Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 8.djvu/230

Rh 218 ENGLAND [DIVISIONS. f ountie* and hun dreds. is m&amp;gt;t the case on the south and south-west coast, the smaller rivers of which were disregarded in fixing the borders of Kent, Sussex, Hampshire, and Devon. Again, the east-running Thames divides counties from its mouth almost up to its source; while the westerly Severn forms not a single boundary, even for a short distance, from its spring down to its sea estuary. Finally, the dividing line between England and Scotland is mainly artificial in the west, while in the east are the natural boundaries of the Tweed and the Cheviot Hills. Modern legislation has made few changes in tiie ancient . divisions of England into counties, or .shires, and hundreds. Each of the forty counties of England and twelve counties of Wales is still primarily divided into hundreds, although the borders thus formed are little more than nominal, the hundreds having become practically extinct as an adminis trative subdivision. Originally signifying a district con taining a hundred families, the division lost its meaning entirely with the unequal increase of population, and at present, while some hundreds count their population by hundreds of thousands, others have not gone far beyond the number that gave rise to the name. At the census of 1871 the number of hundreds, or their equivalents, for which the population was separately shown was 818. In naming the subdivisions corresponding to hundreds, the ancient word &quot; wapentake &quot; is still adopted officially as re gards the counties of York, Lincoln, and Nottingham, Yorkshire, exclusive of the city of York, and Lincolnshire being each divided into three parts, consisting of a given number of wapentakes. In Cumberland and Westmoreland the hundreds are called &quot; wards,&quot; while in Kent they are grouped into &quot;lathes,&quot; and in Sussex into &quot;rapes.&quot; Intimately connected with the division into hundreds in former times was that into boroughs. The old Saxon borough, in fact, was nothing more than a hundred, or a group of hundreds, encircled by a moat, a stockade, or a wall/ All the inhabitants of the borough, or burgesses, were freemen, bound to each other as neighbours, sharing common burthens, and responsible for each other to sur rounding communities. As the boroughs grew in size and importance, the hundred lost its former significance; still for a long time the original principle was kept in view of having the same subdivision, organization, and government for town and country populations. Many of the ancient boroughs have now fallen into decay, while new boroughs sprang up in many parts of the country with the rapid pro gress of population which commenced after the middle of the last century. In 1835 a great change was made in their constitution, and the limits of many were enlarged by the adoption of new boundaries. The change was the result of the labours of a parliamentary commission appointed &quot;to inquire into municipal corporations.&quot; The parliament iry commissioners experienced, at the outset of their work, considerable difficulty in ascertaining the exact number of corporate bodies in England and Wales, Acting upon the best information they were able to collect, they visited and instituted inquiries in 285 places. It was found that 16 of them contained corporations of an exclu sively manorial character; that 89 could claim to be properly boroughs ; and that the remainder, 178 in number, required legislation to settle their rights and privileges. The latter, accordingly, were placed under the operation of the Municipal Corporation Act, 5 and 6 Will. IV. c. 76. Subsequently to the passing of this Act, two more old boroughs, Ashton-under-Lyne and Hartlepool, were brought under its provision by the grant of new charters. It was provided for by section 141 of the Municipal Cor poration Act that any towns, on the petition of the in habitant householders, may have granted to them charters of incorporation if Her Majesty, by the advice of the Privy Council, shall think fit to accede to the request. The number of towns which thus obtained charters has since 1835 been 45; but the provisions of the Act were not universally adopted, and to this day a number of towns, some of considerable importance, are still without municipal organization. At the census of 1871, the total number of municipal boroughs was 224, containing more than one- fourth of the population of England and Wales. Claiming high rank among the municipal corporations of Cinq England, and forming one of the most ancient and celebrated Port subdivisions, or jurisdictions, of the country, are the Cinque Ports. The Cinque Ports existed as self-governing boroughs from a very early time, though the exact date of their incorporation is not known. It is stated in Jeake s Charters of the Cinque Ports that in the records of the town of Rye there is a memorandum that &quot;the five Ports were enfranchised in the time of King Edward the Con fessor.&quot; The five ports originating the title were Hastings, Romney, Hythe, Dover, and Sandwich. To these were added the so-called &quot; ancient towns &quot; of Rye and Winchelsea, which were placed, as regards rights and privileges, on the same footing as the original Cinque Ports. Each of the seven towns, with the exception of Winchelsea, had one or more &quot; members,&quot; or &quot; limbs,&quot; placed under the mantle of its privileges, very important for many centuries, one of them being an almost entire exemption from taxes levied by the king. In early times these &quot; members &quot; were in a great measure dependent from their respective ports, but the old connection has long ceased. Most of the old &quot;members &quot; are at present corporate towns, and therefore completely independent, and only the few that are not remain under the municipal jurisdiction of their parent ports. The still existing privileges of the Cinque Ports, including jurisdiction of the south coast from Seaford in Sussex to the mouth of the Thames, are of no great im portance, but they are favoured by a large share of parlia mentary representation. (See also vol. v. p, 786.) Unlike the civil divisions of the country, those formed Pavli for parliamentary representation are mainly of recent date. &quot;I 61. 1 . Vast changes in the character of this representation the origin of which is involved is much obscurity were made by the Reform Bill of 1832; and others, scarcely less im portant, by the statute of 30 and 31 Viet. c. 102, known as the Reform Act of 1867.. By the latter Act, the existing franchise was not only much enlarged, but new divisions of counties were made for electoral purposes, while the limits of many boroughs were extended, new ones created, and old ones excluded from the list. The new parliamentary boroughs created by the Act of 1867 were Burnley, Chelsea, Darlington, Dewsbury, Gravesend, Hackney, Hartlepool, Middlesborough, Staleybridge, Stockton, and Wednesbury ; a representative was also given to the university of London, and additional ones to Birmingham, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Merthyr Tydfil, and Salford. On the other hand, 4 boroughs were disfranchised immediately by the Act, and 7 more in 1868, the year after its passing, while 36 were reduced to one representative instead of two. In the new division of counties made by the Reform Act of 1867, Cheshire and Lincolnshire were separated into North, Mid, and South ; Devonshire and Derbyshire into North, South, and East; Essex into North-East, North- West, and South ; Norfolk into West, North-East, and South-East ; Somersetshire into East, Mid, and West ; and the West Riding of Yorkshire into North, Mid, and South; with minor alterations. These re-arrangements of parliamentary representation were more than justified by the changes of population brought about by time. Within the parlia mentary boroughs the population increased 16 1 per cent, from 1851 to 1861, and 23 3 per cent, from 1861- 71 ; while outside them the increase was only 8 9 per