Page:The government of London.djvu/23

 In general the vestries have been fortunate in the chief clerks whom they have relied on for the management and direction of their business. Many of them have proved themselves to be men of real administrative ability; their office, in no case a sinecure, and sometimes requiring an exemplary degree of temper, integrity, and skill, can in no case be said to be overpaid. It is highly creditable to them that the most prominent amongst them have retained their arduous position for many years, without growing weary of well-doing, or losing the confidence of their variable and varying masters; and without having the stimulus of promotion, which in the civil service of the Crown tends to preserve men past their prime from yielding to the torpor of routine. Such men cannot keep out incursions of unworthy faction or keep down displays of personal hostility and spite, or prevent the perpetration of jobs now and then in small matters, and sometimes in considerable affairs. But Parliament itself has not always escaped the imputation of having been made the instrument of men actuated by selfish motives; and just now it does not behove an assembly chosen by ballot and household suffrage, to have its heart too haughty, or its eyes too lofty, when judging of the subordinate bodies to whom has been committed the management of local affairs. Upon the whole they have not neglected their duty; very rarely can it be said that their prominent members have made merchandise of their functions. In five and twenty years society has materially and mentally undergone many changes, and their position has without any fault of theirs been modified thereby. New powers and influences have risen up or been created by direct intervention of law, all of them contributing to divert public attention, more or less, from parochial assemblies not too strong at the beginning, and now perceptibly less so than they were. In 1855 there was no school board and no penny press, no tramways and no preservation of open spaces for the recreation of the peoples; and these are but some of the universally operative changes that have taken place in metropolitan existence. The tide of life has swollen and shrunk alternately in many ways—what wonder if popular institu-