The Governments of Europe

by Frederic Austin Ogg

IV. Local Government to the Municipal Corporations Act, 1835

185. Periods in Local Governmental History.—No description of a governmental system can be adequate which does not take into account the agencies and modes by which the powers of government are brought close to the people, as well as those by which the people in greater or lesser measure regulate locally their own public affairs. More especially is this true in the instance of a government such as the English in which local self-control is a fundamental rather than an incidental fact. The history of local institutions in England covers an enormous stretch of time, as well as a remarkable breadth of public organization and activity, and by no means its least important phases are those which have appeared in most recent times. Speaking broadly, it may be said to fall into four very unequal periods. The first, extending from the settlement of the Saxons to the Norman Conquest, was marked by the establishment of the distinctive English units of administration—shire, hundred, and township—and by the planting of the principle of broadly popular local control. The second, extending from the Conquest to the fourteenth century, was characterized by a general increase of centralization and a corresponding decrease of local autonomy. The third, extending from the fourteenth century to the adoption of the Local Government Act of 1888, was pre-eminently a period of aristocratic control of local affairs, of government by the same squirearchy which prior to 1832, if not 1867, was accustomed to dominate Parliament. The last period, that from 1888 to the present time, has been notable in a special degree for the democratization and systematization of local governing arrangements which has taken place within it.

186. County and Parish before 1832.—The transformation by which the institutions of local government have been brought to their present status paralleled, and in a large measure sprang from, the revolutionizing of Parliament during the course of the nineteenth century. Two periods of change are especially noteworthy, the one following closely the Reform Act of 1832 and culminating in the adoption of the Municipal Corporations Act of 1835, the other following similarly the Representation of the People Act of 1884 and attaining fruition in the Local Government Act of 1888 and the District and Parish Councils Act of 1894. At the opening of the century rural administration was carried on principally in the shire or county and the civil or "poor law" parish; urban administration in the corporate towns, or municipal boroughs. The counties were fifty-two in number. Most of them were of Saxon origin, although some were the product of absorptions or delimitations which took place in later centuries. The last to be added were those of Wales. Altered often in respect to their precise functions, the counties retained from first to last a large measure of importance, and at the beginning of the nineteenth century they were still the principal areas of local governing activity. From Saxon times to the fourteenth century the dominating figure in county administration was the sheriff, but in the reign of Edward III. justices of the peace were created into whose hands during the ensuing five hundred years substantially all administrative and judicial affairs of the county were drawn. These dignitaries were appointed by the crown, chiefly from the ranks of the smaller landowners and rural clergy, and as a rule they comprised in practice a petty oligarchy whose conduct of public business was inspired by aristocratic, far more than by democratic, ideals.

The principal division of the county was the civil parish, usually but not always identical with the ecclesiastical parish. The governing bodies of the parish were two—the vestry (either open to all rate-payers or composed of elected representatives), which administered general affairs, and the overseers of the poor who under the Elizabethan statute of 1601 were empowered to find employment for the able-bodied poor, to provide other forms of relief as should be required, and to levy a local rate to meet the costs of their work. Since the passage of Gilbert's Act of 1782 the parishes had been arranged in groups for poor-law purposes, and boards of guardians appointed by the justices of the peace had come to be the real authorities in the administration of poor relief, as well as in most other matters. The abuses arising from poor-law administration were not infrequently appalling.

187. The Borough before 1832.—The corporate towns in England and Wales numbered, in 1832, 246. They comprised population centers which, on the basis of charters granted by the crown, had become distinct areas of local government. They did not, however, stand entirely apart from the county and parish organization. On the contrary, except in so far as they were exempted specifically by the terms of their charters, they were subject to the authority of the justices of the peace and of the governing agencies of the parishes within whose jurisdiction they were situated. Their style of government was determined largely by the provisions of their charters, and since these instruments exhibited a marked degree of variety, uniformity of organization was entirely lacking. As a rule, however, the borough was a close corporation, and the burgesses, or "freemen," in whom were vested peculiar trading and fiscal rights and an absolute monopoly of the powers of government, comprised but a small fraction of the general body of citizens. The governing authority of the borough was the town council, whose members were either elected by the freemen or recruited by co-optation. Government was regularly oligarchical and irresponsible; sometimes it was inefficient and corrupt.

188. The New Poor Law (1834) and the Municipal Corporations Act (1835).—The reforms accomplished since 1832 within the domain of parliamentary organization and procedure have been hardly more remarkable than those wrought during the same period within the field of local government. It must suffice to mention but the principal steps by which the local governing system has been brought to its present high degree of democracy and effectiveness. Among the subjects to which the first reformed parliament addressed its attention was the direful condition into which had fallen the relief of the poor, and the initial stage of local government regeneration was marked by the adoption of the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834, abolishing outdoor relief for the able-bodied, providing for the regrouping of parishes in "poor-law unions," and establishing a national Poor Law Commission. The administration of relief within the unions was intrusted all but exclusively to newly created boards of guardians, composed in part of the justices of the peace sitting ex-officio and in part of members specially elected by the rate-payers. The arrangements set up by the act proved very successful and they survive almost intact at the present day. The second notable change was that effected by the Municipal Corporations Act of 1835. The enfranchising of large numbers of the townspeople in 1832 led inevitably to demand for the democratization of the aristocratic borough governments, and within three years the demand was met in a statute so sweeping as to justify the assertion that with its enactment the modern history of the English town begins.[254] Sixty-nine of the old corporate towns, by reason of their unimportance, were now deprived of the character of boroughs. The city of London was not touched, but elsewhere all municipal corporations were broadened so as to personify legally the entire population of the borough. The time-honored municipal oligarchy was broken down by the giving of the franchise to all rate-payers, the town councils were made wholly elective, trading monopolies and privileges were swept away, and a variety of other reforms were introduced. With the adoption of this important measure, however, the work of reform came for a time to a halt, and the widely assailed system of county government through nominated magistrates in quarter sessions survived until 1888.[255]

V. Local Government Reform, 1835-1912

189. Mid-Century Confusion of Areas and Jurisdictions.—Throughout the earlier and middle portions of the Victorian period legislation respecting local government was abundant, but it was special rather than general. It pertained principally to the care of highways and burial grounds, the laying out and organization of districts for the promotion of sanitation, the establishment of "improvement act" districts, and, notably, the erection and administration of school districts under the Elementary Education Act of 1870. With each successive measure the confusion of jurisdictions and agencies was increased. The prevailing policy was to provide for each fresh need as it arose a special machinery designed to meet that particular need, and arrangements effected were seldom or never uniform throughout the country, nor did they bear any logical relation to arrangements already existing for other purposes. By 1871 the country, as Lowell puts it, was divided into counties, unions, and parishes, and spotted over with boroughs and with highway, burial, sanitary, improvement act, school, and other districts, and of these areas none save the parishes and unions bore any necessary relation to any of the rest.[256] In the effort to adapt the framework of the administrative system to the fast changing conditions of a rapidly growing population Parliament piled act upon act, the result being a sheer jungle of interlacing jurisdictions alike baffling to the student and subversive of orderly and economical administration. It is computed that in 1883 there were in England and Wales no fewer than 27,069 independent local authorities,[257] and that the rate-payer was taxed by eighteen different kinds of rates.

190. Local Government Act of 1888 and District and Parish Councils Act of 1894.—Soon after the passage of the Elementary Education Act of 1870 reform began to be attempted in the direction both of concentration of local governing authority and the readjustment and simplification of local governing areas. In 1871 the Poor Law Board (which succeeded the Poor Law Commission in 1847) was converted into the Local Government Board, with the purpose of concentrating in a single department the supervision of the laws relating to public health, the relief of the poor, and local government; and when, in 1872, the entire country was divided into urban and rural sanitary districts, the work was done deliberately in such a fashion as to involve the least possible addition to the existing complexities of the administrative system.[258] The two measures, however, by which, in the main, order was brought out of confusion were the Local Government Act of 1888 and the District and Parish Councils Act of 1894. The first of these, referred to commonly as the County Councils Act, was the sequel of the Representation of the People Act of 1884 and was definitely intended to invest the newly enfranchised rural population with a larger control of county affairs. The act created sixty-two administrative counties (some coterminous with pre-existing counties, others comprising subdivisions of them) and some three score "county boroughs," comprising towns of more than 50,000 inhabitants.[259] In each county and county borough there was set up a council, at least two-thirds of whose members were elective, and to this council was transferred the administrative functions of the justices of the peace, leaving to those dignitaries of the old régime little authority save of a judicial character. The democratization of rural government accomplished by the Conservative ministry of Lord Salisbury in 1888 was supplemented by the provisions of the District and Parish Councils Act, carried by a Liberal ministry in 1894.[260] This measure provided (1) that every county should be divided into districts, urban and rural, and every district into parishes, and (2) that in every district and in every rural parish with more than three hundred inhabitants there should be an elected council, while in the smallest parishes there should be a primary assembly of all persons whose names appear on the local government and parliamentary register. To the parish councils and assemblies were transferred all of the civil functions of the vestries, leaving to those bodies the control of ecclesiastical matters only, while to the district councils, whether rural or urban, were committed control of sanitary affairs and highways.

The effect of the acts of 1888 and 1894 was two-fold. In the first place, they put the administrative affairs of the rural portions of the country in the hands almost exclusively of popularly elected bodies. In the second place, their adoption afforded opportunity for the immediate or gradual abolition of all local governing authorities except the county, municipal, district, and parish councils, the boards of guardians, and the school boards, and thus they contributed vastly to that gradual simplification of the local governing system which is one of the most satisfactory developments of recent years. The act of 1894 alone abolished some 8,000 authorities. Since 1894 the consolidation of authorities and the elimination of areas have been carried yet further, the most notable step being the abolition of the school boards by the Education Act of 1902 and the transfer of the functions of these bodies to the councils of the counties, boroughs, and districts. Both the majority and minority reports of the recent Poor Law Commission, submitted in 1909, recommend the abolition of the parish union area; but no action has been taken as yet by Parliament upon this subject.[261]