[Footnote 7: Loftie, History of London , vol. i. p. 446]
[Sidenote: English cities, the bulwarks of liberty.]
The development of other English cities and boroughs was so far like that of London that merchant guilds generally obtained control, and government by mayor, aldermen, and common council came to be the prevailing type. Having also their own judges and sheriffs, and not being obliged to go outside of their own walls to obtain justice, to enforce contracts and punish crime, their efficiency as independent self-governing bodies was great, and in many a troubled time they served as staunch bulwarks of English liberty. The strength of their turreted walls was more than supplemented by the length of their purses, and such immunity from the encroachments of lords and king as they could not otherwise win, they contrived to buy. Arbitrary taxation they generally escaped by compounding with the royal exchequer in a fixed sum or quit-rent, known as the firma burgi. We have observed the especial privilege which Henry I. confirmed to London, of electing its own sheriff. London had been prompt in recognizing his title to the crown, and such support, in days when the succession was not well regulated, no prudent king could afford to pass by without some substantial acknowledgment. It was never safe for any king to trespass upon the liberties of London, and through the worst times that city has remained a true republic with liberal republican sentiments. If George III. could have been guided by the advice of London, as expressed by its great alderman Beckford, the American colonies would not have been driven into rebellion.
[Sidenote: Simon de Montfort and the cities.] The most signal part played by the English boroughs and cities, in securing English freedom, dates from the thirteenth century, when the nation was vaguely struggling for representative government on a national scale, as a means of curbing the power of the crown. In that memorable struggle, the issue of which to some extent prefigured the shape that the government of the United States was to take five hundred years afterward, the cities and boroughs supported Simon de Montfort, the leader of the popular party and one of the foremost among the heroes and martyrs of English liberty. Accordingly on the morrow of his decisive victory at Lewes in 1264, when for the moment he stood master of England, as Cromwell stood four centuries later Simon called a parliament to settle the affairs of the kingdom, and to this parliament he invited, along with the lords who came by hereditary custom, not only two elected representatives from each rural county, but also two elected representatives from each city and borough. In this parliament, which met in 1265, the combination of rural with urban representatives brought all parts of England together in a grand representative body, the House of Commons, with interests in common; and thus the people presently gained power enough to defeat all attempts to establish irresponsible government, such as we call despotism, on the part of the crown.
[Sidenote: Oligarchical abuses in English cities (cir. 1500-1835).] If we look at the later history of English cities and boroughs, it appears that, in spite of the splendid work which they did for the English people at large, they did not always succeed in preserving their own liberties unimpaired. London, indeed, has always maintained its character as a truly representative republic. But in many English cities, during the Tudor and Stuart periods, the mayor and aldermen contrived to dispense with popular election, and thus to become close corporations or self-perpetuating oligarchical bodies. There was a notable tendency toward this sort of irresponsible government in the reign of James I., and the Puritans who came to the shores of Massachusetts Bay were inspired with a feeling of revolt against such methods. This doubtless lent an emphasis to the mood in which they proceeded to organize themselves into free self-governing townships. The oligarchical abuses in English cities and boroughs remained until they were swept away by the great Municipal Reform Act of 1835.
[Sidenote: Government of the city of New York (1686-1821).] The first city governments established in America were framed in conscious imitation of the corresponding institutions in England. The oldest city government in the United States is that of New York. Shortly after the town was taken from the Dutch in 1664, the new governor, Colonel Nichols, put an end to its Dutch form of government, and appointed a mayor, five aldermen, and a sheriff. These officers appointed inferior officers, such as constables, and little or nothing was left to popular election. But in 1686, under Governor Dongan, New York was regularly incorporated and chartered as a city. Its constitution bore an especially close resemblance to that of Norwich, then the third city in England in size and importance. The city of New York was divided into six wards. The governing corporation consisted of the mayor, the recorder, the town-clerk, six aldermen, and six assistants. All the land not taken up by individual owners was granted as public land to the corporation, which in return paid into the British exchequer one beaver-skin yearly. This was a survival of the old quit-rent or firma burgi.[8] The city was made a county, and thus had its court, its sheriff and coroner, and its high constable. Other officers were the chamberlain or treasurer, seven inferior constables, a sergeant-at-arms, and a clerk of the market, who inspected weights and measures, and punished delinquencies in the use of them. The principal judge was the recorder, who, as we have just seen, was one of the corporation. The aldermen, assistants, and constables were elected annually by the people; but the mayor and sheriff were appointed by the governor. The recorder, town-clerk, and clerk of the market were to be appointed by the king, but in case the king neglected to act, these appointments also were made by the governor. The high constable was appointed by the mayor, the treasurer by the mayor, aldermen, and assistants, who seem to have answered to the ordinary common council. The mayor, recorder, and aldermen, without the assistants, were a judicial body, and held a weekly court of common pleas. When the assistants were added, the whole became a legislative body empowered to enact by-laws.
[Footnote 8: Jameson, "The Municipal Government of New York," Mag.
Amer. Hist., vol. viii. p. 609.]
Although this charter granted very imperfect powers of self-government, the people contrived to live under it for a hundred and thirty-five years, until 1821. Before the Revolution their petitions succeeded in obtaining only a few unimportant amendments.[9] When the British army captured the city in September, 1776, it was forthwith placed under martial law, and so remained until the army departed in November, 1783. During those seven years New York was not altogether a comfortable place in which to live. After 1783 the city government remained as before, except that the state of New York assumed the control formerly exercised by the British crown. Mayor and recorder, town-clerk and sheriff, were now appointed by a council of appointment consisting of the governor and four senators. This did not work well, and the constitution of 1821 gave to the people the power of choosing their sheriff and town-clerk, while the mayor was to be elected by the common council. Nothing but the appointment of the recorder remained in the hands of the governor. Thus nearly forty years after the close of the War of Independence the city of New York acquired self-government as complete as that of the city of London. In 1857, as we shall see, this self-government was greatly curtailed, with results more or less disastrous.
[Footnote 9: Especially in the so-called Montgomerie charter of 1730.]
[Sidenote: City government in Philadelphia (1701-1789).] The next city governments to be organized in the American colonies, after that of New York, were those of Philadelphia, incorporated in 1701, and Annapolis, incorporated in 1708. These governments were framed after the wretched pattern then so common in England. In both the mayor, the recorder, the aldermen, and the common council constituted a close self-electing corporation. The resulting abuses were not so great as in England, probably because the cities were so small. But in course of time, especially in Philadelphia as it increased in population, the viciousness of the system was abundantly illustrated. As the people could not elect the governing corporation or any of its members, they very naturally and reasonably distrusted it, and through the legislature they contrived so to limit its powers of taxation that it was really unable to keep the streets in repair, to light them at night, or to support an adequate police force. An attempt was made to supply such wants by creating divers independent boards of commissioners, one for paving and draining, another for street-lamps and watchmen, a third for town-pumps, and so on. In this way responsibility got so minutely parcelled out and scattered, and there was so much jealousy and wrangling between the different boards and the corporation, that the result was chaos. The public money was habitually wasted and occasionally embezzled, and there was general dissatisfaction. In 1789 the close corporation was abolished, and thereafter the aldermen and common council were elected by the citizens, the mayor was chosen by the aldermen out of their own number, and the recorder was appointed by the mayor and aldermen. Thus Philadelphia obtained a representative government.
[Sidenote: Traditions of good government lacking.] These instances of New York and Philadelphia sufficiently illustrate the beginnings of city government in the United States. In each case the system was copied from England at a time when city government in England was sadly demoralized. What was copied was not the free republic of London, with its noble traditions of civic honour and sagacious public spirit, but the imperfect republics or oligarchies into which the lesser English boroughs were sinking, amid the foul political intrigues and corruption which characterized the Stuart period. The government of American cities in our own time is admitted on all hands to be far from satisfactory. It is interesting to observe that the cities which had municipal government before the Revolution, though they have always had their full share of able and high-minded citizens, do not possess even the tradition of good government. And the difficulty, in those colonial times, was plainly want of adequate self-government, want of responsibility on the part of the public servants toward their employers the people.