Stadholder

“ First, If any assembly or hasty gathering of the commons of the said city, for suppressing or subduing of misruled people within the said city, hereafter shall happen to be called or commanded by the mayor, aldermen, and other governors and councillors of the said city for the time being, there is none so convenient, meet, and necessary a place, to assemble them in, within the said city, as the said Leaden hall, both for largeness of room, and their sure defence in time of their counselling together about the premises. ”

“ This District, the seat of the national councils, and the common property of the whole republic, is by the constitution of the country, under your immediate care, and exclusive government—and to the combined wisdom, patriotism and prudence of your honourable body, is the common mind turned, with intense anxiety, knowing that nothing can exempt any portion of us from the shame and mortification that may attach to the character of its public laws and institutions; while nothing can prevent their participation in the splendour and renown of its wisdom, prosperity, and happiness. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The city council shall have power to appoint a recorder, treasurer, assessor, marshall, supervisor of streets, and all such other officers as may be necessary, and to prescribe their duties and remove them from office at pleasure. ”

“ The machinery of local administration is completed by councils of which the governor of a prefecture, the mayor of a town, [3] or the head-man of a county or district, is ex-officio president, and the councillors are partly elective, partly nominated by the Central Government. The councils may be said to stand in an executive position towards the local legislatures, namely, the assemblies, for the former give effect to the measures voted by the latter, take their place in case of emergency and consider questions submitted by them. ”

“ Every town must be divided, according to its extent, into a greater or less number of districts, or subdivisions; and each of these must have a committee of inspection, or rather a commissary, with assistants, who must be entrusted with the superintendance and management of all affairs relative to the relief and support of the Poor within its limits. ”

“ And under an act passed in 1899 the council of any urban or rural district may, with the approval of the Board of Agriculture and without recourse to parliament, make a scheme for the management of any common within its district, provided no notice of dissent is served on the board by the lord of the manor or by persons representing one-third in value of such interests in the common as are affected by the scheme. There is yet another way of protecting a common. ”

“ Until the Common Council—composed of representatives each directly elected by ward or district, and held personally responsible by the citizens in that ward for the efficient and honest discharge of his municipal duties—is restored to its natural position as the source and seat and centre of civic authority, it seems to me that we shall continue wandering in the wilderness. ”

“ Through every department of the eighty-four, men of less energy and resource struggle up to the chef-lieu—the provincial capital. There they try to become little functionaries. Go still lower—deal with a still smaller scale—and the result will be the same. As is the department to France, so is the arrondissement to the department, and the commune to the arrondissement. All who have, or think they have, heads on their shoulders, struggle into towns to fight for office. ”

“ But each of the others, each department, district, and municipality, had its own little constitution, based upon popular election, but with many varieties and complexities of form. Every department, district, and municipality had its own council or deliberative body, and its own executive officers too. The officials of the municipalities were elected directly by the citizens within them. But the higher officials of the districts and departments were, like the deputies to the National Assembly, elected by a double system of election. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The prefets of the departments, and sous-prefets of districts, are nominated by the king, subject to approval by the chamber of deputies. The communal chiefs and councils are elected by the people over whom they are to preside. ”

“ Their chief officers are a Burgomaster, like our Mayor, twenty-four Senators, like our Common Council, and a Syndic, as our Recorder. These are the chief Council and Judicatory of the city, and order all the public affairs thereof; only in some extraordinary occasions of making laws or foreign treaties, matters of war and peace, the people of the town make choice of deputies, sometimes forty or fifty,—more or less, as they please,—who sit and consult with the Senate, and by their votes by the people, who willingly submit thereunto. ”

“ A Village Council is composed of the Headman and one man from each family, and is empowered to pass resolutions on matters connected with education, registration of house- holds or lands, sanitation, roads and bridges, communal grain exchanges, agricultural improvements, common woods and dykes, payment of taxes, relief in famine or other calamity, adjustment of the corvee, savings associations, and by-laws. The Headman, who acts as chairman, has not only a casting vote, but the power to veto. ”

“ The city is provided with 3 commodious and handsome market houses, each of which is the centre of a busy trade.—The government is vested in a mayor, a common council comprising 26 members, 2 from each of the 13 wards, a comptroller, city attorney, street commissioner, treasurer, superintendent of education, city engineer, overseer of the poor, and 3 assessors, all of whom are elected by the people for a term of two years. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Council was ordained to consist of “a Mayor, six Aldermen, and eighteen Councillors, to be respectively elected at such times and places, and in such manner” as those of other boroughs existing under the same acts, in common with which they “shall have, exercise, and enjoy all the powers, immunities, and privileges, and be subject to the same duties, penalties, liabilities, and disqualifications” appertaining to such positions. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Moreover, under our local self-government, under our decentralized system, nobody is above even a town officer, or a State or city official at the head of his department, however small it be, except the courts. State officers may not command town officers, nor Federal officers State officers ”

“ 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. ”

“ Thus it seems to me a District Officer should be educated to be the head of his district in all ways, not merely its judge or its schoolmaster. His other work must be lightened. Much of the work he does should not be done at all. All interference with the village should cease. If the suggestions I have to make in a later chapter as to self-government were adopted, the District Officer would soon feel the relief. He now seeks for work to do. He should try to avoid work as much as he can. ”

“ The streets, wards, and Locations in, at, or adjoining the villages or standdorpen pointed out and surveyed as places of residence and business for the said persons, which do not form part of such villages or standdorpen, and which do not fall under the local authorities or board of management, shall, as from now, form part of such villages or standdorpen, and are placed under such authority or board, be it the local Landdrost, Mining Commissioner, Responsible Clerk, or any Town Council, or Town Board. ”

“ These district chiefs sub-divide their districts into inspection districts each with a chief inspector who controls the individual and local co-operative societies, which actually sell the food to the individual buyer. ”

“ The Urban District.—Of areas within which are administered the local affairs of the urban portions of the kingdom there are several of distinct importance, although in reality the institutions of urban government are less complex than they appear on the surface to be. In the main, the legal basis of urban organization is the Municipal Corporations Consolidation Act of 1882, which comprises a codification of the Municipal Corporations Act of 1835 and a mass of subsequent and amending legislation. ”

“ The council of every city may, in a manner prescribed by law, increase or diminish the number, and change the boundaries, of the wards thereof, and shall, in the year nineteen hundred and three, and in every tenth year thereafter, and also whenever the boundaries of such wards are changed, re-apportion the representation in the council among the wards in a manner prescribed by law; and whenever the council of any such city shall fail to perform the duty so prescribed, a mandamus shall lie on behalf of any citizen thereof to compel its performance. ”

“ As to our city councils, the very name in our large cities has become malodorous. If one should explain to this audience that in German cities membership in the municipal council gives valuable social rank, an involuntary grin would ripple from the platform to the door. ”

“ With the District and Parish Councils Act just coming into force, I hoped that new life would rise amongst you, and that you would endeavour to make the most of the opportunities that presented themselves to you, and that by this time you would have been in a much better position. ”

“ Now so great a mass of men could not be administered except through this decentralization of authority, and the corollary of short service universally applied is the full territorial system, in which the whole enrolled strength of the district is subjected to the authority of the district commander. ”

“ The executive powers, which in the country districts are vested in the fogeds, in the towns are committed to the judges of the courts of first instance. The management of the affairs of the parish is placed in the hands of a council, chosen by the peasants, which deliberates on all matters which concern the parish, such as the making of new roads, the application to the central government for assistance, and the repairing of the parish church. ”

“ The city government is vested in a mayor, elected every two years, a municipal council, and the usual administrative departments, all appointed by the executive, and all, excepting that of public works, where the power is given to a single head, governed by boards. ”

“ An urban council and a rural council, if invested with the requisite power by the Local Government Board, may, and when required by order of that board must, provide for the proper cleansing of streets, and may also provide for the proper watering of streets. ”

“ In some localities the inhabitants have met together and voluntarily formed a municipal organization for the purposes of local government, adopting the form of a municipal constitution and charter, under which said officials have been appointed; and ordinances creating and regulating a police force, a fire department, a department of health, and making provision for the care of the insane and indigent poor and sick and for public schools, have been passed. ”

“ 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. ”

“ As we marched from one petty district to another, each independent from the other, governed by its own chief and council of elders, exclusive from its own peculiar customs, habits, or passion, varying differently from the other according to the age, intelligence, and disposition of the chief, our duties and rule of conduct varied. ”