WORKS BY SIDNEY AND BEATRICE WEBB
Demy 8vo, pp. viii and 858, in 2 volumes (1908). Price 25s. net.
ENGLISH LOCAL GOVERNMENT
(THE MANOR AND THE BOROUGH)
FROM THE REVOLUTION TO THE MUNICIPAL CORPORATIONS ACT
In this second instalment of their English Local Government the authors apply their method of combined history and analysis to the fascinating story of the towns and the manorial communities, of which several hundreds find mention, belonging to all the counties of England and Wales. An interesting new account is given, from unpublished materials, of the organisation and development in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries of the Manor and its several Courts, with picturesque glimpses of the hitherto undescribed part played by the Jury in the common-field agriculture. But the Manor is shown to be also the starting-point for a whole series of constitutional developments, passing through grade after grade of Manorial Borough, hitherto undescribed, into the complete Municipal Corporation. This, too, is analysed and described in a way never before attempted, so as to make the strangely interesting life of the towns live before us. A special chapter is devoted to the Boroughs of Wales, in which their national peculiarities are brought out. Their extensive study of the manuscript records enable the authors to set forth the inner working of the "Municipal Democracies" that existed alongside the chartered oligarchies, with their many analogies to modern American cities; and to bring vividly to notice the conditions and limitations of successive Democratic government. There is an interesting sketch of English hierarchies of town government, chief among them being the Cinque Ports, the constitutional position of which is presented in a new light. The anomalous history of the City of Westminster is explored by the light of the unpublished archives of its peculiar municipal organisation. An altogether novel view is presented of the constitutional development of the greatest municipality of all, the Corporation of the City of London, to which no fewer than 124 pages are devoted. The work concludes with a picturesque account of the "Municipal Revolution" of 1835, and the Homeric combat of Brougham and Lyndhurst which ended in the Municipal Reform Act of 1835.
CONTENTS
Introduction.
The Lord's Court—
(a) The Lawyer's View of the Lord's Court. (b) The Court Baron. (c) The Court Leet.