Chapter 18

THE CITY.

Section 1. _Direct and Indirect Government_.

[Sidenote: Summary of foregoing results.] In the foregoing survey of local institutions and their growth, we have had occasion to compare and sometimes to contrast two different methods of government as exemplified on the one hand in the township and on the other hand in the county. In the former we have direct government by a primary assembly,[1] the town-meeting; in the latter we have indirect government by a representative board. If the county board, as in colonial Virginia, perpetuates itself, or is appointed otherwise than by popular vote, it is not strictly a representative board, in the modern sense of the phrase; the government is a kind of oligarchy. If, as in colonial Pennsylvania, and in the United States generally to-day, the county board consists of officers elected by the people, the county government is a representative democracy. The township government, on the other hand, as exemplified in New England and in the northwestern states which have adopted it, is a pure democracy. The latter, as we have observed, has one signal advantage over all other kinds of government, in so far as it tends to make every man feel that the business of government is part of his own business, and that where he has a stake in the management of public affairs he has also a voice. When people have got into the habit of leaving local affairs to be managed by representative boards, their active interest in local affairs is liable to be somewhat weakened, as all energies in this world are weakened, from want of exercise. When some fit subject of complaint is brought up, the individual is too apt to feel that it is none of his business to furnish a remedy, let the proper officers look after it. He can vote at elections, which is a power; he can perhaps make a stir in the newspapers, which is also a power; but personal participation in town-meeting is likewise a power, the necessary loss of which, as we pass to wider spheres of government, is unquestionably to be regretted.

[Footnote 1: A primary assembly is one in which the members attend of their own right, without having been elected to it; a representative assembly is composed of elected delegates.]

[Sidenote: Direct government impossible in a county.] Nevertheless the loss is inevitable. A primary assembly of all the inhabitants of a county, for purposes of local government, is out of the question. There must be representative government, for this purpose the county system, an inheritance from the ancient English shire, has furnished the needful machinery. Our county government is near enough to the people to be kept in general from gross abuses of power. There are many points which can be much better decided in small representative bodies than in large miscellaneous meetings. The responsibility of our local boards has been fairly well preserved. The county system has had no mean share in keeping alive the spirit of local independence and self-government among our people. As regards efficiency of administration, it has achieved commendable success, except in the matter of rural highways; and if our roads are worse than those of any other civilized country, that is due not so much to imperfect administrative methods as to other causes,--such as the sparseness of population, the fierce extremes of sunshine and frost, and the fact that since this huge country began to be reclaimed from the wilderness, the average voter, who has not travelled in Europe, knows no more about good roads than he knows about the temples of Paestum or the pictures of Tintoretto, and therefore does not realize what demands he may reasonably make.

This last consideration applies in some degree, no doubt, to the ill-paved and filthy streets which are the first things to arrest one's attention in most of our great cities. It is time for us now to consider briefly our general system of city government, in its origin and in some of its most important features.

[Sidenote: The Boston town-meeting in 1820.] Representative government in counties is necessitated by the extent of territory covered; in cities it is necessitated by the multitude of people. When the town comes to have a very large population, it becomes physically impossible to have town-meetings. No way could be devised by which all the taxpayers of the city of New York could be assembled for discussion. In 1820 the population of Boston was about 40,000, of whom rather more than 7,000 were voters qualified to attend the town-meetings. Consequently when a town-meeting was held on any exciting subject in Faneuil Hall, those only who obtained places near the moderator could even hear the discussion. A few busy or interested individuals easily obtained the management of the most important affairs in an assembly in which the greater number could have neither voice nor hearing. When the subject was not generally exciting, town-meetings were usually composed of the selectmen, the town officers, and thirty or forty inhabitants. Those who thus came were for the most part drawn to it from some official duty or private interest, which, when performed or attained, they generally troubled themselves but little, or not at all, about the other business of the meeting.[2]

[Footnote 2: Quincy's _Municipal History of Boston_, p. 28.]

Under these circumstances it was found necessary in 1822 to drop the town-meeting altogether and devise a new form of government for Boston. After various plans had been suggested and discussed, it was decided that the new government should be vested in a Mayor; a select council of eight persons to be called the Board of Aldermen; and a Common Council of forty-eight persons, four from each of twelve wards into which the city was to be divided. All these officials were to be elected by the people. At the same time the official name "Town of Boston" was changed to "City of Boston."

[Sidenote: Distinctions between towns and cities.] There is more or less of history involved in these offices and designations, to which we may devote a few words of explanation. In New England local usage there is an ambiguity in the word "town." As an official designation it means the inhabitants of a township considered as a community or corporate body. In common parlance it often means the patch of land constituting the township on the map, as when we say that Squire Brown's elm is "the biggest tree in town." But it still oftener means a collection of streets, houses, and families too large to be called a village, but without the municipal government that characterizes a city. Sometimes it is used _par excellence_ for a city, as when an inhabitant of Cambridge, itself a large suburban city, speaks of going to Boston as going "into town." But such cases are of course mere survivals from the time when the suburb was a village. In American usage generally the town is something between village and city, a kind of inferior or incomplete city. The image which it calls up in the mind is of something urban and not rural. This agrees substantially with the usage in European history, where "town" ordinarily means a walled town or city as contrasted with a village. In England the word is used either in this general sense, or more specifically as signifying an inferior city, as in America. But the thing which the town lacks, as compared with the complete city, is very different in America from what it is in England. In America it is municipal government--with mayor, aldermen, and common council--which must be added to the town in order to make it a city. In England the town may (and usually does) have this municipal government; but it is not distinguished by the Latin name "city" unless it has a cathedral and a bishop. Or in other words the English city is, or has been, the capital of a diocese. Other towns in England are distinguished as "boroughs," an old Teutonic word which was originally applied to towns as _fortified_ places.[3] The voting inhabitants of an English city are called "citizens;" those of a borough are called "burgesses." Thus the official corporate designation of Cambridge is "the mayor, aldermen, and _burgesses_ of Cambridge;" but Oxford is the seat of a bishopric, and its corporate designation is "the mayor, aldermen, and _citizens_ of Oxford."

[Footnote 3: The word appears in many town names, such as _Edinburgh, Scarborough, Canterbury, Bury St. Edmunds_; and on the Continent, as _Hamburg, Cherbourg, Burgos_, etc. In Connecticut, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Minnesota, the name "borough" is applied to a certain class of municipalities with some of the powers of cities.]

QUESTIONS ON THE TEXT.

1. What is the essential difference between township government and county government?

2. What is the distinct advantage of the former?

3. Why is direct government impossible in the county?

4. Speak of the degree of efficiency in county government.

5. Why is direct government impossible in a city?

6. What difficulties in direct government were experienced in Boston in 1820 and many years preceding?

7. What remedy for these difficulties was adopted?

8. Show how the word "town" is used to indicate

a. The land of a township. b. A somewhat large collection of streets, houses, and families. c. And even, in some instances, a city.

9. What is the town commonly understood to be in American usage?

10. What is the difference in the United States between a town and a city?

11. What is the difference in England between a town and a city?

12. Distinguish between citizens and burgesses in England.

Section 2. _Origin of English Boroughs and Cities_.

[Sidenote: "Chesters."] [Sidenote: Coalescence of towns to fortified boroughs.] What, then, was the origin of the English borough or city? In the days when Roman legions occupied for a long time certain military stations in Britain, their camps were apt to become centres of trade and thus to grow into cities. Such places were generally known as _casters_ or _chesters_, from the Latin _castra_, "camp," and there are many of them on the map of England to-day. But these were exceptional cases. As a rule the origin of the borough was as purely English as its name. We have seen that the town was originally the dwelling-place of a stationary clan, surrounded by palisades or by a dense quickset hedge. Now where such small enclosed places were thinly scattered about they developed simply into villages. But where, through the development of trade or any other cause, a good many of them grew up close together within a narrow compass, they gradually coalesced into a kind of compound town; and with the greater population and greater wealth, there was naturally more elaborate and permanent fortification than that of the palisaded village. There were massive walls and frowning turrets, and the place came to be called a fortress or "borough." The borough, then, was simply several townships packed tightly together; a hundred smaller in extent and thicker in population than other hundreds.[4]

[Footnote 4: Freeman, _Norman Conquest_, vol. v. p. 466. For a description of the _hundred_, see above, pp. 75-80.]

[Sidenote: The borough as a hundred.] From this compact and composite character of the borough came several important results. We have seen that the hundred was the smallest area for the administration of justice. The township was in many respects self-governing, but it did not have its court, any more than the New England township of the present day has its court. The lowest court was that of the hundred, but as the borough was equivalent to a hundred it soon came to have its own court. And although much obscurity still surrounds the early history of municipal government in England, it is probable that this court was a representative board, like any other hundred court, and that the relation of the borough to its constituent townships resembled the relation of the modern city to its constituent wards.

[Sidenote: The borough as a county.] But now as certain boroughs grew larger and annexed outlying townships, or acquired adjacent territory which presently became covered with streets and houses, their constitution became still more complex. The borough came to embrace several closely packed hundreds, and thus became analogous to a shire. In this way it gained for itself a sheriff and the equivalent of a county court. For example, under the charter granted by Henry I. in 1101, London was expressly recognized as a county by itself. Its burgesses could elect their own chief magistrate, who was called the port-reeve, inasmuch as London is a seaport; in some other towns he was called the borough-reeve. He was at once the chief executive officer and the chief judge. The burgesses could also elect their sheriff, although in all rural counties Henry's father, William the Conqueror, had lately deprived the people of this privilege and appointed the sheriffs himself. London had its representative board, or council, which was the equivalent of a county court. Each ward, moreover, had its own representative board, which was the equivalent of a hundred court. Within the wards, or hundreds, the burgesses were grouped together in township, parish, or manor.... Into the civic organization of London, to whose special privileges all lesser cities were ever striving to attain, the elements of local administration embodied in the township, the hundred, and the shire thus entered as component parts.[5] Constitutionally, therefore, London was a little world in itself, and in a less degree the same was true of other cities and boroughs which afterwards obtained the same kind of organization, as for example, York and Newcastle, Lincoln and Norwich, Southampton and Bristol.

[Footnote 5: Hannis Taylor, _Origin and Growth of the English Constitution_, vol. i. p. 458.]

[Sidenote: The guilds.] [Sidenote: mayor, aldermen, and common council.] In such boroughs or cities all classes of society were brought into close contact,--barons and knights, priests and monks, merchants and craftsmen, free labourers and serfs. But trades and manufactures, which always had so much to do with the growth of the city, acquired the chief power and the control of the government. From an early period tradesmen and artisans found it worth while to form themselves into guilds or brotherhoods, in order to protect their persons and property against insult and robbery at the hands of great lords and their lawless military retainers. Thus there came to be guilds, or "worshipful companies," of grocers, fishmongers, butchers, weavers, tailors, ironmongers, carpenters, saddlers, armourers, needle-makers, etc. In large towns there was a tendency among such trade guilds to combine in a "united brotherhood," or "town guild," and this organization at length acquired full control of the city government. In London this process was completed in the course of the thirteenth century. To obtain the full privileges of citizenship one had to be enrolled in a guild. The guild hall became the city hall. The _aldermen_, or head men of sundry guilds, became the head men of the several wards. There was a representative board, or _common council_, elected by the citizens. The aldermen and common council held their meetings in the Guildhall, and over these meetings presided the chief magistrate, or port-reeve, who by this time, in accordance with the fashion then prevailing, had assumed the French title of _mayor_. As London had come to be a little world in itself, so this city government reproduced on a small scale the national government; the mayor answering to the king, the aristocratic board of aldermen to the House of Lords, and the democratic common council to the House of Commons. A still more suggestive comparison, perhaps, would be between the aldermen and our federal Senate, since the aldermen represented wards, while the common council represented the citizens.

[Sidenote: The city of London.] The constitution thus perfected in the city of London[6] six hundred years ago has remained to this day without essential change. The voters are enrolled members of companies which represent the ancient guilds. Each year they choose one of the aldermen to be lord mayor. Within the city he has precedence next to the sovereign and before the royal family; elsewhere he ranks as an earl, thus indicating the equivalence of the city to a county, and with like significance he is lord lieutenant of the city and justice of the peace. The twenty-six aldermen, one for each ward, are elected by the people, such as are entitled to vote for members of parliament; they are justices of the peace. The common councilmen, 206 in number, are also elected by the people, and their legislative power within the city is practically supreme; parliament does not think of overruling it. And the city government thus constituted is one of the most clean-handed and efficient in the world.[7]

[Footnote 6: The city of London extends east and west from the Tower to Temple Bar, and north and south from Finsbury to the Thames, with a population of not more than 100,000, and is but a small part of the enormous metropolitan area now known as London, which is a circle of twelve miles radius in every direction from its centre at Charing Cross, with a population of more than 5,000,000. This vast area is an agglomeration of many parishes, manors, etc., and has no municipal government in common.]

[Footnote 7: Loftie, _History of London _, vol. i. p. 446] [Sidenote: English cities, the bulwarks of liberty.]

The development of other English cities and boroughs was so far like that of London that merchant guilds generally obtained control, and government by mayor, aldermen, and common council came to be the prevailing type. Having also their own judges and sheriffs, and not being obliged to go outside of their own walls to obtain justice, to enforce contracts and punish crime, their efficiency as independent self-governing bodies was great, and in many a troubled time they served as staunch bulwarks of English liberty. The strength of their turreted walls was more than supplemented by the length of their purses, and such immunity from the encroachments of lords and king as they could not otherwise win, they contrived to buy. Arbitrary taxation they generally escaped by compounding with the royal exchequer in a fixed sum or quit-rent, known as the _firma burgi_. We have observed the especial privilege which Henry I. confirmed to London, of electing its own sheriff. London had been prompt in recognizing his title to the crown, and such support, in days when the succession was not well regulated, no prudent king could afford to pass by without some substantial acknowledgment. It was never safe for any king to trespass upon the liberties of London, and through the worst times that city has remained a true republic with liberal republican sentiments. If George III. could have been guided by the advice of London, as expressed by its great alderman Beckford, the American colonies would not have been driven into rebellion.

[Sidenote: Simon de Montfort and the cities.] The most signal part played by the English boroughs and cities, in securing English freedom, dates from the thirteenth century, when the nation was vaguely struggling for representative government on a national scale, as a means of curbing the power of the crown. In that memorable struggle, the issue of which to some extent prefigured the shape that the government of the United States was to take five hundred years afterward, the cities and boroughs supported Simon de Montfort, the leader of the popular party and one of the foremost among the heroes and martyrs of English liberty. Accordingly on the morrow of his decisive victory at Lewes in 1264, when for the moment he stood master of England, as Cromwell stood four centuries later Simon called a parliament to settle the affairs of the kingdom, and to this parliament he invited, along with the lords who came by hereditary custom, not only two elected representatives from each rural county, but also two elected representatives from each city and borough. In this parliament, which met in 1265, the combination of rural with urban representatives brought all parts of England together in a grand representative body, the House of Commons, with interests in common; and thus the people presently gained power enough to defeat all attempts to establish irresponsible government, such as we call despotism, on the part of the crown.

[Sidenote: Oligarchical abuses in English cities (cir. 1500-1835).] If we look at the later history of English cities and boroughs, it appears that, in spite of the splendid work which they did for the English people at large, they did not always succeed in preserving their own liberties unimpaired. London, indeed, has always maintained its character as a truly representative republic. But in many English cities, during the Tudor and Stuart periods, the mayor and aldermen contrived to dispense with popular election, and thus to become close corporations or self-perpetuating oligarchical bodies. There was a notable tendency toward this sort of irresponsible government in the reign of James I., and the Puritans who came to the shores of Massachusetts Bay were inspired with a feeling of revolt against such methods. This doubtless lent an emphasis to the mood in which they proceeded to organize themselves into free self-governing townships. The oligarchical abuses in English cities and boroughs remained until they were swept away by the great Municipal Reform Act of 1835.

[Sidenote: Government of the city of New York (1686-1821).] The first city governments established in America were framed in conscious imitation of the corresponding institutions in England. The oldest city government in the United States is that of New York. Shortly after the town was taken from the Dutch in 1664, the new governor, Colonel Nichols, put an end to its Dutch form of government, and appointed a mayor, five aldermen, and a sheriff. These officers appointed inferior officers, such as constables, and little or nothing was left to popular election. But in 1686, under Governor Dongan, New York was regularly incorporated and chartered as a city. Its constitution bore an especially close resemblance to that of Norwich, then the third city in England in size and importance. The city of New York was divided into six wards. The governing corporation consisted of the mayor, the recorder, the town-clerk, six aldermen, and six assistants. All the land not taken up by individual owners was granted as public land to the corporation, which in return paid into the British exchequer one beaver-skin yearly. This was a survival of the old quit-rent or _firma burgi_.[8] The city was made a county, and thus had its court, its sheriff and coroner, and its high constable. Other officers were the chamberlain or treasurer, seven inferior constables, a sergeant-at-arms, and a clerk of the market, who inspected weights and measures, and punished delinquencies in the use of them. The principal judge was the recorder, who, as we have just seen, was one of the corporation. The aldermen, assistants, and constables were elected annually by the people; but the mayor and sheriff were appointed by the governor. The recorder, town-clerk, and clerk of the market were to be appointed by the king, but in case the king neglected to act, these appointments also were made by the governor. The high constable was appointed by the mayor, the treasurer by the mayor, aldermen, and assistants, who seem to have answered to the ordinary common council. The mayor, recorder, and aldermen, without the assistants, were a judicial body, and held a weekly court of common pleas. When the assistants were added, the whole became a legislative body empowered to enact by-laws.

[Footnote 8: Jameson, "The Municipal Government of New York," _Mag. Amer. Hist_., vol. viii. p. 609.]

Although this charter granted very imperfect powers of self-government, the people contrived to live under it for a hundred and thirty-five years, until 1821. Before the Revolution their petitions succeeded in obtaining only a few unimportant amendments.[9] When the British army captured the city in September, 1776, it was forthwith placed under martial law, and so remained until the army departed in November, 1783. During those seven years New York was not altogether a comfortable place in which to live. After 1783 the city government remained as before, except that the state of New York assumed the control formerly exercised by the British crown. Mayor and recorder, town-clerk and sheriff, were now appointed by a council of appointment consisting of the governor and four senators. This did not work well, and the constitution of 1821 gave to the people the power of choosing their sheriff and town-clerk, while the mayor was to be elected by the common council. Nothing but the appointment of the recorder remained in the hands of the governor. Thus nearly forty years after the close of the War of Independence the city of New York acquired self-government as complete as that of the city of London. In 1857, as we shall see, this self-government was greatly curtailed, with results more or less disastrous.

[Footnote 9: Especially in the so-called Montgomerie charter of 1730.]

[Sidenote: City government in Philadelphia (1701-1789).] The next city governments to be organized in the American colonies, after that of New York, were those of Philadelphia, incorporated in 1701, and Annapolis, incorporated in 1708. These governments were framed after the wretched pattern then so common in England. In both the mayor, the recorder, the aldermen, and the common council constituted a close self-electing corporation. The resulting abuses were not so great as in England, probably because the cities were so small. But in course of time, especially in Philadelphia as it increased in population, the viciousness of the system was abundantly illustrated. As the people could not elect the governing corporation or any of its members, they very naturally and reasonably distrusted it, and through the legislature they contrived so to limit its powers of taxation that it was really unable to keep the streets in repair, to light them at night, or to support an adequate police force. An attempt was made to supply such wants by creating divers independent boards of commissioners, one for paving and draining, another for street-lamps and watchmen, a third for town-pumps, and so on. In this way responsibility got so minutely parcelled out and scattered, and there was so much jealousy and wrangling between the different boards and the corporation, that the result was chaos. The public money was habitually wasted and occasionally embezzled, and there was general dissatisfaction. In 1789 the close corporation was abolished, and thereafter the aldermen and common council were elected by the citizens, the mayor was chosen by the aldermen out of their own number, and the recorder was appointed by the mayor and aldermen. Thus Philadelphia obtained a representative government.

[Sidenote: Traditions of good government lacking.] These instances of New York and Philadelphia sufficiently illustrate the beginnings of city government in the United States. In each case the system was copied from England at a time when city government in England was sadly demoralized. What was copied was not the free republic of London, with its noble traditions of civic honour and sagacious public spirit, but the imperfect republics or oligarchies into which the lesser English boroughs were sinking, amid the foul political intrigues and corruption which characterized the Stuart period. The government of American cities in our own time is admitted on all hands to be far from satisfactory. It is interesting to observe that the cities which had municipal government before the Revolution, though they have always had their full share of able and high-minded citizens, do not possess even the tradition of good government. And the difficulty, in those colonial times, was plainly want of adequate self-government, want of responsibility on the part of the public servants toward their employers the people.

QUESTIONS ON THE TEXT.

1. What was the origin of the _casters_ and _chesters_ that are found in England to-day?

2. Trace the development of the English borough until it became a kind of hundred.

3. Compare this borough, with the hundred in the administration of justice.

4. Trace the further development of the borough in cases in which it became a county.

5. Illustrate this development with London, showing how the elements of the township, the hundred, and the shire government enter into its civic organization.

6. Explain the origin and the objects of the various guilds.

7. Speak of the "town guild" under the following heads:--

a. Its composition and power. b. Its relation to citizenship. c. Its place of meeting. d. The aldermen. e. The common council. f. The chief magistrate.

8. Compare the government of London with that of Great Britain or of the United States.

9. Give some account of the lord mayor, the aldermen, and the councilmen of London.

10. Distinguish between London the city and London the metropolis.

11. Show how the English cities and boroughs became bulwarks of liberty by (1) their facilities for obtaining justice, (2) the strength of their walls, and (3) the length of their purses.

12. Contrast the power of London with that of the throne.

13. What notable advance in government was made under the leadership of Simon de Montfort?

14. What abuses crept into the government of many of the English cities?

15. What was the Puritan attitude towards such abuses?

16. Give an account of the government of New York city:--

a. The charter of 1686. b. The governing corporation. c. The public land. d. The city's privileges as a county. e. Officers by election and by appointment. f. Judicial functions. g. Martial law. h. The charter of 1821.

17. Give an account of the government of Philadelphia:--

a. The governments after which it was patterned. b. The viciousness of the system adopted. c. The legislative interference that was thus provoked.