162 On the Self-Government of Small Manorial Communities 
the general improvement in communications, by facilitating inter- 
course and multiplying transactions between the inhabitants of 
different parishes and towns, rendered highly inconvenient, if not 
impracticable, the continuance of separate municipal jurisdictions 
of so very limited an area; and at the same time facilitated the 
resort for Justice to the Courts of the Hundred or County. But 
it seems now generally recognised that the concentration of all 
authority in the higher Courts, and the disuse or decay of local 
municipalities have been allowed to proceed too far. And in many 
recent legislative measures for establishing, or increasing the autho- 
rity in respect to many of the matters above-mentioned, of County 
Courts, Union Boards of Guardians, local Boards of Health, and 
Commissions for paving and lighting of towns, &c., as well as in 
the grant of Corporations to many towns not hitherto possessed of 
them, may be seen a clear admission of the necessity for restoring 
much of the practice and principle of local self-government, which 
the inhabitants of this country seem to have enjoyed from the very 
earliest period of its history, and to which in a great degree they 
are indebted for that rational liberty and that general attachment 
to their free institutions, which so peculiarly distinguish it from 
nearly every other part of the old world. 
Tt is not, however, intended by what has been said, to deny that 
the institutions of the country at these early periods were very 
faulty, and the liberties of its inhabitants defective. Quite the 
contrary. The power of the Lords over their tenants was for a long 
time excessive, and their exactions sometimes intolerable. Personal 
and predial slavery were long maintained, and lasted in some 
instances to a very late date, though gradually growing obsolete, 
and frequently terminated through the good sense and liberality of 
individual Lords, or still more of the Judges of the superior Courts, 
who, (as is observed by Blackstone), made it a general rule in 
doubtful cases to decide in favor of the liberty of the subject. 
Moreover nothing could be more tyrannical than many of the laws 
in force in these early times, and even of the practices which the 
chief inhabitants themselves ordered, and did their best to enforce; 
such as those described above, intended to regulate trade, to fix the 
