The Governments of Europe Part 15

Even to-day the general government is not present in county or borough in any such sense as that in which the French government, in the person of the prefect, is present in the department, or the Prussian, through the agency of the "administration," is present in the district. A noteworthy aspect of English administrative reform during the past three-quarters of a century has been, nevertheless, a large increase of centralized control, if not of technical centralization, in relation to poor-relief, education, finance, and the other varied functions of the local governing agencies. There are to-day five ministerial departments which exercise in greater or lesser measure this kind of control. One, the Home Office, has special surveillance of police and of factory inspection. A second, the Board of Education, directs and supervises all educational agencies which are aided by public funds. A third, the Board of Agriculture, supervises the enforcement of laws relating to markets and to diseases of animals. A fourth, the Board of Trade, investigates and approves enterprises relating to the supply of water, gas, and electricity, and to other forms of "munic.i.p.al trading." Most important of all, the Local Government Board directs in all that pertains to the execution of the poor laws and the activities of the local health authorities, oversees the financial operations of the local bodies, and fulfills a variety of other supervisory functions too extended to be enumerated. The powers of these departments in relation to local affairs are exercised in a number of ways, but chiefly through the promulgation of orders and regulations, the giving or withholding of a.s.sent to proposed measures of the local bodies, and the giving of expert advice and guidance. It need hardly be added that the powers and functions of the local authorities are subject at all times to control by parliamentary legislation.[262]

[Footnote 262: On the relations between the central and local agencies of government see Lowell, Government of England, II., Chap. 46; J. Redlich and F. W. Hirst, Local Government in England, 2 vols. (London, 1903), II., Pt. 6; Traill, Central Government, Chap. 11; and M. R. Maltbie, English Local Government of To-day; a Study of the Relations of Central and Local Government (New York, 1897).]

VII. LOCAL GOVERNMENT TO-DAY: RURAL (p. 183)

*192. The Administrative County.*--Since the reform of 1888 there have been in England counties of two distinct kinds. There are, in the first place, the historic counties, fifty-two in number, which survive as areas for parliamentary elections and, in some instances, for the organization of the militia and the administration of justice. Their officials--the lord lieutenant, the sheriff, and the justices of the peace--are appointed by the crown. Much more important, however, are the administrative counties, sixty-two in number,[263] created and regulated by the local government legislation of 1888 and 1894. Six of these administrative counties coincide geographically with ancient counties, while most of the remaining ones represent no wide variation from the historic areas upon which they are based. Yorkshire and Lincolnshire were divided into three of the new counties each, and eight others were divided into two. The administrative counties do not include the seventy-four county boroughs which are located geographically within them, but they do include all non-county boroughs and urban districts, so that they are by no means altogether rural. They are extremely unequal in size and population, the smallest being Rutland with 19,709 inhabitants and the largest Lancashire with 1,827,436.

[Footnote 263: Including the county of London. See p. 190.]

*193. The County Council.*--The governing authority in each administrative county is the county council, a body composed of (1) councillors elected for a term of three years in single-member electoral divisions under franchise qualifications identical with those prevailing in the boroughs, save that plural voting is not permitted, and (2) aldermen chosen for six years by the popularly elected councillors. The number of aldermen is regularly one-third that of the other councillors, and half of the quota retire triennially. Between the two cla.s.ses of members there is no distinction of power or function. The council elects a chairman and vice-chairman who hold office one year but are commonly re-elected.

Other officers are the clerk, the chief constable, the treasurer, the surveyor, the public a.n.a.lyst, inspectors of various kinds, educational officials, and coroners. The tenure of these is not affected by changes in the composition of the council. Legally, the chairman is only a presiding official, though in practice his influence may be, and not infrequently is, greater than that of any other member. In the election of councillors party feeling seldom displays itself, and (p. 184) elections are very commonly uncontested.[264] Members are drawn mainly from the landowners, large farmers, and professional men, though representatives of the lower middle and laboring cla.s.ses occasionally appear. The councils vary greatly in size, but the average membership is approximately seventy-five. The bringing together of so many men at frequent intervals is not easily accomplished and the bodies do not a.s.semble ordinarily more than the four times a year prescribed by law.

The ma.s.s of business devolving upon them is transacted largely through the agency of committees. Of these, some, as the committees on finance, education, and asylums, are required by law; others are established as occasion arises.

[Footnote 264: At the elections of 1901 there were contests in but 433 of 3,349 divisions. P. Ashley, Local and Central Government; a Comparative Study of England, France, Prussia, and the United States (London, 1906), 25, note.]

The powers and duties of the council are many and varied. In the main, though not wholly, they represent the former administrative functions of the justices of the peace. In the act of 1888 they are enumerated in sixteen distinct categories, of which the most important are the raising, expending, and borrowing of money; the care of county property, buildings, bridges, lunatic asylums, reformatory and industrial schools; the appointment of inferior administrative officials; the granting of certain licenses other than for the sale of liquor;[265] the care of main highways and the protection of streams from pollution; and the execution of various regulations relating to animals, fish, birds, and insects. By the Education Act of 1902 the council is given large authority within the domain of education. It must see that adequate provision is made for elementary schools, and it may a.s.sist in the maintenance of agencies of education of higher grades. The control of police within the county devolves upon a joint committee representing the council and the justices of the peace.

Finally, the council may make by-laws for the county, supervise in a measure the minor rural authorities, and perform the work of these authorities when they prove remiss.[266]

[Footnote 265: Liquor licenses are granted by the justices of the peace.]

[Footnote 266: Lowell, Government of England, II., 274-275.]

*194. The Rural District.*--Within the administrative county are four kinds of local government areas--rural districts, rural parishes, urban districts, and munic.i.p.al boroughs. Of rural districts there are in England and Wales 672. They are coterminous, as a rule, with rural poor-law unions, or with the rural portions of unions which are both rural and urban; but they may not comprise parts of more than one county. The governing authority of the district is a council, (p. 185) composed of persons (women being eligible) chosen in most instances triennially by the rural parishes in accordance with population.

Unless an order is made to the contrary, one-third retire each year.

The members at the same time represent on the board of guardians of the union the parishes from which they have been elected, although the two bodies are legally distinct. The council must meet at least once a month. Its chairman, who during his year of office is _ex-officio_ a justice of the peace, may be chosen from among the councillors or from outside; and the same is true of members of committees. The princ.i.p.al salaried and permanent officials are the clerk, the treasurer, a medical officer, a surveyor, and sanitary inspectors. The functions of the councils pertain, in the main, to the administration of sanitation and of highways. The bodies are responsible largely for the execution in the rural localities of the various public health acts, and they have charge of all highways which are not cla.s.sed as "main roads." To meet in part the costs of this administration they are empowered to levy district rates.

*195. The Parish.*--Of parishes there are two types, the rural and the urban, and their aggregate number in England and Wales is approximately 15,000. The urban parishes possess no general administrative importance and further mention need not be made of them here. Under the act of 1894 the rural parish, however, has been revived in a measure from the inert condition into which it had fallen, and it to-day fills an appreciable if humble place in the rural administrative regime. The style of its organization is dependent to a degree upon its population. In each parish there is a meeting in which all persons on the local government and parliamentary registers (including women and lodgers) are privileged to partic.i.p.ate.

This meeting elects its own chairman, and it likewise chooses a number of overseers whose duty it is to a.s.sess and collect certain local rates, to administer the poor-rate, and to make up the electoral and jury lists. All parishes whose population numbers as much as three hundred have a council composed of from five to fifteen members (women being eligible), elected as a rule for a term of three years. The list of powers which the parish authorities may exercise is extended, if not imposing. It includes the maintenance of foot-paths, the management of civil parochial property, the provision of fire protection, the inspection of local sanitation, and the appointment of trustees of civil charities within the parish. The meagerness of the population of large numbers of the parishes, however, together with the severe limitations imposed both by law and by practical conditions upon rate-levying powers, preclude the authorities very generally (p. 186) from undertaking many or large projects. It is regarded commonly that the parishes are too small to be made such areas of public activity as the authors of the act of 1894 had in mind. Practically, the parish is little more than a unit for the election of representatives and the collection of rates.[267]

[Footnote 267: Lowell, Government of England, II., 281.]

For purposes of poor-law administration, as has been pointed out, there have existed since 1834 poor-law unions, consisting of numbers of parishes grouped together, usually without much effort to obtain equality of size or population. These unions not infrequently comprise both rural and urban parishes, and in cases of this kind the board of guardians is composed of the persons elected as district councillors in the rural parishes of the union, together with other persons who are elected immediately as guardians in the urban parishes and have no other function. The conditions under which poor relief is administered are prescribed rather minutely in general regulations laid down by the Local Government Board at London, so that, save in the matter of levying rates, the range of discretion left to the boards of guardians is closely restricted.[268]

[Footnote 268: Ashley, Local and Central Government, 52-60.]

VIII. LOCAL GOVERNMENT TO-DAY: URBAN

*196. The Urban District.*--Of areas within which are administered the local affairs of the urban portions of the kingdom there are several of distinct importance, although in reality the inst.i.tutions of urban government are less complex than they appear on the surface to be. In the main, the legal basis of urban organization is the Munic.i.p.al Corporations Consolidation Act of 1882, which comprises a codification of the Munic.i.p.al Corporations Act of 1835 and a ma.s.s of subsequent and amending legislation. This great statute is supplemented at a number of points by the Local Government Act of 1888, the District and Parish Councils Act of 1894, the Education Act of 1902, and other regulative measures of the past thirty years. At the bottom of the scale among urban governmental units stands the urban district, which differs from an ordinary borough princ.i.p.ally in that it has no charter and its council possesses less authority than does that of the borough.[269]

The number of urban districts is in the neighborhood of eight hundred.

Under the terms of the act of 1894 the governing authority in each is a council consisting of members elected for three years, women being eligible. There are no aldermen, and no mayor is chosen. The (p. 187) council elects its own chairman and other officers, and it meets at least once a month. Its functions, of which the most important is the control of sanitation and of highways, are discharged largely through the agency of committees. The district council possesses none of the police and judicial privileges which the borough councils commonly enjoy. It is more closely controlled by the Local Government Board, and, in general, it lacks "the status and ornamental trappings of a munic.i.p.al authority.[270]" Yet in practice its powers are hardly less extensive than are those of the council of a full-fledged borough. New urban districts may be created in thickly populated localities by joint action of the county council and the Local Government Board.

[Footnote 269: Speaking strictly, a borough is an urban district, and something more.]

[Footnote 270: Ashley, Local and Central Government, 45.]

*197. Boroughs and "Cities."*--The standard type of munic.i.p.al unit is the borough. Among boroughs there is a certain amount of variation, but the differences which exist are those rather of historic development and of nomenclature than of governmental forms or functions. There are "munic.i.p.al" boroughs, "county" boroughs, and cities. Any non-rural area upon which has been conferred a charter stipulating rights of local self-government is a borough. Areas of the sort which have been withdrawn from the jurisdiction of the administrative counties in which they are situated are county boroughs; those not so withdrawn are munic.i.p.al boroughs. The term "city" was once employed to designate exclusively places which were or had been the seat of a bishop. Nowadays the t.i.tle is borne not only by places of this nature but also by places, as Sheffield and Leeds, upon which it has been conferred by royal patent. Save, however, in the case of the city of London, where alone in England ancient munic.i.p.al inst.i.tutions have been generally preserved, the term possesses no political significance.[271] The governments of the cities are identical with those of the non-city boroughs. It is to be observed, further, that whereas formerly the borough as organized for munic.i.p.al purposes coincided with the borough as const.i.tuted for purposes of representation in Parliament, there is now no necessary connection between the two. An addition to a munic.i.p.al borough does not alter the parliamentary const.i.tuency.

[Footnote 271: See p. 190.]

*198. Kinds of Boroughs.*--The Munic.i.p.al Corporations Act of 1835 made provision for 178 boroughs in England and Wales and stipulated conditions under which the number might be increased from time to time by royal charter. In not a few instances the charters of boroughs at the time existing were of mediaeval origin. Since 1875 new charters (p. 188) have been conferred until the number of boroughs has been brought up to approximately 350. For the obtaining of a borough charter no fixed requirement of population is laid down. Each application is considered upon its merits, and while the size and importance of an urban community weigh heavily in the decision other factors not infrequently are influential, with the consequence that some boroughs are very small while some urban centers of size are not yet boroughs. Of the present number of boroughs, seventy-four, or about one-fifth, are county boroughs. By the act of 1888 it was provided that every borough which had or should attain a population of 50,000 should be deemed, for purposes of administration, a separate county, and should therefore be exempt from the supervision exercised over the affairs of the munic.i.p.al boroughs by the authorities of the administrative counties. Any borough with a population exceeding the figure named may be created a county borough by simple order of the Local Government Board. Unlike the ordinary munic.i.p.al borough, the county borough is not represented in the council of the county in which the borough lies; on the contrary, the council of the borough exercises substantially an equivalent of the powers exercised normally by the county council, and it is, to all intents and purposes, a council of that variety. Much the larger portion of the English boroughs are, however, simple munic.i.p.al boroughs, whose activities are subject to a supervision more or less constant upon the part of the county authorities.

*199. The Borough Authorities.*--The difference between county and munic.i.p.al boroughs is thus one of degree of local autonomy, not one of forms or agencies of government. The charters of all boroughs have been brought into substantial agreement and the organs of borough control are everywhere the same. The governing authority is the borough council, which consists of councillors, aldermen, and a mayor, sitting as a single body. The councillors, varying in number from nine to upwards of one hundred, are elected by the voters of the borough, either at large or by wards, for three years, and one-third retire annually. The aldermen, equal in number to one-third of the councillors, are chosen by the entire council for six years, and are selected usually from among the councillors of most prolonged experience. The mayor is elected annually by the councillors and aldermen, frequently from their own number. In boroughs of lesser size re-elections are not uncommon. Service in all of the capacities mentioned is unpaid. The council determines its own rules of procedure, and its work is accomplished in large measure through the agency of committees, some of which are required by statute, others of which are created as occasion demands; but, unlike the county (p. 189) council, the council of the borough cannot delegate any of its powers, save those relating to education, to these committees. The mayor presides over the council meetings, serves commonly as an _ex-officio_ member of committees, and represents the munic.i.p.ality upon ceremonial occasions. The office is not one of power, although it is possible for an aggressive and tactful mayor to wield real influence. The permanent officers of the council include a clerk, a treasurer, a medical official, a secretary for education, and a variable number of inspectors and heads of administrative departments.

*200. The Borough Council.*--In the capacity of representative authority of the munic.i.p.ality the council controls corporation property, adopts and executes measures relative to police and education, levies rates, and not infrequently administers waterways, tramways, gas and electric plants, and a variety of other public utilities. The enormously increased activity of the town and urban district councils in respect to "munic.i.p.al trading" within the past two score years has aroused widespread controversy. The purposes involved have been, in the main, two--to avert the evils of private monopoly and to obtain from remunerative services something to set against the heavy unremunerative expenditures rendered necessary by existing sanitary legislation. And, although opposed by reason of the outlays which it requires and the invasion of the domain of private enterprise which it const.i.tutes, the device of munic.i.p.al ownership is being ever more widely adopted, as in truth it is also in Germany and other European countries.[272] Aside from its general functions, the borough councils is in particular a sanitary authority, and among its most important tasks is the execution of regulations concerning drainage, housing, markets, hospitals, and indeed the entire category of matters provided for in the long series of Public Health acts. The expenditures of the council as a munic.i.p.al authority are met from a fund made up of fees, fines, and other proceeds of administration, together with the income from a borough rate, which is levied on the same basis as the poor rate; its expenditures as a sanitary authority are met from a fund raised by a general district rate. To a.s.sist in the administration of education, sanitation, and police, grants are made regularly by Parliament.[273]

[Footnote 272: Ashley, Local and Central Government, 42.]

[Footnote 273: The best of existing works upon the general subject of English local government is J.

Redlich, and F. W. Hirst, Local Government in England, 2 vols. (London, 1903). There are several convenient manuals, of which the most useful are P.

Ashley, English Local Government (London, 1905); W.

B. Odgers, Local Government (London, 1899), based on the older work of M. D. Chalmers; E. Jenks, An Outline of English Local Government (2d ed., London, 1907); R, S. Wright and H. Hobhouse, An Outline of Local Government and Local Taxation in England and Wales (3d ed., London, 1906); and R. C.

Maxwell, English Local Government (London, 1900), in Temple Primer Series. The subject is treated admirably in Lowell, Government of England, II., Chaps. 38-46, and a portion of it in W. B. Munro, The Government of European Cities (New York, 1909), Chap. 3 (full bibliography, pp. 395-402). There are good sketches in Ashley, Local and Central Government, Chaps. 1 and 5, and Marriott, English Political Inst.i.tutions, Chap. 13. A valuable group of papers read at the First International Congress of the Administrative Sciences, held at Brussels in July, 1910, is printed in G. M. Harris, Problems of Local Government (London, 1911). A useful compendium of laws relating to city government is C. Rawlinson, Munic.i.p.al Corporation Acts, and Other Enactments (9th ed., London, 1903). Two appreciative surveys by American writers are A.

Shaw, Munic.i.p.al Government in Great Britain (New York, 1898) and F. Howe, The British City (New York, 1907). On the subject of munic.i.p.al trading the reader may be referred to Lowell, Government of England, II., Chap. 44; Lord Avebury, Munic.i.p.al and National Trading (London, 1907); L. Darwin, Munic.i.p.al Ownership in Great Britain (New York, 1906); G. B. Shaw, The Common Sense of Munic.i.p.al Trading (London, 1904); and C. Hugo, Stadteverwaltung und Munic.i.p.al-Socialismus in England (Stuttgart, 1897). Among works on poor-law administration may be mentioned T. A. Mackay, History of the English Poor Law from 1834 to the Present Time (New York, 1900); P. T. Aschrott and H. P. Thomas, The English Poor Law System, Past and Present (2d ed., London, 1902); and S. and B. Webb, English Poor Law Policy (London, 1910). The best treatise on educational administration is G.

Balfour, The Educational Systems of Great Britain and Ireland (2d ed., London, 1904). Finally must be mentioned C. Gross, Bibliography of British Munic.i.p.al History (New York, 1897), an invaluable guide to the voluminous literature of an intricate subject.]

*201. The Government of London.*--The unique governmental (p. 190) arrangements of London are the product in part of historical survival and in part of special and comparatively recent legislation.

Technically, the "city" of London is still what it has been through centuries, i.e., an area with a government of its own comprising but a single square mile on the left bank of the Thames. By a series of measures covering a period of somewhat more than fifty years, however, the entire region occupied by the densely populated metropolis has been drawn into a closely co-ordinated scheme of local administration.

London was untouched by the Munic.i.p.al Corporations Act of 1835 and the changes by which the governmental system of the present day was brought into being began to be introduced only with the adoption of the Metropolis Management Act of 1855. The government of the city was left unchanged, but the surrounding parishes, hitherto governed independently by their vestries, were at this time brought for certain purposes under the control of a central authority known as the Metropolitan Board of Works. The Local Government Act of 1888 carried the task of organization a stage further. The Board of Works was abolished, extra-city London was transformed into an administrative county of some 120 square miles, and upon the newly created London (p. 191) County Council (elected by the rate-payers) was conferred a varied and highly important group of powers. Finally, in 1899 the London Government Act simplified the situation by sweeping away a ma.s.s of surviving authorities and jurisdictions and by creating twenty-eight metropolitan boroughs, each with mayor, aldermen, and councillors such as any provincial borough possesses, though with powers specially defined and, on the side of finance, somewhat restricted. Within each borough are urban parishes, each with its own vestry.

At the center of the metropolitan area stands still the historic City, with its lord mayor, its life aldermen, and its annually elected councillors, organized after a fashion which has hardly changed in four and a half centuries. Within the administrative county the county council acts as a central authority, the borough councils and the parish vestries serve as local authorities. While areas of common administration still very much larger than the county comprise, among others, the districts of the Metropolitan Water Board and of the Metropolitan Police. The jurisdiction of the Metropolitan Police extends over all parishes within fifteen miles of Charing Cross, an area of almost 700 square miles.[274]

[Footnote 274: For excellent descriptions of the government of London see Munro, Government of European Cities, 339-379 (bibliography, 395-402), and Lowell, Government of England, II., 202-232.

Valuable works are G. L. Gomme, Governance of London: Studies on the Place occupied by London in English Inst.i.tutions (London, 1907); ibid., The London County Council: its Duties and Powers according to the Local Government Act of 1888 (London, 1888); A. MacMorran, The London Government Act (London, 1899); A. B. Hopkins, Boroughs of the Metropolis (London, 1900); and J. R. Seager, Government of London under the London Government Act (London, 1904). A suggestive article is G. L.

Fox, The London County Council, in _Yale Review_, May, 1895.]

PART II.--GERMANY (p. 193)

CHAPTER IX

THE EMPIRE AND ITS CONSt.i.tUTION

I. POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT PRIOR TO 1848

*202. Napoleonic Transformations.*--Among the political achievements of the past hundred years few exceed in importance, and none surpa.s.s in interest, the creation of the present German Empire. The task of German unification may be regarded as having been brought formally to completion upon the occasion of the memorable ceremony of January 18, 1871, when, in the presence of a brilliant concourse of princes and generals gathered in the Hall of Mirrors in the palace of the French kings at Versailles, William I., king of Prussia, was proclaimed German Emperor. Back of the dramatic episode at Versailles, however, lay a long course of nationalizing development, of which the proclamation of an Imperial sovereign was but the culminating event.

The beginnings of the making of the German Empire of to-day are to be traced from a period at least as remote as that of Napoleon.

Germany in 1814 was still disunited and comparatively backward, but it was by no means the Germany of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The transformations wrought to the east of the Rhine during the period of the Napoleonic ascendancy were three-fold. In the first place, after more than a thousand years of existence, the Holy Roman Empire was, in 1806, brought to an end, and Germany, never theretofore since the days of barbarism entirely devoid of political unity, was left without even the semblance or name of nationality. In the second place, there was within the period a far-reaching readjustment of the political structure of the German world, involving (1) the reducing of the total number of German states--kingdoms, duchies, princ.i.p.alities, ecclesiastical dominions, and knights' holdings--from above three hundred to two score; (2) the augmenting of the importance of Austria by the acquisition of a separate imperial t.i.tle,[275] and the (p. 194) raising of Saxony, Bavaria, and Wurttemberg from duchies to kingdoms; and (3) the bringing into existence of certain new and more or less artificial political aggregates, namely, the kingdom of Westphalia, the grand-duchy of Warsaw, and the Confederation of the Rhine, for the purpose of facilitating the Napoleonic dominance of north-central Europe. Finally, in several of the states, notably Prussia, the overturn occasioned by the Napoleonic conquests prompted systematic attempts at reform, with the consequence of a revolutionizing modernization of social and economic conditions altogether comparable with that which within the generation had been achieved in France.

[Footnote 275: In antic.i.p.ation of the prospective abolition of the dignity of Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, the Emperor Francis II., in 1804, a.s.sumed the t.i.tle of Emperor of Austria, under the name Francis I.]