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municipal privilege acquired by towns at this time was the 
permission to make their own terms with the Exchequer, for 
it thus became necessary to refer to the citizens on the subject 
of the taxation of their towns, and this hastened the represent- 
ation of the boroughs in Parliament. 
Mr. Rothwell spoke of the institution of ‘‘ Justice of the 
Peace”? by Edward III, and continuing, said that as in all 
other modern states, so in England, public administration, 
beginning with the bare idea of police, gradually widened and 
deepened its preventive activities to meet the growing and 
diversifying requirements of economic and social development. 
Regarding the later history of the towns, Mr. Rothwell said 
that the general tendency was to vest the government in the 
hands of a mayor, assisted by a small body of aldermen and a 
larger body of councillors. At first the mayor was chosen by 
the whole of the burgesses, but gradually his election passed 
into the hands of the aldermen and councillors. The latter 
formed themselves into a close corporation, ignored to a large 
extent the rights of their fellow citizens, and obtained charters 
incorporating themselves as the sole governing body of their 
town. Thus was the door opened wide for waste of municipal 
property, misuse of municipal office, and corruption in all parts 
of town government. In 16383 the Corporation of London was 
remodelled in a way that made it the creature of the Court ; 
no mayor or sheriff was to be admitted until approved by the 
king and quo warranto informations were soon afterwards 
brought against other towns by the notorious Judge Jeffreys, 
and many of the towns hastened to mollify the government 
by a voluntary surrender of their charters. The Corporations 
were then remodelled on an oligarchical plan, by which the 
king reserved to himself the right of appointing the first 
members. The object of this aggression was, of course, to 
control the return of representatives to Parliament, a plan of 
action which had already been inaugurated under the Tudors 
by the profuse creation of rotten boroughs. After the Res- 
toration, the old charters of the remodelled corporations were 
for the most part restored to them, and they continued to 
exercise their narrow independence. The parliamentary as- 
pect of the question now became especially prominent, and 
the incompetence of the close corporations for the purpose of 
local government was forgotten, while attention was turned 
to the system by which the pocket boroughs flourished, and 
the franchise was limited to small bodies of freemen. During 
the development of these close corporations, which gradually 
led to the disfranchisement of the burgesses, the radical change 
in county administration, inaugurated by Edward III, was 
