424 MUNICIPAL ADMINISTRATION 



enfranchisement of the populous new boroughs for parliamentary 

 purposes was attended by inquiries and discussions which showed 

 the necessity of reforming the inner or municipal structure of these 

 new communities. Some of these were without any form whatever 

 of municipal government, while others were subject to serious abuses 

 under outgrown medieval charters, which practically excluded the 

 people themselves from a share in the control of their own local 

 affairs. 



The Municipal Government Act of 1835 is the great legal landmark 

 in the development of modern town organization. Its lines were so 

 broad and so simple that its essential features have sufficed for nearly 

 three quarters of a century, and will undoubtedly continue through 

 the new century upon which we have entered. Many old forms and 

 old terms were retained, and the chartered life of the county cities 

 and the medieval boroughs seemed to go on without a shock or a 

 break. Nevertheless, the Municipal Government Act brought new 

 life into the old forms, while it cut off unjust privileges and mono- 

 polies, and enlarged the conception of the municipal corporation from 

 a narrow, close, self-perpetuating body to a body made up of all the 

 resident householders and occupiers. 



Under this elastic common framework it has been possible from 

 time to time to enlarge the municipal electorate as English life has 

 grown more completely democratic. The central fact in the ad- 

 ministration has been and will continue to be the popularly elected 

 municipal council, sitting in one chamber, acting as a board of direct- 

 ors for the conduct of municipal affairs, and carrying on the various 

 departments of executive work under the supervision of standing 

 committees. 



Each working department is carried on under the direction of an 

 employed expert head, whose tenure is presumably permanent, and 

 who has in a large measure the authority to appoint and dismiss as 

 well as to direct all the subordinates in his branch of the municipal 

 service. The municipal or town council is a financial as well as 

 an administrative body, and, under parliamentary authority and 

 a certain measure of central supervision, it levies local rates and 

 taxes, contracts interesi^bearing loans, and in general carries on 

 the work of municipal administration very much as the directors 

 of a railway company, or of any other large industrial or financial 

 enterprise, carry on the business with which they have been intrusted 

 by the shareholders. 



In this British system, the mayor is simply the presiding officer of 

 the municipal council, is selected by the council itself, and is almost 

 invariably one of its oldest members. By way of exception, the 

 administration of the schools falls to a separately elected school 

 board, and the care of the poor in like manner devolves upon a sepa- 



