Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 17.djvu/38

Rh 28 MUNICIPALITY acts as the returning-officer for the borough. Municipal elections fall within the provisions of the Corrupt Practices Act, 1883. The aldermen hold office for six years, one-half of their number retiring every three years in rotation. The mayor holds office for one year. His election is the first business at the quarterly meeting held on the 9th day of November, when the amount of his remuneration is fixed by the council. He is the only member of the corporation who receives a salary. The council chooses the mayor and aldermen and appoints the officers of the corporation, as the town -clerk and treasurer, the sheriff when the borough is a county of itself, and the coroner and clerk of the peace when it has separate quarter-sessions. The council appoints such general and special committees as may be required, and has the general management of the corporate property, subject to the supervision of the treasury; it makes all necessary byelaws, subject to disallowance by the privy council if necessary. With exceptions arising from the provisions of local Acts, the council regulates the police force, the lighting and watching of the borough, the management of markets and burial-grounds, and the execution of the laws relat ing to public health. The expenses are defrayed out of the borough fund, which includes the income of the general corporate estate, supplemented by a borough- rate paid out of the poor-rate or assessed upon a similar basis. A watch-rate, if required, may be levied on the whole borough or on a selected portion of the district. When expenditure is required for objects of a permanent character, the council is empowered to raise the amount by loans, charged on the rates and repayable by instal ments, subject to the approval of the treasury or other public department entrusted with the control of the matter, according to the nature of the improvement required. The whole of the accounts are audited by borough auditors, of whom one must be a councillor appointed by the mayor, and the other two elected by the burgesses from persons qualified to be councillors. A return is made to the Local Government Board of the receipts and expenditure for the year, and an abstract of all these returns is laid every year before parliament. Some con trol over the expenditure is also reserved to the High Court of Justice by a provision that all orders for payment must be signed by three councillors and the town-clerk, and that any such order may be moved by certiorari into the Queen s Bench Division. The aldermen have no greater powers than other councillors, excepting that they may act as the returning-officers for wards as above mentioned, and that an alderman may act for the mayor if he is temporarily unable to discharge his duty and has not appointed a deputy. The mayor is the head of the cor poration, and is ex officio a magistrate for the borough and a member of the watch committee. He is the return- ing-officer at parliamentary elections, and acts with two elected revising assessors as the revising officer if the borough is not represented in parliament. His office is vacated by death or bankruptcy, and must be filled up with all convenient speed after any such vacancy occurs. The last ex-mayor is also ex officio a magistrate for the borough. Where the borough has a separate commission of the peace, the borough justices, Avith the last-mentioned excep tions, are appointed by the crown. A separate commission does not of itself exempt the borough from the concurrent jurisdiction of the county justices. A stipendiary magis trate may be appointed by a secretary of state on the appli cation of the council, and when appointed he is ex officio a justice for the borough. When the borough has a separate court of quarter-sessions the recorder is the judge, but in certain cases may appoint an assistant or deputy ; the recorder must be a barrister of five years standing, and is appointed by the crown on the recommendation of the home secretary ; the recorder is also ex officio a justice for the borough. When the borough has such a court it ceases to be liable to the county-rate, but must contribute to the expenses arising from prosecution and conviction of prisoners from the borough at the assizes. In the case of boroughs which were liable before 1832 to contribute to the county-rate, a contribution to the expenses of the county is still required. Subject to an exception as to judges and assessors appointed before 1835, and to the provisions of various local Acts, the recorder is the judge of any civil court existing in the borough by prescription. We shall now discuss more generally the origin of these municipalities upon the Continent as well as in the United Kingdom. The conception of the borough as it now exists has obviously been copied from the Roman munici- pium. As to England, however, the coincidence is in one sense accidental, inasmuch as it had a municipal system before the lawyers adopted the notion of a corporation from the civilians, though it may be true that no such system could grow up without being influenced by ideas which were familiar to the churchmen. In some parts of the West the Roman system appears to have lived on without an actual breach of continuity. The &quot; curia &quot; seems to have continued in the cities of Provence until the outbreak of the great revolution. At Treves and Cologne &quot;the Roman language perished, but the institu tions survived ; &quot; and the libertas Romano, or full body of municipal privileges was extended gradually to other cities on the Rhine and the trading communities of Holland and Brabant. It is possible also that some relics of the imperial administration may have continued in southern Italy and in a few of the Lombard cities. One element at least in the corporation of Paris can be traced back to the Nautse, Parisiaci, a college of merchants established in the first period of the empire. But the English munici palities are in no sense a legacy from the imperial times, or a continuation of the system which prevailed in the cities of Britain, even in the few instances, as in London, York, and Exeter, where there may have been an unbroken succession of occupancy. Almost all the towns were destroyed in the course of the English conquest, and some which became important again, as Bath, Cambridge, and Chester, are known to have lain waste for centuries. In other instances the English kings soon learned to hold their courts in the fortresses, and to set up their farmsteads in the desolated palaces, or elsewhere a Roman camp may have been taken as a convenient point for a garrison, which in time became a &quot; civil centre &quot; and the site of a muni cipal borough. The French municipalities can be traced to several dis tinct sources of origin. The chief activity was in the north ; the southern cities kept their Roman traditions or imitated the Italian model, as those in the east endeavoured to secure the same privileges as the mercantile communities on the Rhine ; in the central provinces the towns for the most part retained the organization of the parish, and were rather bourgeoisies or privileged market-towns than communes with powers of self-government. The rise of the communes began under Philip I., and they became general in the 13th century. The first charter was granted to Le Mans in 1072, and another to Cambray in 1076 ; these were followed by grants to Laon, Beauvais, Amiens, Soissons, and many other places; and similar privileges were granted in the 12th century by the counts of Flanders, the dukes of Burgundy, and other princes, the general effect of the grants being to fix the lord s rent or tribute, to commute the military service, and to give jurisdiction to magistrates either freely elected or chosen by the townsmen in conjunction with their feudal lords. Speci-