Jacob Le Maire

“ It is almost impossible for a friend to pass the mayor's without being stopped by just such a welcome. The twinkle in his eyes and the hearty genuineness of his greeting are irresistible. The next moment you have crossed his threshold and entered a square, low-ceiled room that for over forty years has served Monsieur le Maire as living room, kitchen, and executive chamber. ”

“ I have urged the organization of the county and of the town, but to no effect. Every street that is mended, every bridge that is repaired, or wharf that is put in order, must be done by the army at the expense of the U. S. government. They will not elect officers to look after the poor, but leave us to feed the starving near our camps. They will establish no police, and by force of public opinion keep suitors out of the courts ordered to be held by Governor Peirpoint. ”

“ This municipal assembly shall be the Council of Administration, which shall establish for the entire extent of its jurisdiction the rules of the common regime, and shall decide on all that concerns the municipal police, its internal security, sanitary policy, the management and use of municipal revenues, local expenditures, and generally all that is within the jurisdiction of the municipalities.
Art. 43. The active power shall be entirely, and for all the extent of the municipal district, in the hands of the mayor and his lieutenant, who shall be elected immediately by the primary assemblies. ”

“ It is already a difficult matter to recruit a municipal council, to find a mayor, the two additional municipal officers, and the national agent which the law requires; in the small communes, these are the only agents of the revolutionary government, and I fancy that, in most cases, their Jacobin fervor is moderate. Municipal officer, national agent or mayor, the real peasant of that day belongs to no party, neither royalist nor republican;3361 his ideas are rare, too transient and too sluggish, to enable him to form a political opinion. ”

“ I knew the mayor very well, and under ordinary conditions he would have insisted on the interview with the governor being private and personal. But he was so excited and bursting with rage that he went right on. The mayor fairly shouted: "It is the station agent of the New York Central Railroad in our city of whom I complain. He is active in politics and controls the Democratic organization in our county. He is working to prevent myself and my friends and even ex-Governor Seymour from being delegates to the national convention. ”

“ He and his council controlled the politics of Paris, and the politics of Paris governed France. Besides that, each of the forty-eight Sections had its own elected authority, a permanent committee of sixteen members, to carry out the orders of the municipal body, invested with some powers of administration and police. The Jacobins, in accordance with their theory, argued that all the Sectional Assemblies ought to sit permanently, that the active citizens ought to meet every day, and that the municipality ought daily to take their opinions on current questions. ”

“ Just as the mayoralty is filled by one man, not only for the sake of greater executive efficiency but also to concentrate and make definite the responsibility of mayoralty action, so each department, for both these reasons, should be presided over by one man. Executive boards should not exist in city government. They would paralyze a charter made by the National Municipal Reform League itself. ”

“ Why do you suppose men went into the town council? To represent the taxpayers, the townspeople? No, but to look after their own interests; to safeguard themselves; to get what they could out of it. The whole policy of the old councils was one of—there's only one word for it, Mr. Brent, and that's only just becoming Anglicized—graft! A municipal government is supposed to exist for the good, the welfare, the protection of a town, but the whole idea of these Hathelsborough men, in the past, has been to use their powers and privileges for their own ends. ”

“ The Mayor is to try all causes, where the Sheriffs shall any way be charged with doing wrong, and hath power to relieve the oppressed, by punishing the sheriffs according to the offence.
The Mayor for the time being is always a justice of the peace by his office, and shall yearly choose four others, to be justices for his assistants, and no justice of the county of Norfolk, or any other justices of peace whatever, are to exercise their office in the city or its county, either by land or water. ”

“ You are asked to stamp with your endorsement, to give your approval, to a man; a public official, the chief executive officer of a municipality, Mayor Merrill, who admits on the witness stand that he allowed a little group of members of the Commercial Club to take the power of the police department out of his office and turn it over to the sheriff of the county. ”

“ I.—THE MAYOR ONE OF THE PECULIARITIES OF MALLINGHAM is the Mayor, for Mallingham has a Mayor all to itself, except when, by virtue of his office, he spends a happy day on various County Benches, joining with the representatives of local county families in the administration of Petty Sessions justice—Petty Sessions justice is founded on “good Crowner's Quest law”—otherwise he is usually a very worthy man, and lays no specious claim to popularity. ”

“ The mayor, recorder and councilmen of said town shall be a body corporate and politic with perpetual succession to be known by the name of the mayor and council of the town of Cedar Rapids, and shall be capable in law to acquire property, real, personal and mixed for the use of said town and sell and convey the same. ”

“ Needless to say, they take good care to choose a man who is in thorough sympathy with their own ideas. Now the late mayor was convinced that this system led to nothing but—well, to put it mildly, to nothing but highly undesirable results. He claimed that the municipal government had the right to deprive the existing town trustees of their power, and to take into its own hands the full administration of the borough finances. ”

“ It is a matter of grave public concern for the people to know in what spirit an officer intrusted for the first time in the history of our city with such powers purposes to use them. The whole theory of the law is that the Mayor shall be responsible for the administration of the city's affairs, and for the policy which animates the different departments. It makes the relation of the different commissioners and heads of departments to the Mayor practically that of the cabinet officer to his chief. ”

“ He first occupied himself with the System of justice, the Parliament, the Châtelet, and the bailiwicks; and in April, 1453, in concert with the princes, the prelates, the council of State, the judges, and others in authority, he framed a general law, in one hundred and twenty-five articles, which was considered as the great charter of Parliament (Fig. 308) . According to the terms of these articles, "the councillors are to sit after dinner, to get through the minor causes. Prisoners are to be examined without delay, and to hold no communication with any one, unless by special permission. ”

“ The mayor, or his deputy, appointed under his hand and seal, or in case of the mayor's death, the surviving justice of the peace, who last served the office of mayor, shall be the presiding officer at every election of mayor, sheriffs, aldermen, and common council-men, and of such scrutinies as shall be demanded thereupon. ”

“ I observe, “but believe me, you will do well to announce the Thiers-Barrot Ministry and say nothing about Marshal Bugeaud.”
“You are right.”
The Mayor requisitions a squad of National Guards, takes with him his two deputies and the Municipal Councillors present, and descends into the Place Royale. The roll of drums attracts the crowd. He announces the new Cabinet. The people applaud and raise repeated shouts of “Hurrah for Reform!” The Mayor adds a few words recommending harmony and the preservation of order, and is universally applauded. ”

“ The mayor of every ward, on a question like the present, would call his ward together, take the simple yea or nay of its members, convey these to the county court, who would hand on those of all its wards to the proper general authority; and the voice of the whole people would be thus fairly, fully, and peaceably expressed, discussed, and decided by the common reason of the society. If this avenue be shut to the call of sufferance, it will make itself heard through that of force, and we shall go on, as other nations are doing, in the endless circle of oppression, rebellion, reformation ”

“ That if a mayor or sheriff dies in his office, or be lawfully removed or displaced, that then the sheriffs, citizens, and commonalty, by assembly in the Gild-hall, may choose an alderman that hath not been mayor for three years before, to be mayor and escaetor for the rest of the year, who shall be sworn immediately after his election, in like manner as other mayors are, and in like manner a sheriff, if in case of death or removal. ”

“ The municipal and internal affairs are managed by a provincial assembly elected by the people. Every villa or borough throughout the province also possesses its municipal council, and in thinly-populated districts, the inhabitants choose every four years a justice of the peace who adjudicates in small disputes between neighbours. ”

“ You must know that the corporation of our town have lately elected a new mayor, a person of many qualifications—big and portly, with a voice like Boanerges; a religious man, the possessor of an immense pew; loyal, so much so that I once heard him say that he would at any time go three miles to hear any one sing "God save the King"; moreover, a giver of excellent dinners. Such is our present mayor; who, owing to his loyalty, his religion, and a little, perhaps, to his dinners, is a mighty favourite ”

“ Jacob observed, when his young friend made his joyous return, “just how old are you?”
“Twenty-four,” Lord Felixstowe confided. “And if it’s the wine you are thinking about, don’t you worry. We’ve got it in our blood and we thrive on it. We doubled this little allowance each, the night after we won the regimental polo cup, and I made a hundred and seven against Yorkshire the following day. You should see the governor—a sallow, lean-looking man, without an ounce of colour. He’d drink you under the table before he’d begun to hiccough.... You’re not much of a lad for the fillies, what?” ”

“ Yes, sir Jacob. Make way there! stand further off from the gate: here is madam Sneak in a chaise along with her husband.
Sir Jacob has work enough on his hands with his relations, and other visiters, who have arrived to see the election from his mansion; he calls his “son Bruin” to come in;—“we are all seated at table man; we have but just time for a snack; the candidates are near upon coming.” ”

“ The corporate authority of said city shall be vested in one principal officer, styled the 'mayor;' in one board of aldermen, consisting of two members from each ward, who, with the mayor, shall be denominated the common council. ”

“ To these councils, elected by the working-classes from themselves, are entrusted the governing of the parish: the lighting, paving, cleaning of the streets, the order and police, and all matters belonging to the daily life of the place. On these councils the squire and the parson may sit, if they are elected; but they have no more power than the others. ”

“ But on the other hand, the Aldermen shewed by many reasons, that unto them belongs the election of Mayor, both because they, the Aldermen are the heads, as it were, and the populace the limbs, as also because it is the Aldermen who pronounce judgments in pleas moved within the City. Of the populace on the other hand there are many who have neither lands, rents, nor dwellings in the City, being sons of divers mothers, some of them of servile station, and all of them caring little or nothing about the City’s welfare. ”

“ Towns were always trying to get out of the power of the overlords' reeve or the shire-reeve, and gradually many of them got the right of appointing their own reeve. That right was granted by charter, usually from the king. That is the beginning of our present borough towns. The mayor in them is the chief magistrate. In many country towns two different courts are often held in the same building: the Borough Sessions, at which the mayor presides, deal with offences done in the town; and County Sessions, at which magistrates from the country district round deal with offences outside the borough. ”

“ According to popular opinion, says Mr Hunt, in his Romances of the West of England, ‘there is a clause in the borough charter compelling the legitimate mayor to surrender his power to the “Mayor of Mylor” on the day in question, and to lend the town-sergeant’s paraphernalia to the gentlemen of the shears.’ At the yearly fair, too, held in the village of Tarleton, a mock-mayor was until a very few years ago elected, this ceremony forming part of the after-dinner proceedings. ”

“ But as I was saying, he’s always on to me about you. ‘My boy,’ he said, in his best Lord Chesterfield manner, ‘you have contracted a valuable acquaintance with that very personable and shrewd young financier whom you introduced to us at Ascot. It rests with you to see that that acquaintance is made of profit to the family.’”
“I am afraid,” Jacob observed, “that in that way I have been rather a disappointment.”
“The governor isn’t easily discouraged,” Felixstowe replied, “and the mater’s got something up her sleeve for you. ”

“ Madame Guibert will have to be told.”
“I don’t deny it. Only it isn’t necessary that you should put yourself out about it. A Mayor is not at everybody’s beck and call. When a Mayor bestirs himself it is the State which acts. You send a deputy, or even a councillor, where enemies of the Republic are concerned. Devil take it! One is either a republican or one isn’t, Mr. Mayor!”
“Mélanie, fetch us a pint!” cried the Mayor, torn between his natural duty and his duty as a republican which was being instilled into him. “And send the boy to look for Randon, Pitet, and Détraz.” ”