The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860

corporations which James II. had suppressed clauses manifestly intended to preserve the ascendency of the Whig party, 'by keeping the Church or Tory faction out of'[238] them. But no such palliation (if, indeed, that had any right to be called a palliation) could be alleged for their abuse of the trusts committed to them; abuse which, if committed by single individuals, would have been branded, and perhaps punished, as malversation and fraud of the deepest dye. A sufficient specimen of the kind and extent of their misdeeds in one branch of their duties was afforded by a single paragraph of Lord John Russell's speech, in which he affirmed that, in some of the reports of their management of charitable estates committed to their care, it was proved that 'the property, instead of being employed for the general benefit of the town, had been consumed for the partial benefit of a few individuals, and not unfrequently in the feastings and entertainments in which the mayor and other corporators had been in the habit of indulging. In some not very large boroughs these expenses had amounted to L500 and L600 a year; and the enjoyment had been confined to freemen of only one party.' And the perpetuity of this mismanagement was in most instances secured by the members of the corporation themselves electing their new colleagues on the occasion of any vacancy.

To put an end to this discreditable state of affairs, the government had prepared a very sweeping scheme of reform, though that it was not too sweeping was proved by the approval with which not only its principle but most of its details were received by the greater part of the Opposition; the leading principle being, to quote the words of the minister in introducing the bill, 'that there should be one uniform government instituted, applicable to all; one uniform franchise for the purpose of election; and a like description of officers in each, with the exception of some of the larger places, in which there would be a recorder, or some other such magistrate. The first thing to be amended was the mode of election to the corporation, which was now to be intrusted to all such rate-payers in each borough as had paid poor-rates for three years, and resided within seven miles of the place.' Lord John Russell had considered, he said, 'whether this franchise should be limited to those paying a certain amount of rates; to the ten-pound householders, for instance, to whom the parliamentary franchise was confined;' but he decided on proposing to extend it to all rate-payers, because, according to the established principle, to the known and recognized principle of the constitution, it is right that those who contribute their money should have a voice in the election of the persons by whom the money is expended. The old modes of acquiring the freedom of a corporation, such as birth, apprenticeship, etc., were to be abolished, as also were all exclusive rights of trade, vested rights, however, being preserved. The next point to be decided was the composition of the corporation which these rate-payers were to elect, and the ministerial proposal was that each corporation should consist of a mayor, aldermen, and councillors, possessing a certain amount of property as a qualification, and varying in number according to the population of the borough; the larger towns being also divided into wards, with a certain number of common-councilmen and aldermen to be chosen in each ward. The mayor was to be a yearly officer; of the aldermen and councillors a certain number were to retire each year, being, however, capable of re- election. The mayor was to be elected by the councils, and was to be a magistrate during his year of office. And the body thus constituted was to have the entire government of the borough; of its police, its charities, and generally, and most especially, of the raising and expenditure of its funds,[239] which had been too often dealt with in a manner not only wasteful, but profligate. Cases had been brought forward in which 'corporations had been incurring debts year by year, while the members were actually dividing among themselves the proceeds of the loans they raised.' The revenue derived from charitable estates had been 'no less scandalously mismanaged.' And the bill provided for the appointment of finance committees, trustees, auditors, and a regular publication of all the accounts, as the only efficient remedy and preventive of such abuses. The whole police of the town and administration of justice was also to be completely under the control of the council; and for the appointment of magistrates the council was to have the power of recommending to the crown those whom they thought fit to receive the commission of the peace; and in the large towns it should have power also to provide a salary for stipendiary magistrates. Another clause provided that towns which could not as yet be included in the bill, since they had never been incorporated, might obtain charters of incorporation by petition to the Privy Council.

Such were the general provisions of this great measure of reform; a bill similar in principle having already been enacted for Scotland, and another being shortly after passed, with such variations of detail as the differences in the circumstances of the country required, for Ireland. Some of the clauses, especially those which preserved the vested rights of freemen and their families, and which required a certain amount of property or rating qualifications in the town councillors, were not originally included in the bill, but were inserted as amendments in the House of Lords; and it may be remarked that the result of the discussion in that House afforded a proof of the sagacity of those peers who, though conscientiously opposed to the Reform Bill, preferred allowing it to pass by their own retirement from the final divisions to driving the minister to carry his point by a creation of peers, since the avoidance of such an addition to their numbers as had been threatened enabled them now to force the adoption of these amendments on a reluctant minister. And it seems difficult to deny that the first was required by justice, and that the second was most desirable in the interests of the measure itself. Without it the town councillors, from among whom the mayor was to be chosen, might have been selected from the poorest, the least educated, and least independent class of the rate-payers. In some boroughs, or in some wards of many boroughs, it may be regarded as certain that they would have been so chosen; and such an admixture of unfit persons would have tended to bring some degree of discredit on the whole council, while to the successful inauguration of a new system the establishment of a general feeling of respect for it and confidence in it was of primary importance. The danger, too, of so ill-judged a selection would have been greatest in the larger boroughs, those being, at the same time, the very places in which the occasional difficulty of maintaining order and tranquillity made it even more necessary than in smaller towns that the council should enjoy the esteem and confidence of their fellow-citizens.

The principle that every man who contributed to the rates had a right to claim a voice in the election of those who were to expend them, which the minister laid down as the justification of the clause conferring the municipal franchise on all the rate-payers, was strongly contested by Sir Robert Peel, though neither he nor those of his party in the Upper House proposed any alteration of the bill in this respect; but he pointed out that, though Lord John affirmed it to be the known and recognized principle of the constitution, he had not acted on it in the Reform Bill; and it is certainly open to question whether the adoption of some limitation would not have been an improvement on the present measure. The doctrine established in this instance by Lord John gave a preponderance at every municipal election to mere numbers, since the poorest class is everywhere the most numerous, and its admission led almost inevitably to a reduction of the parliamentary franchise at some future day, though certainly at this time, and for many years afterward, Lord John was far from contemplating any alteration of the Reform Bill, but, on the contrary, took every opportunity of proclaiming his adherence to it as a final solution of the question.

But though in this particular it is possible that the bill might have been improved, it must be allowed to have been a measure very creditable to its framers. Few reforms have been conceived in a more judicious and more moderate spirit; few have been so carefully limited to the removal of real and proved abuses, and the prevention of their recurrence, while avoiding any concessions to the insidious demands of revolutionists, or the ill-regulated fancies of metaphysical theorists. It was a reform strictly in accordance with some of the most important principles of the constitution, as they have been gradually developed by the practical experience of successive generations. It combined with felicitous skill representative with local government; it secured uniformity in working, and that peculiarly English principle of publicity, without which the best-devised system cannot long be preserved from degeneracy.

The Church reforms in England and Ireland, which were carried out about the same time, cannot be said to have involved any constitutional principle, though one of them greatly extended the principle of religious toleration and indulgence to the Dissenters of various sects. No alteration had been made in the Marriage Act of 1754, which declared it indispensable to the validity of a marriage that it should be performed in a church and by a clergyman of the Established Church. And it was not strange that this should be felt as a grievance by those who were not in communion with that Church. But some of the Dissenting sects had an additional cause of discontent in the words of the marriage service, which gave a religious character to the ceremony, while they regarded it as a civil contract. In his short administration Sir Robert Peel had recognized the validity of the arguments against the unmodified maintenance of the existing law, and had framed a measure calculated, in his view, to give the Dissenters the relief their title to which could not be denied. But his bill had been extinguished by his retirement. And Lord John Russell now availed himself of the machinery of another measure, which he introduced at the same time, to make the relief somewhat wider and more effective.

Hitherto there was no record of births and marriages beyond that which was preserved in the registers of different parishes, which in former years had in many instances been carelessly and inaccurately kept. But at the