MIS GOVERNMENT OF GREAT CITIES. 299 



constituency, it would by-and-by be demonstrated that the powers 

 and privileges which were amply sufficient for the small constituency 

 were too limited when the growth of the city demanded increased 

 facilities and improvements. 



An attempt would then be made to meet these demands, not by 

 abrogating the original act of incorporation and substituting for it 

 such a system as should be comprehensive and sufficiently elastic to 

 respond to all legitimate demands that should be made on the govern- 

 ing power, but by amendments and additions, and the substitution of 

 boards of commissions, until the whole system became inextricably 

 involved. As a result we find in many municipalities separate boards 

 of control for the government of the fire and police departments, elec- 

 tion boards, school boards, boards of health, boards of visitors, and so 

 on, until the multiplication of authorities has subdivided responsibil- 

 ity into homoeopathic quantities. The tendency is also to apply the 

 homoeopathic treatment, and, on the theory of similia similibus curan- 

 tur, to meet the constantly increasing difficulties by the creation of 

 more of these boards and commissions. 



"We have in this country had an extensive and disastrous expe- 

 rience in this constant effort to meet the increasing demands of local 

 government by supplemental legislation, but so far as I can ascertain 

 we have not yet even approximated the achievements of our English 

 cousins in this patchwork style of city government. 



The English municipal reform bill was passed in 1834. Since then 

 there have been passed seventy additional acts, all of which are in 

 force, and which are applicable to all boroughs. These are supple- 

 mented by nineteen further acts, which, to a greater or less extent, 

 effect these municipal organizations. 



In addition to these acts I find it stated in a number of the " Con- 

 temporary Review" that there was, at least until recently, comprised 

 within the limits of one poor-law union, two municipal boroughs with 

 town councils, eleven local board districts, three boards of guardians, 

 twenty-four bodies of overseers, five burial boards, two school boards, 

 and one highway board — in all forty-eight local authorities, each act- 

 ing independently and having jurisdiction in the same territory; a 

 condition of things that would seem in contrast to render Babel a veri- 

 table haven of rest. 



Our own experiments with this system of government by local 

 boards and special commissions, whether these independent bodies 

 have been created to meet some pressing need for which the organic 

 act of incorporation did not make provision, or whether organized in 

 the hope of rescuing a part of the municipal machinery from the con- 

 trol of the Tweeds and McManes and their disciples and imitators 

 have been alike disastrous : the first, because the imperium in imperio 

 is necessarily self destructive ; and the second, because the vultures 

 which prey upon the body politic will as certainly find the means to 



