclesiastical parishes. Out of the 15,000 civil parishes, there were in 1871 not more than 10,000 whose boundaries coincided with the ecclesiastical par 2 1 & 2 Will. IV. c. 6. I 3 See Toulmin Smith, The Parish, pp. 240-243. 4 Chalmers, Local Government, Citizen Ser. p. 40. to check become still a unit and elec importance govern reduced the counties and their governments to the attenuated period of form in which they now appear. During the period that folits greatest influence: lowed the Conquest, the shire organization reached no doubt its highest point of influence in the county parliaments, called together by the sheriffs to meet the itinerant justices, in order to participate with them in the administration of justice, and in the transaction of other public business. The process has already been drawn out through which the bodies thus constituted have been transformed into the modern courts of assize, in which the itinerant justices still preside, but in which the great assemblies of the shire are now represented only by the of the shire grand and petty jurors summoned for the trial of civil and criminal cases. One of the notable consequences of the development of this itinerant system was a steady decline in the decline in judicial powers of the sheriff, who finally became simply the the judicial executive head of the shire, whose duty it was to convene the sheriff; the ancient county court that lingered on after its more great assemblies gave way to the courts of assize; powers of ancient county court and its functions; was ad vanced by the rise of justices of the peace; important powers had been absorbed by the royal tribunals. That court met once a month, probably at the county town, for general purposes, military, judicial, and fiscal, and twice a year in every hundred as the great court-leet of the county for criminal trials, under the name of the sheriff's tourn or cirhow decline cuit.1 What thus remained of administrative and judicial work to the ancient assembly of the shire, with the sheriff at its head, was subjected to a second process of diminution with the rise of the royal officers known as justices of the peace, who in their courts of quarter sessions acquired not only the right to try all minor criminal cases once tried in the courtsleet, but also the sheriff's ancient control over the county conadministra- stabulary. All administrative functions of the county were then conferred upon the justices assembled, either in quarter or special sessions, by a series of statutes extending from statute; Tudor and Stuart times down to the present day.2 Thus it result of the was that the ancient county courts were gradually reduced centraliza- through a process of centralization to the shadowy theoretical existence which they still maintain. The decline and fall of the sheriff himself has gone on hand in hand with that of the tive work cast on quarter sessions by process of tion; 1 Vol. i. pp. 319, 320. See, also, Sir J. F. Stephen, Hist. of the Crim. Law, vol. i. pp. 67, 81. 2 Vol. i. pp. 192, 193. functions ancient district in which he was once a viceroy. One by one present his functions have been taken from him until he now appears of sheriff largely simply as a country gentleman, who, may be against his will, formal. has been called upon to perform for a single year a set of disconnected duties, many of which are purely formal, and nearly all of which may be performed by an under-sheriff of his appointment. He acts as returning officer in parliamentary elections, he receives the judges on their circuits, he summons jurors, and sees to the execution of judgments, both civil and criminal. In theory only it is still his duty to proclaim in the obsolete county court all the new acts of parliament; and he still has the immemorial right to quell sudden disturbances by calling out the posse comitatus, a proceeding which the justices of the peace and the police constables have long since rendered unnecessary.1 head of the perseded lieutenant; the ancient earldom; On its military side, the importance of the sheriff's office As military was entirely obscured by the rise of that of lord lieutenant, county which gradually came into being in the Tudor time, as it be- sheriff sucame evident that, in order to render the county force more by lord efficient, the sheriff appointed for only a year should be superseded by a permanent commander. Thus as a revival of the revival of ancient local earldom the lord-lieutenancy was bestowed by a local special commission from the crown, usually upon a peer or other great landowner, who, once appointed, generally continues in office for life. But with the growth of a standing effect of the army the county militia became less and less important, and standing with it dwindled the importance of its permanent commander, army on until by an act passed in 1871 his military jurisdiction was militia; restored to the source from which it had emanated. In the lord lieumean time, however, he had become the honorary head of the honorary county magistracy, and as such he was appointed by the commission of the peace the keeper of their records, custos magistracy; rotulorum. In that capacity he still appoints the clerk of the how the peace, who acts as clerk of the sessions; and it is usually usually upon his recommendation that the chancellor, acting in the appoints justices of the peace. name of the crown, appoints the justices themselves. 1 "For purposes of county government, therefore, his office is now but of little practical account. Its interest is historical rather than practical."Chalmers, Local Government, Citizen Ser. p. 95. 2 See above, p. 198. 8 By the Army Regulation Act, 34 & 35 Vict., the authority of the lord lieutenant over the county militia has been revested in the crown, to be exercised by the secretary of state for war through officers appointed by his advice. tenant as head of county chancellor |