reference. The fact that there are more than one hundred separate enactments in force, directly or indirectly affecting corporate government under the 5th and 6th William IV., c. 76, is of itself strong evidence of the necessity for the proposed consolidation of No trouble has been spared to ensure general accuracy. of the pages, and particularly those which treat of the Parlia- The figures, dates, and historical information have been J. R. S. V. PART II.-A Short Historical Sketch of the English Municipalities PART III.-The Acts of Parliament relating to the English Municipal CORRIGENDA. At page 14, (in List of Acts) Public Libraries, &c., for 18 and 19 Vict. " c. 20," read c. 70. At page 96 (first line of the last paragraph) for "6 and 7 Victoria," read 5 and 6 Victoria. At page 113 (last line of first paragraph) for "Mayors-elect," read Mayorelect. At page 127 (fifth line of first paragraph) for "is administered," read was administered. At page 129 (second List in foot-note) for 2 Vict. " c. 13," read c. 15. THE ENGLISH MUNICIPALITIES. IT may be safely asserted that no form of local administration or government attains to so high a position in popular esteem, or commands such a large measure of visible respect, as does a corporate existence under the municipal laws now in force in England and Wales. It is the system above all others which works freely and without friction between the State and the individual. On the one hand, it interposes firm barriers to a centralising interference in matters of detail which could never evoke genuine confidence ; and, on the other hand, it promotes a fervent interest and healthy emulation in essential obligations closely allied with the family circle. Most true it is that "our Municipalities produce qualities which are the best safeguards of England's greatness," and it might be added, none the less justly, that their appreciated intervention between the national directorate and domestic duties plays no secondary part in stimulating that proverbial love of regulated independence which characterises the faithful type of an English citizen. The paramount purpose of the present compilation is to describe in the language of statistics the practical advance which the municipal institutions of England and Wales have made from the date of their re-establishment upon an intelligible and approved basis in 1835, and to afford to afford easily comprehended means of comparison between two phases of municipal life separated by an interval of nearly fifty years. * Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone. B PART I. THE NATURE AND CONSTITUTION OF MUNICIPAL CORPORATIONS. A CORPORATION is a franchise possessed by one or more individuals who subsist as a body politic under a special denomination, and are vested by the policy of the law with the capacity of perpetual succession, and of acting in several respects, however numerous the association may be, as a single individual. The object of the institution is to enable the members to act by one united will, and to continue their joint powers and property in the same body, undisturbed by the change of members, and without the necessity of perpetual conveyances, as the rights of members pass from one individual to another. All the individuals composing a corporation, and their successors, are considered in law but as one person, capable under an artificial form of taking and conveying property, contracting debts and duties, and of enjoying a variety of civil and political rights. One of the peculiar properties of a corporation is the power of perpetual succession, for in the judgment of law it is capable of indefinite duration The rights and privileges of the corporation do not determine or vary upon the death or change of any of the individual members; they continue as long as the corporation endures. It was chiefly for the purpose of clothing bodies of men in succession with the qualities and capacities of one single artificial and fictitious being that corporations were originally invented, and for the same convenient purpose they have been brought largely into use. Corporations, private as well as public, or municipal, were well known to the Roman law, and they existed from the earliest periods of the Roman republic. The powers, capacities, and incapacities of corporations under the English law, do, indeed, very much resemble those under the civil law; and it is evident that the principles of law applicable to corporations under the former were borrowed chiefly from the Roman law, and from the policy of the municipal corporations established in Britain and the other Roman colonies, after the countries had been conquered by the Roman arms. The first division of corporations is into aggregate or sole. Corporations aggregate consist of many persons united together into one society, and are kept up by a perpetual succession of |