Municipalization

“ Two wants are now felt: roads, or at least paths from house to house, from hamlet to market town, and a school-house for the multiplying children. There is no strong central authority to provide these things, but the settlers meet and vote to tax themselves. The services of a supervisor, collector, clerk, constable and justice of the peace are required." [1] This is the beginning of the township and county. As population increases, other wants arise which only a stronger government can supply. A territorial, and then a State government are consequently formed. ”

“ The territorial legislature at least had the same authority as that possessed by congress to recognize claims of the nature described. It is a legislative power, and it was granted to the territorial legislature by the acts already referred to. A city is a municipal corporation and a political subdivision of the state, and, what the state could do itself, it has the power to direct its agent, the municipality, to do. ”

“ When any small area becomes thickly and permanently settled, and a certain population is reached (which varies in different States) , the state legislature is appealed to, and a charter of incorporation as a city is granted. This enables the incorporated district to act independently of the county or township, to levy municipal taxes and carry out public improvements. Rapid as has been the growth of cities, the duties required of city governments have increased still faster.
The government of our large cities has become a question of vital importance. ”

“ But to a burgher of the middle ages the care and protection of the State were dim and shadowy compared with the duties and responsibilities thrown on the townspeople themselves. For in the beginnings of municipal life the affairs of the borough great and small, its prosperity, its safety, its freedom from crime, the gaiety and variety of its life, the regulation of its trade, were the business of the citizens alone. ”

“ The right of the municipality in any given case to suppress uses of land depends on the language of its charter, but under a universal charter provision a municipality may protect the general welfare of its people, and many uses of land are enjoined under this general power. ”

“ It is the municipality which makes the power and glory of the democracy in England and the United States, and despotism never triumphed on the European Continent till it had destroyed the municipality. The municipality is the political school of the people, it is the temple of their liberty, it is the citadel of their rights. Without the municipality, democracy can never be long maintained. ”

“ It may be conceded, as a general proposition, that there is a substantial distinction between the acts of a municipality as the agent of the state, for the preservation of peace and the protection of persons and property, and its acts as the agent of its citizens, for the care and improvement of the public property, and the adaptation of the city for the purposes of residence and business. ”

“ A town, doubtless at no distant day to be a city, is growing up around the borders of this reserved tract, and entirely dependent upon it for its prosperity. Whatever can be done properly by the government to secure and retain the full benefit of the waters under its control for the use of the people and the preservation of other health auxiliaries which are now in its possession should not be overlooked. In my opinion, all the mountains within the four townships should be withdrawn from sale. ”

“ We cannot too strongly insist upon its establishment, immediate and perpetual. The foundation of municipalities implies the decentralization of the Administrative, the Judicial and even the Legislative Power. ”

“ Just as the larger experiment is designed to lead the nation into a juster and better system of land tenure and a better and more common-sense view of how towns should be built, so are the various pro-municipal undertakings of Garden City devised by those who are prepared to lead the way in enterprises designed to further the well-being of the town, but who have not as yet succeeded in getting their plans or schemes adopted by the Central Council. ”

“ We shut out all speculators.
No towns started in any other way shall have railroad or mail facilities.
When once a municipality is created in the way I have described, it shall provide, in the plat of the town, parks for recreation; no lot shall contain less than half an acre; the streets shall be very wide and planted with fruit trees in double and treble rows. In the center of the town shall be erected a town hall, with an assembly chamber, arranged like a theater, and large enough to seat all the inhabitants. ”

“ Graft must be stamped out of the city administration, and a high order of men elected to the bench. Some big things must be accomplished in the city.
She had arrived at the conclusion that to most people the municipality is an industrial accident, its government rather a matter of police, fire and health administration, some public schools and a police court, a street and water department; that they wanted just enough of these things, and at the lowest possible cost, to enable men to go about their daily business. ”

“ Our municipalities are entirely destroyed; the rural areas of this province, forming a disgracious contrast with the other parts of this continent, are absolutely deprived of any power to regulate, in a municipal capacity, their local affairs, by the means of freely elected parish and township officers ”

“ How many municipalities in the countryside are not at the mercy of the lords, or of the priests, or of some notables! How many, in the small towns, are not dominated by the credit of the principal townspeople! Let us expect nothing from these administrations that are too weak to remain independent; the only way to emancipate municipal authority is to distribute it in larger masses, and to make the bodies that will be its depositories more enlightened and more powerful, by making them less numerous. ”

“ Whether the board of public works is also a part of and an agency of the municipal corporation is the question before us.
1. The authorities state, and our own knowledge is to the effect, that the care and superintendence of streets, alleys, and highways, the regulation of grades, and the opening of new and closing of old streets, are peculiarly municipal duties. No other power can so wisely and judiciously control this subject as the authority of the immediate locality where the work is to be done. ”

“ When a borough had won from its lord full rights of self-government, its battles were not yet over. The next effort of the town authorities was to secure complete power over all the inhabitants within their walls, so that they might compel all alike to submit to the town courts, and to bear their share of burdensome duties, such as the payment of taxes, the keeping watch and ward, the defence of the town, the maintenance of its trade, or the enlargement of its liberties—in fact to take their part as good citizens in all that concerned the common weal. ”

“ If we wish to destroy the life of the city, make it impotent to discharge the functions for which it was organized, then, and then only, it might be feasible to place over it a commission.
But, Honorable Judges, authorities are agreed that cities must be allowed greater freedom of action in local affairs, that municipal home rule is indispensable. The governments of our large cities have been dominated to such an extent by the state legislatures, usually partisan and irresponsible to the locality concerned, that in many cases self-government has become a term, hollow and without meaning. ”

“ I do not mean centralisation or the removal of that proper control which every local authority should maintain over its own officers. I would maintain intact the great principle of local government, which has been the bulwark of our social and political freedom. But local government may degenerate, and in small towns deteriorate into littleness: local affairs are too frequently avoided by those who are most fitted by intelligence and social standing to take part therein. ”

“ And my case to-night is, that the existing local government bodies, your town councils, borough councils, urban district boards, and so forth, are, for the purposes of municipalisation, far from being the best possible bodies, and that even your county councils fall short, that by their very nature all these bodies must fall far short of the highest possible efficiency, and that as time goes on they must fail even more than they do now to discharge the duties we Fabians would like to thrust upon them. ”

“ The city alone has anything really important to gain or to lose from their proper or improper treatment; and its legal responsibility should be as complete as its economic localization is real.
There is no need of discussing in any detail the way in which a municipal government which does enjoy the advantage of home rule and an efficient organization can contribute to the work of national economic and social reconstruction. Public opinion is tending to accept much more advanced ideas in this field of municipal reform than it is in any other part of the political battle-field. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I have not, in this paper, attempted to describe the actual condition of any particular municipality, or even presented a picture which could represent the material existence of the cities as a whole. Such a picture would only be a necessary part of a study of institutions when the city itself was the unit to be investigated, and not of one whose chief object is to prove that the city as such had no constitutional existence, but simply formed a part of another institutional unit. ”

“ There are local interests peculiar to every town, whether great or small, and common to all its inhabitants; every town, therefore, without distinction of size, ought to have its municipal council. It is equally obvious that every town ought to have but one. The different quarters of the same town have seldom or never any material diversities of local interest; they all require to have the same things done, the same expenses incurred; and, except as to their churches, which it is probably desirable to leave under simply parochial management, the same arrangements may be made to serve for all. ”

“ The municipal boards have care of the roads, water supply, sewerage, sanitation, public lighting, markets, schools, hospitals and other institutions and enterprises of public utility. They impose taxes, collect revenues and expend them subject to the approval of the provincial governments. In all of the large cities a number of Englishmen and other foreigners are members of boards and committees and take an active part in local administration, but in the smaller towns and villages the government is left entirely to natives, who often show conspicuous capacity. ”

“ Men begin to ask whether the municipal authority may not be so organized and administered that it shall promote and protect the interests of both the corporation and the individual; whether the evils to which I have alluded, and others equally apparent and subversive of the ends of good government, are inherent in our municipal system or only incident thereto. And some effort has been made to ascertain the principles which underlie a legitimate municipal authority and the most efficient means of making the application of those principles practical. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Regulation by the state has the advantage of making the provisions apply uniformly to all cities within its borders and is obtained by no more effort than is required to get an ordinance through the Council of a single municipality. On the other hand, the municipal ordinance has the advantage of being secured by residents of the community who are intelligently concerned in the local problem and who will therefore take an active interest in having its provisions enforced. ”

“ With about four hundred municipal councils to lead, one may imagine what he will do with them: nothing except to drive them like a flock of sheep into a pen of printed regulations, or urge them on mechanically, in lots, according to his instructions, he himself being as automatic and as much in a rut as they are. ”

“ Out of the League's efforts grew a “municipal programme” the fundamental features of which were that every community should have the right of self-government in local affairs without the interference of outside governmental or party machinery; that the city's public property in land, and especially its franchise rights, should be preserved unimpaired; that all barriers should be removed which prevented the popular will from expressing itself freely and effectively ”

“ The rising municipalities on the other hand, even if they had a history but a century or two old, were endowed with all the young and vigorous forces of the modern world; nor is there a single instance of a town where a lively trade went hand in hand with a subservient spirit, or where a temper of unconquerable audacity in commercial enterprise did not throw its exuberant force into the region of government and politics. ”