Great Britain has no general system of self-government. A certain number of cities and towns have been from time to time incorporated by the crown, or have successfully claimed the privilege as existing from time immemorial, either because in fact they have governed themselves from very ancient times, or because they have had such a representation in parliament as led to a presumption of their having been incorporated like the rest. The other urban districts have been regarded as mere “upland towns” or populous townships, with nothing but a parochial organization, or the faint semblance of municipal institutions which grew out of the administration of fairs and markets. These are now comprised in the various local government districts existing under the Public Health Acts, “lighting and watching districts” constituted under an Act passed for the purpose in 1833, and improvement districts governed under the powers given by a number of local Acts. Provision has been made by the Acts which regulate these corporations for the grant of powers of self-government to new municipal boroughs subject to the approval of the committee of the privy council. The making of corporations, however, is regarded as one of the highest prerogatives of the crown, and the legislature has always been careful to avoid unnecessary interference with the right; the functions of the committee are therefore confined to the allowance or refusal of municipal powers as constituted by statute, the right of the crown to make corporations of other kinds being left in theory untouched.

The term “municipal borough” was introduced when the larger corporations were reformed in 1835 to denote a place to which the new powers of self-government were applied, whether such a place were a parliamentary borough or not. It has now become nearly equivalent to “municipality” owing to the provisions of the Act of 1883 for extinguishing the less important of the small unreformed municipalities, and for bringing the rest within the purview of the Municipal Corporations Act, 1882, by which the provisions of the statute of 1835 and its forty-two amending Acts were consolidated. The meaning of the word “borough” has undergone many changes. It seems at first to have denoted a walled town or city, but it was soon applied especially to such of them as possessed some kind of organization for the transaction of the local business. At a later period the term implied the right to be represented in parliament. This may be illustrated by the proceedings in the case of Torrington in the reign of Edward III. This place, whether a “burgh” or a mere “vill,” had in fact sent burgesses to parliament, but after it was determined that such representation was improper the town was omitted from the category of boroughs. In summoning the commons to parliament each sheriff was directed to procure the election of two citizens from every city and two burgesses from every borough in his bailiwick. But it soon became the practice to omit places which had been represented, and to include others with no title to the privilege except their situation on the royal demesnes, or their political or commercial importance. It resulted that the word “borough” came to denote only those places which were usually represented in parliament, whether they were walled towns or not, and whether they had or had not received charters of incorporation; and in course of time it was taken for granted that every parliamentary borough must have been incorporated at some ancient time, or in other words was entitled to the privileges of a borough by prescription. The first Reform Act changed the meaning of the word again by depriving the smaller boroughs of their parliamentary functions and reducing them to the same position as those districts which were known as boroughs in a popular sense, as having originally had a representation which had been lost, or as being important places enjoying municipal rights under charters like those which had been granted to the parliamentary boroughs.

We shall now proceed to describe the ordinary constitution of an English municipal borough, omitting the small municipalities which are now in course of extinguishment, and for other reasons omitting the city of London, which, on account of its singular importance and its peculiar circumstances, will probably become without much delay the subject of separate legislation (see London).

These boroughs are governed by corporations composed in each case of a mayor, aidermen, and burgesses, acting by a council elected by the general body of qualified corporators. If the borough is a city, the burgesses are described as the “citizens.” With a few exceptions arising under local Acts, the following description applies to all the municipal boroughs in England and Wales, similar provisions having been made for the boroughs of Scotland and Ireland (see vol. iv. p. 63) by Acts of Parliament passed for those parts of the United Kingdom. The powers and duties of the council are defined by the Municipal Corporations Act, 1882, which forms a complete municipal code. The number of councillors varies from twelve to forty-eight according to the size of the borough, and in the case of a new incorporation the number is fixed by a provision in the charter. The qualification of a councillor is to be an enrolled resident burgess, or, if not resident within the district, residing within 15 miles of the borough and having in either case the property qualification required by the Act, provided that he is not a clergyman or a regular dissenting minister, or interested in any office, place, or contract with which the corporation is concerned. The qualification of a burgess is to be enrolled on the burgessroll as the rate-paying occupier of a house or other building in the borough or within 7 miles distance from it. Women may be burgesses, but are not qualified for corporate office. In many boroughs there are ancient classes of freemen qualified as such by birth, servitude, or marriage (and formerly in many cases qualified by gift or purchase); but these freemen as such have not the rights of burgesses, though they are entitled to the parliamentary franchise and to their share in the charities and corporation property under titles accruing to their class before the reform of 1835. The qualification of an aiderman is the same as that of a councillor, and the mayor is chosen from the aidermen, or councillors, or persons qualified for such positions.

The councillors hold office for three years, one-third of their number being annually renewed by ballot. If the borough is divided into wards, an aiderman acts as returning-officer for the elections in each ward; if not, the mayor acts as the returning-officer for the borough. Municipal elections fall within the provisions of the Corrupt Practices Act, 1883. The aidermen hold office for six years, one-half of their number retiring every three years in rotation. The mayor holds office for one year. His election is the first business at the quarterly meeting held on the 9th day of November, when the amount of his remuneration is fixed by the council. He is the only member of the corporation who receives a salary. The council chooses the mayor and aidermen and appoints the officers of the corporation, as the town-clerk and treasurer, the sheriff when the borough is a county of itself, and the coroner and clerk of the peace when it has separate quarter-sessions. The council appoints such general and special committees as may be required, and has the general management of the corporate property, subject to the supervision of the treasury; it makes all necessary byelaws, subject to disallowance by the privy council if necessary. With exceptions arising from the provisions of local Acts, the council regulates the police force, the lighting and watching of the borough, the management of markets and burial-grounds, and the execution of the laws relating to public health. The expenses are defrayed out of the borough fund, which includes the income of the general corporate estate, supplemented by a boroughrate paid out of the poor-rate or assessed upon a similar basis. A watch-rate, if required, may be levied on the whole borough or on a selected portion of the district. When expenditure is required for objects of a permanent character, the council is empowered to raise the amount by loans, charged on the rates and repayable by instalments, subject to the approval of the treasury or other public department entrusted with the control of the matter, according to the nature of the improvement required. The whole of the accounts are audited by borough auditors, of whom one must be a councillor appointed by the mayor, and the other two elected by the burgesses from persons qualified to be councillors. A return is made to the Local Government Board of the receipts and expenditure for the year, and an abstract of all these returns is laid every year before parliament. Some control over the expenditure is also reserved to the High Court of Justice by a provision that all orders for payment must be signed by three councillors and the town-clerk, and that any such order may be moved by certiorari into the Queen’s Bench Division. The aidermen have no greater powers than other councillors, excepting that they may act as the returning-officers for wards as above mentioned, and that an aiderman may act for the mayor if he is temporarily unable to discharge his duty and has not appointed a deputy. The mayor is the head of the corporation, and is ex officio a magistrate for the borough and a member of the watch committee. He is the returning-officer at parliamentary elections, and acts with two elected revising assessors as the revising officer if the borough is not represented in parliament. His office is vacated by death or bankruptcy, and must be filled up with all convenient speed after any such vacancy occurs. The last ex-mayor is also ex officio a magistrate for the borough.

Where the borough has a separate commission of the peace, the borough justices, with the last-mentioned exceptions, are appointed by the crown. A separate commission does not of itself exempt the borough from the concurrent jurisdiction of the county justices. A stipendiary magistrate may be appointed by a secretary of state on the application of the council, and when appointed he is ex officio a justice for the borough. When the borough has a separate court of quarter-sessions the recorder is the judge, but in certain cases may appoint an assistant or deputy; the recorder must be a barrister of five years’ standing, and is appointed by the crown on the recommendation of the home secretary; the recorder is also ex officio a justice for the borough. When the borough has such a court it ceases to be liable to the county-rate, but must contribute to the expenses arising from prosecution and conviction of prisoners from the borough at the assizes. In the case of boroughs which were liable before 1832 to contribute to the county-rate, a contribution to the expenses of the county is still required. Subject to an exception as to judges and assessors appointed before 1835, and to the provisions of various local Acts, the recorder is the judge of any civil court existing in the borough by prescription.

We shall now discuss more generally the origin of these municipalities upon the Continent as well as in the United Kingdom. The conception of the borough as it now exists has obviously been copied from the Roman municipium. As to England, however, the coincidence is in one sense accidental, inasmuch as it had a municipal system before the lawyers adopted the notion of a corporation from the civilians, though it may be true that no such system could grow up without being influenced by ideas which were familiar to the churchmen. In some parts of the West the Roman system appears to have lived on without an actual breach of continuity. The “curia” seems to have continued in the cities of Provence until the outbreak of the great revolution. At Treves and Cologne “the Roman language perished, but the institutions survived;” and the libertas Romana or full body of municipal privileges was extended gradually to other cities on the Rhine and the trading communities of Holland and Brabant. It is possible also that some relics of the imperial administration may have continued in southern Italy and in a few of the Lombard cities. One element at least in the corporation of Paris can be traced back to the Nautae Parisiaci, a college of merchants established in the first period of the empire. But the English municipalities are in no sense a legacy from the imperial times, or a continuation of the system which prevailed in the cities of Britain, even in the few instances, as in London, York, and Exeter, where there may have been an unbroken succession of occupancy. Almost all the towns were destroyed in the course of the English conquest, and some which became important again, as Bath, Cambridge, and Chester, are known to have lain waste for centuries. In other instances the English kings soon learned to hold their courts in the fortresses, and to set up their farmsteads in the desolated palaces, or elsewhere a Roman camp may have been taken as a convenient point for a garrison, which in time became a “civil centre” and the site of a municipal borough.

The French municipalities can be traced to several distinct sources of origin. The chief activity was in the north; the southern cities kept their Roman traditions or imitated the Italian model, as those in the east endeavoured to secure the same privileges as the mercantile communities on the Rhine; in the central provinces the towns for the most part retained the organization of the parish, and were rather bourgeoisies or privileged market-towns than communes with powers of self-government. The rise of the communes began under Philip I., and they became general in the 13th century. The first charter was granted to Le Mans in 1072, and another to Cambray in 1076; these were followed by grants to Laon, Beauvais, Amiens, Soissons, and many other places; and similar privileges were granted in the 12th century by the counts of Flanders, the dukes of Burgundy, and other princes,—the general effect of the grants being to fix the lord’s rent or tribute, to commute the military service, and to give jurisdiction to magistrates either freely elected or chosen by the townsmen in conjunction with their feudal lords. Specimens of these charters can be seen in the Ordonnances des Rois, Kemble’s Anglo-Saxons, and Bouthors’s Coutumes locales du Baillage d ’ Amiens. They show us a political revolution directed against the feudal lord by townsmen associated in merchant-guilds or sworn into a new sort of brotherhood. To break the oath of loyalty to the commune is a crime of the gravest kind. “If any of us aid or comfort our enemies he is guilty of lèse-commune, and we will pull down his house, if we can. . . . Whoever wounds with weapon any of his fellows shall lose his fist or pay nine livres” (Amiens). “The men shall take what wives they please, first asking leave; if their lord refuse, and a man take a wife from another lordship, he shall pay but five sous for a fine. Every one living within the district shall take the communal oath or answer with house or goods” (Soissons). These charters are important because the communa of London was founded under Richard I. in direct imitation of the French example, and soon became the type of the independence which the other boroughs continually struggled to attain; and, as in France, the great men deplored the revolt as tumor plebis, timor regis, tepor sacerdotii, while the kings for their own purposes encouraged the popular movement. And in the same way Γhilip Augustus and his successors were so ready to protect the communes that they eventually claimed and obtained an immediate seigniory over all the chartered boroughs to the exclusion of any private lords to whom the towns had formerly belonged. Another point of importance lies in the fact that the lords not only settled the local laws of inheritance and other customs “running with the land,” but sometimes changed them at the townsmen’s request, as if it were merely an affair between lord and tenant. There are English examples of the same practice, which seems to have been not entirely discontinued until the reign of Edward I. A prerogative of this nature was exercised by the archbishop in Kent, and Simon de Montfort in 1255, at the request of his burgesses of Leicester, abolished the custom of descent to the youngest son. Fitzosberne appears by Domesday Book to have granted a separate set of customs to his “Frenchmen” in Hereford, and a difference of the same kind which existed at Stafford and Nottingham must have been caused by similar grants; in the latter place it was found on a trial in the reign of Edward III. that there were two districts in the town, the one called the “French borough” and the other the “English borough,” where descent was to the youngest son, a circumstance which gave its name to the custom of “borough-English.”

Municipal freedom was granted in Spain at an earlier date and on an ampler scale, as beseemed the poverty of the kings, the weakness of the nobles, and the constant danger from the Moors. The Visigothic laws were imbued with the principles of the Theodosian code, and it was easy for the Spaniards to regard the incorporated cities as bodies politic of the highest importance. The first instance of the erection of such a community was the grant in 1020 of a code of privileges to Leon. Such grants were treaties between the king and the chartered towns, by which the latter obtained fixed laws, extensive territories, and the choice of their own magistrates in return for a tribute and universal service in the militia. The king appointed a governor to take charge of the fortified places, but in almost every other respect the inhabitants governed themselves. This democratic constitution was after a time impaired by the claims of the knights or “Caballeros” to a monopoly of office; but what actually led to its destruction was the increase in the power of the crown. The disorders inseparable from popular elections were declared, as in England under the Tudors, to be a reason for vesting the government in a small and close corporation, which was soon found to be quite amenable to the influence and dictation of the court.

The municipalities of every country have a separate history of their own, and it is difficult to find any general law for determining their methods of development. According to their opportunities the oppressed wear out their conquerors’ patience and too often become oppressors in their turn: as the state becomes more complex the old confederacies are broken up, and the scattered communities are reduced to order by a central government, and as privilege begins to disappear the towns are regulated by a common set of rules, or the whole country, as in France, is parcelled out again into a new series of communes or corporate districts. In Spain, as we have seen, the needs of the state gave immediate freedom to its defenders. In Italy the cities grew too soon into a crowd of independent republics. The history of Lincoln and Exeter and the cities of the Danelagh shows that “the tendency of the great cities of England was towards a more than municipal independence” (Freeman, Engl. Towns, p. 206). If these movements had not been checked by the Norman Conquest, English history might have been “like that of the imperial kingdoms.” But, as this event turned out, there is little in the...