Full particulars may be obtained on application to the Director.
NEW WORK BY SIDNEY AND BEATRICE WEBB.
English Local Government from the Revolution to the Municipal Corporations Act—The Parish and the County.
Published 1 Oct., 1906. Post 8vo, with Index, 650 pp. Price 16s. net.
ADVERTISEMENT.
More than that of any other Anglo-Saxon country, English Local Government is rooted in the past, and its contemporary problems can be neither fully understood nor adequately solved without a knowledge of how they have arisen. This work, the first fruits of seven years’ investigation into the development of English Local Government, combines a detailed history of local administration in parish and county throughout England and Wales from 1689 to 1835, with a descriptive analysis of the interesting constitutional evolution of this most fruitful period, when local authorities were practically free from supervision or control.
Avoiding discussions as to the origins of English local institutions, or even as to their growth during the Middle Ages, it describes in vivid detail the development of structure and function which led to the reforms of 1832–35, on which our present system is based. This description is framed on new lines and drawn almost entirely from materials hitherto unused. Instead of dealing principally with the law of local government, and the successive changes in the Statute-book, the institutions themselves, and the persons who worked them, are described as vital social tissue. The subject matter is, in fact, not law or politics, but the life-history of the various species of local governing bodies.
The manuscript records of county and parish from Northumberland to Cornwall, from Cardigan to Kent, elucidated by contemporary literature and biography, enable the authors to present an entirely new picture of the internal history of England in the eighteenth century, revealing what Justice of the Peace and Churchwarden really were, in their habits as they lived, the way in which the daily administration of the Parish and County was actually carried on, the manner in which the daily life of the people was affected by contemporary influences, and the result, both on the health and character of the nation, and in producing the difficulties that in the twentieth century confront us.
The present work is complete in itself. Subsequent volumes will deal similarly with Seignorial Franchises and Municipal Corporations, Statutory Bodies for Special Purposes, Local Administration in relation to Poverty and Crime and in relation to Public Health and Convenience, etc.