THE NEW ERA IN ENGLISH COUNTIES
General effect of the legislation of 1888 on the English County
system. Some analogy between the principles of corporation reform
(1835) and County administration reform (1888). But the earlier act
did not touch, as the later did, the power of magistrates in Quarter
Sessions. Social circumstances, _e.g._: the growth of an educated and
leisured class of residents in country towns which have made the time
ripe for the new legislation, and distributed throughout England a new
class of capable local administrators. Contrast between County town
life before and since the establishment of County Councils. Social
pictures of county supremacy on Sessions days in the old era at hotels
and shops. County self government has not destroyed the old County
traditions nor deprived the old administrators of their former career.
Exact functions of County Councils, and points of administrative
communion between them and the old magistrates. Local idiosyncrasies
of these Councils, North and South.
The legislation of 1888 has influenced the entire scheme of life in
provincial England. The social prestige of the County system, centred in
the extra-judicial power of the magistrates at Quarter Sessions, had not
been affected prejudicially by the Corporation Reform Act with which, two
years before the Queen's accession, the Whig Ministers in the newly
reformed Parliament supplemented the Poor Law changes. The principle
underlying the County Council Act of 1888, and before that the Corporation
Act of 1835 was the same. Both marked a return to a more ancient but a
less exclusive system rather than a sudden introduction of a new. Like the
monarchy itself, the borough corporations were in their beginnings
genuinely popular. As in the case of the Throne, so in that of the
provincial polities; it was the Tudor sovereigns who narrowed and
enervated the privileges of their subjects. Under the Plantagenets and
throughout the Middle Ages, the corporations were elected by popular
constituencies, the freemen of the town. Contracted in their scope under
Henry VIII. and Elizabeth, these charters of urban freedom were, under the
Stuarts, so remodelled as to transfer from the burgesses to the Crown the
appointment of municipal officers. Municipal liberty having passed away
first, municipal purity gradually followed. The abuses in civic life had
at last equalled the corruptions which reduced parliamentary elections to
a farce. Within a year of Lord Grey's Reform Act, the urban scandals
became too gross to be ignored longer by a comparatively purified House of
Commons. As in the case of the procedure with reference to the Poor Law,
so in the business of municipal reform a Commission was appointed to
investigate the corporations of the United Kingdom. The national
enthusiasm for the men who had carried electoral reform against the House
of Lords, against the Duke of Wellington and against the King was soon
followed by a Tory reaction. In the hope of regaining for his party some
of the popularity which it had lost, Lord John Russell in the summer of
1835 submitted the new measure to the House of Commons. Two millions of
Englishmen were affected by the scheme. The then existing municipal
bodies had been shown as little to represent the property, the
intelligence, even the population of the towns as the unreformed
Legislature had reflected the convictions and desires of the Kingdom.
Charitable funds, bequeathed by former benefactors for the impartial
relief of local want, had by the abuses of years, been diverted wholly
from their original purpose. They were dispensed habitually to the
political friends of the men who had for the time the upper hand in the
affairs of the borough. These moneys seldom mitigated any honest distress;
they were squandered in the periodical junketings of the authorities of
the township, with the political partizans who were their fellow feasters.
Two novelists of our time have drawn famous pictures of the same great
nobleman. The original of Disraeli's 'Lord Monmouth' in _Coningsby_ was
the Marquis of Hertford, whose henchman, the 'Mr Rigby' of the novel, was
the John Wilson Croker of real life. Thackeray's 'Marquis of Steyne' in
_Vanity Fair_ was the other literary likeness of the same titled original.
In real life the Marquis of Hertford, as 'an honest burgess,' was a chief
member of the Council of Oxford city. The Right Honourable John Wilson
Croker, his lordship's steward, and his confidant in all things were the
chief associates of this eminent noble in the control of the municipality
of the University town. The Corporation Act of 1835 swept away these
scandals, and made municipal government a fairly popular reality.
Thenceforward in all corporate boroughs, the Town Council was chosen by
resident inhabitants rated to the relief of the poor. Since 1835 the
power of the magistrates in boroughs is exercised by the borough bench
with an appeal to Quarter Sessions, that is, to the County. The measure
did not a little towards re-establishing the popular privileges which had
existed before the Tudor encroachments. London was not included in the
Act. With that exception, all English towns on the Queen's accession had
for two years been in the enjoyment of self-rule. Cobden is one of the
many opponents of caste exclusiveness who have testified to the purity and
efficiency of the unpaid magistracy in their functions of County
administrators. These persons were of course never responsible to any
constituent body. They satisfied the property qualification by the
possession of L300 in land, or by the receipt of an income of L100 a year.
Notwithstanding the thoroughness of the work done by them on the Quarter
Sessions committees for regulating extra-judicial business, they
represented no interest except that of the party enjoying political power,
the supreme embodiment of which was the Lord Lieutenant of the County.
Meanwhile, there had been great changes in the composition of the
residents at, or in the neighbourhood of the chief provincial towns of
England. The close of the Crimean War reinforced the class now mentioned
by the addition of educated, but not generally wealthy, men, who desired
peacefully to spend the residue of their days in districts with which
family ties made them familiar or which conveniences of sport or education
rendered attractive. The absorbing powers of the capital have
progressively increased during recent decades. Opulence and fashion have
swollen the great public schools of the country to unmanageable
dimensions. Still, to a large percentage of English parents in the upper
middle class, Eton and Harrow are not the only two possible schools of the
realm; life may be lived as pleasantly, and more economically, in
provincial centres like Bedford, Ipswich, Bath, or Cheltenham as within
the metropolitan radius. Schools, not less than hotels, have become
matters of joint stock enterprise, and of federal proprietorship. The
excellent places of teaching which abound in such towns as those just
mentioned are pre-eminently a product of the Victorian era. Thus it has
come to pass that, at innumerable spots throughout provincial England,
during recent years there have settled families, not pretending to
historic antiquity or distinction, but still agreeably supplementing the
social resources of the County district. Many, perhaps most of these
newcomers have served the Queen in peace or war, abroad as well as at
home, and are thus likely to have acquired administrative experience of
different sorts. These are just the people qualified to relieve their
older neighbours, the local squirarchy, in their administrative work. If
the machinery for establishing County Councils had been created in the era
of the Corporation Reform Act, or during the first half of the present
reign, it would have been premature, would at least comparatively have
failed, instead of proving, as it has done, a signal success. How this
institution works will best be judged by contrasting certain phases of
County town life to-day and in the pre-County Council epoch. To visit
such a town on a day when the magistrates were sitting at Quarter Sessions
was like making an excursion into feudalism. One used to alight at the
stable yard of the chief hotel to find no room for one's horse. The
County's steeds had possession of the best stalls. They could not of
course be displaced by, or consort with, the quadrupeds of less
considerable riders. Inside the building, the same tale was retold and on
every storey illustrated afresh. The apartment normally the coffee room
was consecrated to the exclusive use of a select party of County justices
who were still at luncheon. The drawing room on the first floor was in the
occupation of the women kind of their relatives who were just about to
refresh themselves after shopping with a cup of tea. The member of the
general public who entered the chief shops of the place on the day devoted
to County customers found himself and his patronage at a discount. The
tradesman, in civil terms, profoundly regretted his inability to attend to
the chance comer until he had satisfied the needs of the County justices'
ladies who were expecting every moment to be called for by their lords
from the Sessions House.
Socially, not less than geographically, the County continues to exist. The
wives and daughters of the country gentlemen who are County J.Ps. set the
fashion in their neighbourhood and are still regarded as moulded out of a
clay slightly superior to that of which their neighbours consist. But as
an object of fetish worship the County has in most districts disappeared.
The chief linen draper in the town, as he watches the County ladies, in
their dilatory fashion, toy with one fabric after another, can scarcely
suppress a look of impatience on his well disciplined face. He happens to
be, not less than the father and husband of these ladies, himself a member
of the new County parliament. He is exercised by a fear lest the special
committee of the body on which he is serving should have decided the
question of certain alterations in the approach to the local capital in
which he is interested, before he has had time to get to the place of
meeting. Unconsciously, perhaps, his manner towards the lady relatives of
his council-colleague, the squire and magistrate, has lost something of
its old deference. Still, the foundations of the social system remain the
same. The fusion between classes of which the County Council is the
expression rather than the cause has not brought us appreciably nearer the
revolution and the Red Republic than had been done by the earlier
parliamentary reforms. Here, as in the case of the District bodies, the
law of the survival of the fittest is unrepealed, amid the administrative
changes of the hour. County magistrates who are specially qualified for
County administration are elected to the new Councils in numbers
sufficient to leaven these bodies. The service that they performed on the
committees of the old Sessions is still discharged by them on the Boards
that are of more recent growth. The venue of their exertions is changed.
The opportunity of their labour remains the same. Probably the association
of County gentry with country town traders widens the view of the
squires, acts as an incentive to greater energy, and is actually
productive of better work. Certainly, since this machinery has been in
operation the intellectual resources of the chief centres of population
within the jurisdiction of the County Council have been improved. New art
and science museums have come into existence. The people's parks, which
were already known in country towns, are better kept. New reading rooms
and libraries have opened their doors.
During the rather more than half a century that elapsed between the
Corporations Act of 1835, and the Local Government Act of 1888, the chief
reforms effected were in the province of sanitary administration, were
mainly due to the efforts of individuals, such as Mr Stansfeld in 1872,
and were generally incorporated in the Public Health Act of 1875. These
sanitary measures contained the principle on which the area of the United
Kingdom was finally redistributed. For the purposes of County Councils,
England is mapped out into sixty-one administrative counties. Each of the
electoral divisions of which the County consists has a Councillor of its
own. The electors are practically almost identical with the parliamentary
constituencies. In the case of municipalities inside the County area, the
Local Government Board decides the share of representation to which it is
entitled, and allots to it on the Council one or more members, as the case
may be. In addition to the councillors created by purely popular election,
a certain number of aldermen, not to exceed one-fourth of the whole body
are chosen by co-optation among the Councillors themselves. The term of
Council office is three years. The chairman, however, who is not forbidden
to receive a salary, holds his place only for one year. Like the District
chairman, the County president too, without satisfying any pecuniary
qualification, becomes, by virtue of his office, a County magistrate.[29]
Like the Council electors, the chairman and the six co-opted aldermen are
subject only to the condition of having the County vote. As in
parliamentary elections so in County elections, the polling is by ballot.
The incidental expenses, however, which are strictly regulated by the
number of the constituency, are defrayed, not by the candidate or his
friends as in parliamentary competitions, but out of a County fund. The
prerogatives of magistrates in whatever appertains to the licensing of
public houses, and exercised in Quarter and Special Sessions, are
untouched by the new bodies. With that exception, the functions of Quarter
Sessions are superseded practically by the Councils. As a consequence, the
sessional attendances of the magistrates have largely fallen off; though
there still exist many opportunities for joint action between the new
Councils and the old Sessions. For instance, the County police is
controlled by a committee whose members are selected from the old
magistrates and the new Councillors. Again, when the object is to acquire
fresh land for popular use; to open or endow local museums or libraries,
to establish emigration funds to the Colonies or elsewhere, united action
between the two bodies is usual, but not compulsory.
It has been seen already that the Local Government Board at Whitehall
looks for the endorsement by the County Council of the Parish Council's
proposal to acquire land for allotments and, with that purpose, to obtain
loans from the State purse. Similarly, the borrowing powers for less local
objects of the Councils are definitely limited. The consent of the
Imperial authority is needed to enable the Council to borrow for permanent
works or to issue County stock. The Council's annual Budget is closely
criticized not only in debate by the Councillors themselves, but by the
Local Government Board. The property rated to the County Rate which is the
security for all loans is inspected periodically by Imperial officers. The
accounts are examined by Imperial auditors. Meanwhile, it may be
conjectured justly that the considerable remnant of country gentlemen of
the old school, that is, the nominated magistrates, who have seats on the
new Councils, secure a salutary continuity of administration and
expenditure between the new regime and that which preceded it. There is,
of course, far more of local variety and of adaptability to the needs of
special neighbourhoods in the composition of the Councils than it was ever
possible there should be in the _personnel_ of the Quarter Session
administrators. This fact would alone make it unsafe, as may be seen by
one or two instances, to generalize about these bodies. If in the
Midlands, in the Metropolitan shires, and in the South Western counties,
power remains to a great extent in the hands of the old order, and only
the tenant farmers on a large scale have influence on the Councils, the
experience of the northern mining districts and of Wales is very
different. Throughout the Principality, as well as on the Gloucester and
Monmouth frontier, the small farmers, who are Nonconformists to a man,
find themselves, for the first time in their lives, a decisive power in
their neighbourhood. The same is the case in Durham. Here the colliers,
also for the most part Nonconformists, containing among them many of the
finest, most upright, and manly specimens of the English race, practically
dominate the Council of the Northern shire.[30]