Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 06.pdf/246

 Municipal Scraps.

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MUNICIPAL SCRAPS. By C. W. Ernst. IT is a pleasing fiction to think that muni cipal corporations are the creature of the State, and that we have found the origin of our municipal institutions when we trace them to old England. To be sure, most of our municipal thinking has come from England, and well it is. But munici palities were not invented in England. Is it an accident that most of our municipal terms are Latin or French, rather than English? Is it all an accident that Boston in Massachusetts was made a market town from the beginning (1 Mass. Rec. 112); that it chose clerks of the market in 1649— 50; and that the laws of its Fancuil market have much in common with the earliest institutions of the city that arose in central Europe after the great migrations? The early state was not so strong that it could look after all matters now entrusted to it; it tried hard to hold things together against foreign and domestic foes, and to preserve the peace. It visited dire vengeance upon the peace breakers, when caught; but when were they caught? Letters and charity were left to the church, and every neighborhood established social order as well as might be. It was the city that first undertook to estab lish a good police, and the crown was quick to perceive the great help to be expected from self-governing cities. The city wanted good order for trade and higher objects, and the crown consented. Hence the early char ters; hence their vast privileges in matters of trade and local jurisdiction. Perhaps it was the market that occasioned our munici pal corporations. Early in the tenth century Edward the Elder ordained that no man should buy with out the town, and that every trade should be witnessed by the portreeve, which means the reeve of the town or the later mayor.

1 Merewether & Stephens, Mun. Corp. 29. The charter given to Freiburg i. B. begins : "Notum sit tam futuris quam presentibus, qualiter ego, Cunradus, in loco mei proprii juris s. Friburg forum constitui anno ab incarnatione Domini MCXX " : Be it known to those present and to future generations, that I, Conrad, in the place of my own law, have constituted Freiburg a market town this year of our Lord 1120. A great many mayors were at first nothing but clerks of the market, and in England they so continued until the municipal reform of Lord John Russell-, in 1835. Even the Common Council appears to have begun in market requirements. The town or its in corporators were given power to regulate the market, to make by-laws for that purpose, to regulate weights and measures, and to hold market courts, pipoudre courts, for the summary settlement of petty causes. The market theory is not without some attrac tions, and apparently supported by the early charters of cities. These early cities cer tainly had the highest inducement to estab lish a good police, and they certainly tried it, although the meaning of the term police officer, as now used, is entirely modern, and hardly a century old. Blackstone did not apparently know it. Like all his predecessors, Blackstone used the term police in the sense of administra tion. Johnson's dictionary defined police as the " government of a city or country," and Webster retained this definition in his famous dictionary of 1828, adding that " the word is applied also to the government of all towns in New England." This sense survives in the term " police powers" of the State, while the narrower term police officer is recent. Boston did not receive permission to appoint police officers until 1838, and