its enact ment; its great defect; met four times a year, not only to attend to the minor judicial work of the county, but also to perform all local legislative and administrative work, including the levying of the county tax, the management of roads and bridges, and the grant of liquor licenses. As all the greater towns within the counties had won through the Municipal Corporations Acts the right to regmotive for ulate their local affairs through representative municipal councils chosen by their own citizens, it was considered no more than just that those who dwelt outside of the towns should be endowed with the same privilege. In order to accomplish that end was enacted the Ritchie Act, 1888, which has given to the English counties elective councils organized on the same general plan as those of the municipalities.1 The first effort at local government reform thus made was, however, very incomplete, because the formation of subordinate district councils for subdivisions of the county contemplated by the act was never carried out. In order to complete the scheme by supplying that deficiency Mr. Fowler introduced his measure, which passed as the Local Government Act,2 1894, whose ment Act, primary purpose was to transform the vestries into district councils, and thus to restore local autonomy under a purely democratic system, similar in many respects to the township its leading system of the United States. By that act "A parish council was, at the appointed day in the year 1894, called into existence in every parish situate in a rural sanitary district which had a population of three hundred or upwards at the census of 1891. Where the population amounts to one hundred but is less than three hundred, a parish council is to be established by means of an order of the county council, if the parish meeting so resolves; while in parishes where the population is less than one hundred, the county council may establish a parish council with the consent of the parish meeting. Parishes may also be grouped under a common parish council by an order of the county council, but not without the consent of each member of the group.' "14 Thus "the hierarchy of local authorities is thorities is complete by the creation of parish councils for rural parishes. complete;”... The system of Local Government which is established by Local Govern 1894; provisions; "the hierarchy of local au 1 Shaw, Municipal Government in Great Britain, p. 240. 2 56 & 57 Vict. c. 73. 8 Shaw, Municipal Government in Great Britain, pp. 254, 255, 257. The Local Govt. Act, 1894, Macmorran and Dill, Introd. p. xxxv. this Act is founded upon the principle of the direct popular representation of parishes. For this purpose an electorate is formed by taking the registers of parliamentary and of local government (county council) electors which relate to a parish so as to form a list of 'parochial electors,' and the right of a person to vote at an election under this Act, whether of parish or district councillors or guardians, will depend upon whether his name is or is not inserted upon the list of parochial electors for the parish or ward which forms or is included in the area for which the election is held. . . . For the purposes of enfranthis Act, a married woman who would be qualified to be an of married elector, but for the disability of coverture, will be entitled to women. have her name inserted on any local government register and to vote at the election of any of the authorities whose election is governed by this Act." 1 chisement of counties mentary of ancient courts limited to shillings; While the ancient courts and magistrates of the county have Subdivision thus been forced to yield to new institutions, the county itself for judicial as a local division for judicial and parliamentary purposes has and parlianot escaped the reorganization and dividing hand of modern purposes; innovation. Through a construction given to a statute of 1278, the contentious jurisdiction of the ancient county courts, jurisdiction which had long ago ceased to do much business, was confined county to forty shillings, a limit that became narrower and narrower as that sum sank in relative value.2 Thus this inadequate pro- forty vision for local justice in small matters lingered on until 1846,3 new system when a new system of county courts was provided by statute whose jurisdiction, fixed first at £20, was soon raised to £50 ganized in ordinary actions for debt or damage, with the right to en- of 1846; force certain contracts even when as much as £500 is at stake. Under the simple procedure that prevails in these courts an their simple procedure; intelligent suitor can conduct his own cause, which is usually heard by a judge alone, who decides both law and fact. With his leave in any case, and without it in any claim that exceeds 1 The Local Govt. Act, 1894, Macmorran and Dill, Introd. pp. xxxi, xxxii. 2 "The discovery of Mexico and Peru altered the meaning of several rules of English law, the letter of which remains unchanged; it extended the county franchise and the sphere of capital crimes; it also made our petty tribunals very petty indeed." - Maitland, Justice and Police, Citizen Ser. p. 22. 8 County Court Act, 1846, 9 & 10 Vict. c. 95. For the several amendments to this act, see Lely and Foulkes, Judicature Acts, pp. 608-612. The most important amendments are those made in 1850, 1856, 1867, 1868, 1875. of county courts or under act trial by jury; cal areas; divided, of county lines, into 491 districts; which are grouped in £5, a trial by a jury, to be composed of only five jurors, may be demanded. The connection between these statutory creations and the ancient county courts in which the freeholders, under the presidency of the sheriff, were the judges is, however, little more than in name. The new county courts differ from the old not only as to procedure and limit of jurisdiction, geographi- but also as to the geographical areas over which such jurisdiction extends. The ancient county court was a court for the whole county; the new is a court for an arbitrary subdivision. all England of a county. By the original act all England, except the City regardless of London, was subdivided regardless of county lines into 491 county court districts, which by orders in council have been somewhat increased. The districts are grouped in circuits, to each of which is usually assigned a single judge. Each district circuits; has generally but one place at which its court is held; and the rule is that any one may be sued in the court of that district county cut in which he dwells or carries on business.1 As heretofore up into divisions explained, the counties have also been cut up into divisions for for electoral electoral purposes. The immemorial right of each county to purposes; have two parliamentary representatives has been forced to give "single-seat way to the new "single-seat system," under which the counties have been broken into divisions in proportion to their population, each division being entitled to return one member.2 Origin of The feeble tentative effort that has grown into the existing the system of national system of national education in England was made in the very education : year in which the reform bill of 1832 passed into law. Then it was that the state recognized for the first time its duty to aid at least in the work of instructing those by whom it was to be governed. The beginning consisted of an annual grant of grant first £20,000, made at the instance of the executive government applied through two for public education, which for six years was applied by the religious societies; treasury through two great religious societies, upon certain conditions, in aid of local efforts for the building of schoolhouses for the poor. In order to give harmonious direction to the work, by an order in council made in 1839 a special committee of that body was charged with its control, and a special staff of officers and inspectors engaged to aid in its execution. system." annual how Educa- was con stituted; 1 For a good commentary on the act, see Maitland, Justice and Police, Citizen Ser. pp. 20-30. 2 See above, p. 548. Education embodied Educa Thus the Education Department of the privy council was constituted. Not, however, until 1870 did this primary effort, which only assumed to aid the work of national education, develop into the wider scheme under which the state then undertook to "complete the voluntary system, and to fill up the gaps" that might be found to exist in it in any community. Such Mr. Forster declared to be the object of his Elementary Elementary Education Act, that became law in August of that year, Act of 1870; founding a system which has prevailed without fundamental change down to the present time. By that act England and scheme Wales were mapped out into school districts, based as a general in it; rule upon the principle that every borough under the Municipal Corporations Acts constitutes a district, every parish not in a borough a district, the Education Department being authorized at the same time to combine two or more of such districts into a new whole. Every school district must be under the control of a local authority known either as a School Board or as a School Attendance Committee. Whenever the duty of local authorities fail to supply sufficient public school accom- tion Demodation, it becomes the duty of the Education Department, when local partment after due notice, to cause such a board to be elected for the authorities fail; district, and at such election every ratepayer has the right to vote. A board thus constituted becomes a corporation, and its members hold office for three years. The school fund sources of administered by such boards at first consisted (1) of parliamen- fund; tary grants in aid of permanent improvements; (2) of fees paid by children; (3) of the proceeds of a compulsory local rate, which the board can collect with the aid of the proper rating authority. In boroughs such rate is levied as a part of how the the borough rate; in parishes outside of boroughs as a part of atte the poor rate. As a settlement of the religious difficulty that boroughs had long been a stumbling-block in the way of a uniform and settlement compulsory system of education, a compromise was embodied religious in the act in the form of a "conscience clause," that permitted a "conchildren to come for secular instruction, although they were science withdrawn from all religious teaching. With that understanding the school boards were permitted to try the experi 133 & 34 Vict. c. 75, called "the charter of national education. That act has been several times amended by subsequent statutes, but only for the purpose of supplementing and working the school is and parish; of the difficulty; clause;" how far the system is com pulsory; Attendance Committees ; ment, new in England, of compelling children of certain ages to attend school, under certain conditions, through by-laws made with the consent of the Education Department. But under the act of 1870 a school board could be established in a district only in the event that adequate school accommodation was not supplied by voluntary effort; and in the event that the vote of those who would be electors went in favor of such a act of 1876 board. To meet such contingencies a supplementary act was providing for School passed in 1876, providing that where no school board exists a School Attendance Committee shall be constituted for the purpose, among other things, of enforcing school attendance. Still another act was necessary, however, to make compulsory attendance, under strictly defined rules, the general law for the whole country. "To do this was the object of the short Mr. Mun- but comprehensive act passed by Mr. Mundella in 1880. That act made the framing of bye-laws, which had before been optional in the case of School Boards, an imperative duty for every Board which had not already framed them; and in the case of School Attendance Committees, not only was the necessity for the previous requisition of the ratepayers done away with, but it became the duty of these Committees - and not merely a matter of choice-that they should frame bye-laws forthact of 1891 with."1 The most important act upon the general subject since providing that time is perhaps that of 1891, introducing what is called education." the system of "free education," under which the parent has been relieved of the obligation to pay fees. della's act of 1880; for "free Creation of in munici The advance of the science of public hygiene led to the enactment of the Public Health Act of 1848, which authorized the crown to appoint a General Board of Health, with power to create through orders in council local boards, in some cases upon its own motion, and in others on the petition of how created the ratepayers. In municipal boroughs the town council was constituted the local board, while the Metropolis was excepted cepting the from the terms of the act altogether. After the original Metropolis; scheme had been amended and extended piecemeal by many Health Act subsequent enactments, it was repealed by the Public Health the present Act of 1875, which embodied at that date the entire English sanitary code; sanitary code. The two facts to be specially noted in connec pal bor oughs, ex Public of 1875, 1 Craik, The State in its Relation to Education, Citizen Ser. p. 117. See, also, Owen's Education Acts Manual, 15th ed. Introd. |