Chapter IX: County Councils and Class Fusion

Reasons why London was not included in the Corporation Reform Act of
1835. Popular character of its municipal government contrasts with
Royal encroachments of various periods. Various schemes and
commissions of City reform since the Queen's accession. 1853
Commission alone produced practical result in the establishment in
1855 of Metropolitan Board of Works. Relations between this Board and
the City. In 1888 Board of Works superseded by London County Council.
Exact relations between London County Council and the City
Corporation. National and Imperial uses of Lord Mayor illustrated.
Possible changes of the future. Class fusion illustrated by titled
Mayors and other provincial usages.

The London County Council, which has little in common with the bodies already examined except the name, has been reserved to a chapter dealing chiefly, like the present, with the polity of the capital. For the exclusion of London from the Corporation Act of 1835, sufficient reasons, whether of principle or procedure, may be assigned. To the former category belongs the fact that the City Corporation, even during the encroachments of the Tudors and the Stuarts, had, unlike other towns, maintained its original liberties. It was, amid all its vicissitudes, not, as were the corporations described above, a self chosen, but a popularly elected, body. Secondly, the Corporation Commissioners did not think that a period within three years of Lord Grey's Reform Act, before the ground swell of the excitement, caused by that measure, had subsided, was suitable for deciding complex and far-reaching issues like those presented by the civic system grouped round Guildhall. At the same time the Commissioners expressly recorded their opinion that the magnitude of the problem ought not indefinitely to postpone an attempt at its solution and that the difference between the administrative problems of the provinces and the capital was one chiefly of degree. In their separate report of 1837 the Commissioners confined their observations on municipal London to cautious negatives. The suggestion of creating a congeries of Metropolitan municipalities had even then been made, as it has often been renewed since. This proposal was officially condemned on the ground that it would only remove an anomaly by provoking an abuse. At the same time, certain functions of local administration were specified which, within the Metropolitan area would be performed most efficiently and economically under the control of a single authority. In 1853 a special Commission enquiring into the affairs of the City Corporation, among various, but not very definite proposals, hinted that the seven parliamentary boroughs, of which London then consisted, might supply the machinery for a heptarchy of municipalities administratively associated in a central Board of Works. That body was to be composed of persons chosen by the different boroughs of the capital. No active steps were taken towards the heptarchical subdivision of the capital. But in 1855 the Metropolis Local Management Act was introduced by Sir Benjamin Hall. The result was the Metropolitan Board of Works, which remained an active power until it was superseded by or incorporated in the London County Council of 1888. All the then existing parishes and vestries of London sent members elected by the vestries to this central body. The Board of Works supplied the long desiderated unity of administration. If during its thirty-three years of rule it made many enemies, it also effected great improvements. In 1884 the Administration of Mr Gladstone produced a fresh measure of London reform. The chief feature of this was the absorption by the City of the powers of the Metropolitan Board, and the redistribution of parochial functions concentrated upon the City Corporation but now to be divided among new local bodies. This proposal proved equally unacceptable to the City which was already overburdened, and to the parochial bodies which were soon to be superseded. It had, however, advanced the question a perceptible degree; had renewed popular interest in London reform, and helped to create the public opinion which, four years later, in 1888, enabled the Cabinet of the day to include London in the Bill for establishing County Councils throughout the kingdom.

In the provinces, as has been seen, the County Councils practically have taken over the civil and administrative duties of magistrates formerly exercised at Quarter Sessions, but have in no way touched the judicial functions of these gentlemen as representatives of the Queen's justice. In the same way, the London County Council has left absolutely unimpaired the judicial power of the Lord Mayor and Aldermen organized in their various courts to execute and administer the civil and criminal law according to the historic traditions of the capital. The Common Council of London City has, therefore, to-day the powers which belong to an ordinary borough council. Outside the City limits, the London County Council with respect to drainage, sanitary arrangements generally, new streets and local improvements of all kinds, in courteous, rather than compulsory, concert with the City discharges the functions of the former Board of Works, or of a County Council in the provinces.

That this friendly association between the two Metropolitan bodies, the old and the new, should be practicable is what a knowledge of the past would lead one to expect. In civic affairs London has always been an encouragement and example to provincial townships. The magnitude of its area, the preoccupation of its inhabitants with the complex interests and exhausting activities of their daily life render London, as Cobden and others have always discovered, an impracticable headquarters for political agitation. But long before our great provincial centres had been possessed with that intense feeling of corporate life which is now the boast of Manchester or Liverpool, Birmingham, Sheffield, or Leeds, the traders who did their business under the shadow of Guildhall were united by a citizenship scarcely less stimulating and constraining than that of the little Republics of old Greece. One, and each of them, they took a patriotic pride in the material perfection to which the conveniences or comforts of their existence had been brought. Thus, as Lancashire has seen with exultation the reflection of its collective life in the great cities on the Irwell, or the Mersey, the entire Kingdom and Empire have always recognized the symbol of their unity as well as of their greatness in the prosperity or in the institutions of London City. Nor does anything more impress the mind of our foreign neighbours or our Colonial fellow-citizens than the response to appeals for help in the day of distress which issue from the Mansion House as from the heart of the English race. It is thus no exaggeration to say that the past records and contemporary services of London have proved of some moral use in promoting the success of the very latest municipal reforms. That a final stage in the evolution of London government has yet been reached no one believes, least of all the men who completed the preliminaries for the formation of the London County Council. The Commissioners of 1886-7 have themselves pointed out the anomaly of applying to London, even though it be called a County, that form of administration which is primarily intended for provincial shires necessarily identified not with commerce and trade, but with rural pursuits and interests. The City Corporation and the London County Council will both be relieved when the existing period of transition with its occasional friction and confusion is terminated. The relations between the two bodies must necessarily be mutually those of armed vigilance rather than of cordial alliance. What is known as the Unification Commission was, it must be remembered, appointed at the instance of the London County Council. The chief points of the proposal thus made was as earlier paragraphs have shown practically to merge the City in some new municipal body to the East of Temple Bar. As matters are, while the Lord Mayor and Aldermen are not County Councillors of London, the City of London has four representatives on the Council. These, however, are not the nominees of the Corporation, but are chosen by the ordinary civic constituency, the ratepayers. As a matter of fact, though by a coincidence, of the four present representatives on the Council of the City, one is an Alderman, and another a common Councilman. But they were not chosen in these capacities. As little therefore as the vestries or as the local boards is the Corporation directly represented in the London County Council, which was created by the Act of 1888. When, in addition to its hospitable and charitable functions, the services rendered by the City to the cause of national education are remembered; when it is considered that nearly all the great Guilds help by exhibitions to support poor students at the Universities, and that they also make regular and liberal contributions to the Science and Art department at South Kensington as well as to the Finsbury Institute for the technical training of mechanics and artizans, the extreme unwisdom of any scheme of London reform which shall, by wounding the pride, discourage the generosity of the historic interests now mentioned, becomes self-evident.

However cordial at the different points where they are brought into contact the relations may be between the old Corporation and the new Council, it is seemingly agreed on all sides that the true method for administering that vast and not yet finally circumscribed area inhabited by what De Quincey once called 'the nation of London,' has still to be devised. The suggestions for future reform are innumerable in quantity and Protean in character. Whether the existing areas of separate control inside or outside the City gates should be maintained; whether they could be replaced conveniently by five or ten, by six or fourteen, separate municipalities; these are the problems that, as in the past, so in the future, seem likely long to divide the minds of Metropolitan reformers. The City Corporation has already divested itself, _e.g._ in its relations with the Commissioners of Sewers, of certain functions which normally belong to a town council. Hence, it has been suggested that this process might be continued till the Lord Mayor and Aldermen practically merged themselves in the existing County Council of the capital. In that event, the administrative jurisdiction of the County Council, instead of stopping abruptly at Temple Bar, as it now does, would stretch from the Strand to the Guildhall. From thence it would radiate throughout the region generally spoken of as the City. There does not seem much likelihood of the fulfilment of this contingency. Such a scheme could not work well unless it were embraced with practical unanimity by those whom it immediately concerned. The Lord Mayor of London, and the authorities gathered round him, naturally regard with jealousy even the apparent infringement of their historic prerogatives and immemorial dignities. Nor in the interests, not of the City alone, but of the nation at large is it desirable that anything should be done which might actually impair the prestige, or even sentimentally wound the vanity of the exceedingly useful, and uniformly patriotic and generous men who are installed by annual succession in the Mansion House. The lofty attributes with which the French press and stage have invested the Lord Mayor are not entirely caricature. They indicate corresponding realities. The Lord Mayor has always been and remains to-day far more than the local head of a great municipality. In all parts of the Three Kingdoms, he, with his colleagues, controls territorial estates equal in extent, and far more than equal in revenue to a Continental Duchy. The Guildhall, with its library and museum; the Mansion House; schools and institutions like the City of London School, Ward's City of London School for Girls, the Guildhall School of Music; these are only a few of the foundations that are naturally presided over by the Lord Mayor. They all exist, not so much for the glory of the City, as for the service of the community. Possibly it might be useful to classify the complicated functions of the Sovereign of the City. It would then be seen how far the principle of devolution could be applied to his various attributes in their daily exercise. There are those who have imagined that within the empire of the Lord Mayor of the future there might be created subordinate municipalities which would act as local committees under his central control.

Few better proofs of the general intelligence and efficiency of the County Councils could be given than the wisdom with which they have discharged an educational duty of the first importance imposed upon them by a new parliamentary statute. The Customs and Excise Act of 1890 placed certain funds for the development of technical instruction at the disposal of the Councils. That duty in the opinion of the critics at Whitehall was performed so efficiently as to suggest the formation of committees from the Councils to ascertain local needs of technical training as well as practically to control, in the place of School Boards, the elementary education of the Kingdom. The Measure wherein that proposal was embodied, the Education Bill of 1896, has been withdrawn. The tribute to the capacity of the Councils remains. The educational functions with which it was suggested to charge these bodies, will without doubt, some day be performed by them.

The wholesome fusion of classes promoted in the country villages and towns by recent local government reforms has been already noticed. The same tendency has been pleasantly illustrated at other points in the social scale. The legislation of 1888 neither diminished the prestige nor trenched upon the province of the Imperial Parliament. The only point at which it can be said to have touched that body was the process connected with the acquirement of land for public purposes by Parish Councils. Here, it will be remembered; if the order, decided on by a majority of the Parish Councillors, is ratified by the County Council; if, after that, it passes the ordeal of the Local Government Board; then the Whitehall department issues its sanction for the purchase of the land in question. That order has forthwith the validity of an Act of Parliament, without having gone through the different stages incidental to legislation at Westminster.

Meanwhile, hereditary legislators have to a considerable extent practically interested themselves in, and placed their experience at the disposal of, the County Councils; just as, with regard to Parish Councils, the clergy and gentry have been seen assisting at the deliberations of their tenants or their flock. The first chairman of the County Council of London, Lord Rosebery, only abdicated that office to become Prime Minister. Among his successors were the former permanent head of the Board of Trade, Lord Farrer, the Vice-President, Sir J. Hutton and Sir Arthur Arnold. The same process of social amalgamation has been witnessed in the provinces not less signally than in the capital. The premier peer of England, the Duke of Norfolk, has been Mayor of Sheffield. Lord Derby has filled the same office at Liverpool. Lord Windsor, in succession to Lord Bute, has been Mayor of Cardiff. Lord Beauchamp has presided over the Corporation of Worcester. Lord Hothfield, one of the largest landowners in Westmorland, has been Mayor of Appleby. Lord Lonsdale has been Mayor of Whitehaven, Lord Zetland has held the same position at Richmond. Lords Dudley, Ripon, Warwick, and Crewe, have presided each of them over the Corporations of the towns from which respectively they derive their titles. If this be a reversion to an earlier usage of the aristocracy in England, the precedent had been almost forgotten before the practice was revived. The analogy that to most persons will more readily have suggested itself is rather that of the cities of mediaeval Italy; when the commercial community of Genoa was presided over by a lineal descendant of the Doges; when a Doria was at the head of the municipality of Rome; when Milan and the Lombard capitals, which first instructed England in arts of luxury and in modes of splendour, were controlled by Magistrates whose pedigrees might have stretched back beyond the Empire to the classical Republic. If the civic association of the titular nobility with the new democracy of England were not popular it could not exist; and titled Mayors would cease to be returned by popular constituencies. If on the other hand the municipal compliments failed to bring with them to their recipients an opportunity of usefulness as well as a sense of honour, they would not be accepted. The plain historical truth is that the patrician landowners of England have recognized the opportunity of removing the remnant of traditional estrangement between themselves and the masses of their countrymen of which so much was heard during the years immediately following the new Poor Law of half a century since. Of that sentiment, little known except by hearsay to the present generation, the most vivid, and not the least trustworthy record is still to be found in a fiction already mentioned in these pages, Mr Disraeli's _Sibyl_. Nothing but reciprocal good can come of these relations between the classes and the masses, to apply to them the distinguishing terms used by Mr Gladstone. An apprenticeship to the routine work of municipal affairs in view of the changed subject matter of the questions of the day is more likely to prove practically serviceable for those born into the condition of hereditary statesmen than a course of diplomatic lounging in the Courts and Chanceries of the world, or even than the grand tour which now extends from Calcutta in one direction to Chicago in another. The class fusion that is so signally the social product of the present reign has culminated in the conditions which, in the fulness of time, legislation has rather recognized than produced. Long before provincial self government was established upon the lines indicated by the Acts of 1888 and 1894, the spirit which in 1867 prompted Edward Denison to take up his dwelling in Whitechapel had been exemplified by philanthropists of both sexes in London and elsewhere. The sister of Mr Chamberlain is one of several ladies at Birmingham who systematically co-operated for purposes of house to house visiting in the poorest quarters of the town that they might practically instruct the wives and daughters of working men in the arts of domestic management, and in the possibility of keeping the humblest homes happy, healthy, comfortable and clean. Similar organizations have done a like work in Manchester, Liverpool, Sheffield, Leeds, and no doubt in all our great centres of population.[31]