XXI.—HOW SHOULD LOCAL SELF-GOVERNMENT BE EXTENDED?
It is always consolatory to find amid the welter of party politics some topic upon which all say they agree, and such a topic certainly is that of the reform of local government. Politicians of every shade have long professed their desire for such a reform, and it ought now to be within measurable distance of accomplishment.
Upon the great question of the extension of self-government to Ireland I have already spoken; and in regard to the purely domestic affairs of all the four divisions of the kingdom—England, Scotland, and Wales, as well as Ireland—it need only here be added that the solution of much of the difficulty which springs from an overburdened Parliament will be found in devolving upon a special authority for each the right of dealing with its own local concerns. But, as to three of the four divisions, it is not so pressing a question as that which is commonly known as the reform of local government, and the main proposition touching which is summed up in the demand for county councils.
This is a matter which more intimately touches the country districts than the towns, for in all the latter of any size there are popularly elected municipal councils, which exercise much power over local affairs. The only exception is the greatest town of all, for London was specifically exempted (by the action of the House of Lords) from the reform effected in all other cities and boroughs by the Municipal Corporations Act of 1835. There is a Corporation of the City of London; but this body, against which a very great deal can be said, has authority only over one square mile of ground, the remaining 119 square miles upon which the metropolis stands being governed by vestries, trustee boards, and district boards of works, all connected with and subject to the Metropolitan Board of Works—or Board of Words, as it was once irreverently but truly called—which is not chosen directly by the ratepayers, but is selected by the vestries, who themselves are elected by handfuls of people, the general public paying them no heed. And thus it comes to pass that the greatest and wealthiest city in the world is worse governed than the smallest of our municipal boroughs, for nine out of ten ratepayers take not the least interest in electing the vestries, and not one ratepayer in a hundred could tell the name of his district representative on the Metropolitan Board of Works, now proposed, by even a Conservative Administration, to be abolished.
It is not a small concern, this of reforming the government of London, for it affects four millions of people—a number not far short of the population of Ireland; but politicians in the mass, as even the keenest metropolitan municipal reformer will admit, are more interested in the general question of local government.
Speaking broadly, the defects of the system proposed to be reformed are that of the popularly elected bodies there are too many, and that the great governing body is not elected at all. In a certain town of 3000 inhabitants, there are at this moment a Town Council, a School Board, a Burial Board, and (because under the Public Health Act an adjoining parish was tacked on) a Local Board of Health; while, notwithstanding that it sends representatives to a Board of Guardians for the whole Union, it had until recently, and in addition to the other bodies, a Local Board of Guardians, chosen under a special Act. And, beyond all these, a Highway Board meets within its borders, which has to be consulted and negotiated with whenever a road leading into the town needs to be re-metalled or an additional brick is required for a neighbouring bridge.
As if all these boards were not sufficient to keep the district in good order, there is the Court of Quarter Sessions, which has jurisdiction in various details that the multitude of small bodies cannot touch. These latter have one justification, however, that the former cannot claim, and that is that, despite there being magistrates who are members of the boards of guardians by virtue of their office, and although the more property one possesses the more votes one can give for certain of the local bodies, these in the main are popularly elected, and are, therefore, directly responsible to the ratepayers for the manner in which their trust is used.
It is quite otherwise with the Court of Quarter Sessions. This consists only of magistrates, such magistrates being appointed by the Lords-Lieutenant of counties, and the appointments being made mainly on political grounds. As a rule, the holders of that distinguished position are Tories, and they take good care that the magistrates shall be Tories also. It is not long since it would have been impossible to find a single Liberal on the commission of the peace for Huntingdonshire; and when comparatively recently it was pointed out to the Lord-Lieutenant of Essex that an almost exactly similar state of things prevailed in that shire, he replied he did not consider there was a Liberal in the whole county who was socially qualified for the magisterial bench. The idea of making a banker or a merchant a justice of the peace was too shocking; and thus the commercial classes and a good half of the population (giving the other half to the Tories) were completely unrepresented, not merely on the bench, but in the Court of Quarter Sessions, which governed the affairs and spent the money of the county.
There is no necessity to prove that these courts have spent the county monies wantonly or with conscious impropriety in order to show this condition of things to be wrong. In imperial affairs, the doctrine that taxation without representation is tyranny has been asserted to the full; in municipal matters, since the Act of 1835, the same has prevailed; but in county concerns it has been non-existent. The magistrates represent no one but themselves, their party, and their own class; they are necessarily swayed by the passions and prejudices that party and class possess; and, seeing that the English people long ago refused power over the national purse to an unrepresentative body like the House of Lords, it is surprising they have until now allowed power over the local purse to be in the hands of such equally unrepresentative bodies as the courts of quarter sessions.
The line which the immediate reform of local government must take is, therefore, the creation of a directly-elected body to deal with county affairs, and the federation of such of the smaller boards as have to do with the more purely district concerns, both of which points the Cabinet of Lord Salisbury appear disposed to concede. But upon the former point Liberals will claim that the whole—and not merely three-fourths—of the County Councils shall be directly elected, for the system of aldermen, included in the Municipal Reform Act by the House of Lords, has been used for partisan purposes, as it was intended to be, and the same effect will follow in the case of the counties if the same cause is provided.
Any system, in fact, which involves “double election” tends to make the body concerned hidebound and cliquish. A county alderman once chosen, especially if he were a squire, as he most likely would be, would have to behave himself in most outrageous fashion ever to lose his post. The ratepayers might grumble, but it would be difficult in the extreme to dislodge him, for he would be removed from their direct control, and the Council would consider it ungracious to get rid of an “old servant.” If one wants to know how this double election operates, let him ask some clear-sighted Londoner who is acquainted with the manner in which his own city is ruled. He will be answered that for scandalous and wanton expenditure not many bodies can equal the Metropolitan Asylums Board, the members of which are mainly chosen by the various boards of guardians; while for jobbery and general mismanagement it is even beaten by the Metropolitan Board of Works, which is elected by the several vestries. And he will add that this chiefly arises from the fact that the ratepayers have no direct control over either of these bodies, and that the good result of such direct control was shown by this fact—that when the metropolitan ratepayers considered that the School Board, which is directly elected, was practising extravagance, they placed at the bottom of the poll those responsible for the policy, with the effect that considerable savings were speedily effected.
And therefore now, when County Councils are being established, all Liberals will have very carefully to watch the points upon which the Tories and Whigs may combine in an attempt to give the country a semblance without the reality of representative local self-government. What must be insisted upon is—(1) That the Councils shall be entirely elective; (2) that the ratepayers shall directly elect; (3) that there shall be no property qualification for membership; (4) that the voting shall be by household suffrage—one householder one vote; and (5) that women ratepayers shall have the same right of voting for county as for town councils.
With such a Council in each county, or, in the case of Lancashire and Yorkshire, in each great division of a county, we should have a central local organization, to which highway boards, local boards of health, village school boards, and other small bodies could be affiliated; and it is not impossible that, as a development of the system, the various bodies controlling the destinies of our lesser towns could be federated to save friction, trouble, and expense; while, above all, it must be insisted that the representatives of the ratepayers shall have full control over the police.
It is a truism that without good citizens the best of governments must fail; but our experience of the House of Commons and of the many town councils has shown that the improvement of the machinery and the handing over of control to the great body of the people have brought public-spirited men to the front to do the duties required. As it has been at Westminster and in the towns, so will it be in the counties. England has become greater and freer, our towns have expanded and benefited, owing to the whole of the inhabitants having a direct voice in the rule; and the counties will correspondingly improve when the same is applied.