OLD AND NEW MUNICIPALITIES. Whether it is true that municipal government has failed in the United States, in the sense that it suffers from any fair comparison with European municipal government, or whether the conditions of American city life have been and are such that our system is on the whole the most successful of any known to political science, is a question involved in great doubt. But it is certainly admitted by all that new problems are confronting American municipalities, and that radical changes will be found needful. The present situation is far from satisfactory. Politically, economically and legally, chaos reigns in our municipal affairs. Questions of structure, organization and function are everywhere being raised, and, while the progress of municipal reformers has been very gratifying, at least so far as practical politics and the elimination of the spoils system are concerned, the deeper aspects of the great problem have hardly received the consideration they require. According to one competent investigator, all attempts at municipal reform. must depend of necessity upon an accurate delimination of the sphere of action of municipalities. What is a municipality? What are its powers, duties and rights? What relation does it sustain to the State as a whole? Has it abused its powers, or has it been hindered by a lack of sufficient authority? Has it attempted too little or too much? And if it has failed in anything, to what must the failure be ascribed? The following discussion will attempt to answer a few of the questions, but in order to grasp or realize the nature and magnitude of the modern municipal problem, it is necessary to have a tolerably clear conception of the historical career and development of this important species of political organization-the self-governing city. Broadly speaking, the origin of municipal corporations may be said to be the same everywhere. It is to be found in the grant of a series of valuable privileges of a certain kind to certain sections of the country in which were to be found comparatively large aggregations of people. Originally there were no municipal corporations throughout the Teutonic world. Indeed there was no municipal government from a legal point of view. In early Germany, the only actual cities that existed were of Roman origin, and generally, with the overthrow of Rome, what had been municipalities, became legally simply parts of the country or duchy in which they were situated. The inhabitants of such sections were, until the grant to them of special privileges, like the inhabitants of outlying and rural districts, subject to the governmental power of the duke or count. But soon the peculiar social and economical conditions of the thickly populated districts began to differ from those of the rural districts, and this difference brought with it a change in the law by which cities were to be governed. * So far as ancient Greece and Rome are concerned, the bond of the association called the city, which was merely an alliance of several independent tribes, was religious. Sometimes the union of several tribes was voluntary, while sometimes it was imposed by the superior force of a tribe, or even of a powerful leader. But the city was really a confederation. None of the groups lost its individuality or independence, and each retained its subordinate worships and festivals. Above these, however, was established one form of worship common to all. In politics numerous little assemblies or governments continued to act, while above them a common government was founded. At first the ancient city had no right to interfere in the private affairs of the tribes, curies and families. Private law was allowed to survive. Sentiments and needs, chiefly of a religious nature, brought little groups together, but each jealously guarded its rights while recognizing a central government of the city. Of course, not all the cities of antiquity that are known to us were formed in precisely the same manner. Municipal organizations, once discovered or evolved, it was not necessary that each new city should pass over the same long route. When a chief, quitting a city already organized, went to found another, he took with him, commonly, only a small number of his fellowcitizens. With them he associated other men from other parts and even from different races. But he naturally organized the new city after the model of the old. He divided his followers into tribes, establishing sacrifices and ceremonies for each, and made each sovereign within a certain sphere. This was due to the fact that no other type of society was known to him or to any of his contemporaries, as is shown by Plato's imaginative description of a model city. The city was omnipotent, and the individual belonged to it body and soul. The city had complete control over education. The city had the right to prevent free or private instruction by the side of its own. It regulated dress and exercised its tyranny even in the smallest things. Personal liberty was unknown. The government changed forms several times, and was called by turns monarchy, aristocracy, democracy, but none of the revolutions responsible for these changes gave the individual personal liberty. To vote, to name magistrates, to be a citizen, this was called liberty, but the man was the slave of the city in peace as well as in war. The organization of the Roman city was highly aristocratic, and its principal features were as follows: * "Municipal Home Rule," by Frank J. Goodman, pp. 11-12. In each municipum was a senate, called an ordo or curia. The senate really constituted the city. To it the power of government belonged, and it alone administered the town, with the exception of a few extraordinary cases where the mass of the population was called upon to take part in municipal affairs. This curia was composed of a certain number of families inscribed upon a register. Their number was small, varying probably between one and two hundred. Not only was the municipal power thus concentrated, but it was hereditary in those families who were invested with it. When once they formed a part of the senate, they never left it. Since, however, the charges of the cities went on increasing, while the extinction of families rendered it necessary to fill vacancies, a method by which the curia could become recruited was essential. The method was very simple and utterly undemocratic. The senate recruited itself. The new senators were not elected by the mass of the population; it was the senate itself which selected and introduced them into its body. The magistrates of the city, elected by the senate, named the new families that were deemed rich and influential enough to be incorporated in the curia. The fall of the Roman municipal system, the transformation of the Roman city, does not concern us here. It is important, however, to note that the notion of the municipal corporation as it now exists has been substantially copied from the Roman municipality. In some parts of the west, indeed, the Roman system appears to have lived on without a breach of continuity. At Treves and Cologne, Roman institutions survived, and the body of municipal privileges was gradually extended to other cities on the Rhine, and the trading communities of Holland and Brabant. The English municipalities can not, however, strictly be regarded as a legacy from the imperial times, because almost all the towns were destroyed in the course of the English conquest. In early English history the borough is essentially a place of defence. Of the civil constitution of the boroughs before the Norman conquest, but little is known. It is certain that the tendency of the great English cities was toward more than a municipal independence. An aristocratic commonwealth was governed by twelve hereditary judges, size and wealth of place entitling them to be treated as separate hundreds. But the ordinary boroughs were without any power of self-government. Each borough was administered as if it were a cluster of townships, and was subject to obligations of tenure which bound the burgesses to lordships outside the walls. Courts were held by the reeve, who was always answerable to an external authority. When municipal rights were granted by the Plantagenet Kings, the reeve was replaced by the "mayor," whose appearance, indeed, signalizes the establishment of an independent commune. An important source of municipal privilege is likewise found in the institution of the guilds. They acquired in time the control of local commerce, and became in fact the governing body of the town. Another valuable franchise was obtained when the boroughs obtained a separate assessment of their dues to the crown. When the dues were assessed in perpetuity, the burgesses were regarded as freeholders by burgage tenure. Municipal independence was made complete when the sheriff's jurisdiction had been ousted and the burgesses were allowed to elect |