inter se are conceived on similar lines.1 The administrative features of the mark are now represented in England by the parish or township, while traces of its economic aspects still survive in manorial customs and rights of common, though they are fast disappearing. In India, until the last few years, society has seemed absolutely stationary. The village community of to-day is the village community of hundreds and probably thousands of years ago. The Englishman in India is brought face to face with archaic forms of life in perfect preservation, and the study of an Indian village as Sir H. S. Maine has shown, may throw a curious light on much that is unintelligible in our own local customs and institutions. It seems strange that two branches of the Aryan race, starting with institutions so similar, should develop such different histories. Be the cause of this divergence what it may, the history of India shows that self-governing local institutions, possessed of intense vitality, may exist apart from any form of representative government, and be successfully administered by a people who have no notion of political freedom. Possibly political freedom and constitutional government are more closely connected with the existence of self-government in large towns and cities, rather than in small and feeble organisations like the village communities. The English boroughs in their time fought a good fight for English liberties. If this view be sound, an important political experiment is now being tried in India by the creation of municipalities modelled on the system of English municipal corporations. Stationary as Indian society seems, and is, there are indications of an approaching change. Western civilisation and English law, when brought into contact with native usages and institutions, act on them as powerful solvents. Silently and unconsciously their dissolution is being effected. The introduction of English legal procedure, including the taking of land in execution, has done much in many parts of India to break up the system of village communities. In many of the large towns the caste system shows signs of breaking down before the spread of English education among the richer classes.1 Other less distinctive native institutions are undergoing a similar process of decay. On the one hand, the bonds which knit native society together are being loosened. On the other, the English rulers of India, by the introduction of their municipal system and other reforms in the same direction, are trying to teach the native races the lesson of selfgovernment, and by this and other means to reconstruct native society on a more durable and beneficial basis. The outcome of this experiment is a matter which lies in gremio deorum. The problem is interesting, but the future alone can solve it. Meanwhile the experiment has this advantage: it can be watched by us in England at a safe distance, and without paying for it.

It is not worth while to enlarge on the speculative aspects of local government. The relations of local institutions with political freedom may be left to others to determine. The object of this series is a practical one-namely, to give some information to an English

citizen as to his actual rights and duties as such. In the next chapter an attempt will be made to lay before the reader a general view of our local institutions considered in the aggregate. In the succeeding chapters particular local areas, and the authorities which rule them, will be considered in detail. Before, however, taking this bird's-eye view of our subject, it may not be amiss to pause for a moment to compare one or two of the salient features of local and central government in England, and to call attention to the points of similarity and contrast.

In local affairs, as in our political constitution, the general type of government is representative. Our local institutions, like our political constitution, have developed spontaneously, and both alike bristle with anomalies. Englishmen, however, care but little for symmetry. The fact that an institution is anomalous, or a compromise in administering it illogical, does not disturb them so long as the thing works even tolerably. Take, for instance, the case of county government, which constitutes the most conspicuous exception to the rule of representative government in local matters. The governing body in the county consists of the justices, who are appointed by the Crown on the recommendation of the Lord-Lieutenant. Logically, whatever reasons there may be in favour of the representative system as regards the Central Government, and as regards other local authorities, apply equally to the county. Historically, too, the counties have every claim to an elective government. In Saxon times the system was thoroughly representative. The fact is that in the hands of the justices county government has been both pure and economical, though perhaps not always disinterested. Englishmen consequently have hitherto acquiesced in a system of class government which is wholly foreign to the generality of their institutions. Various schemes have been propounded from time to time for the re-establishment of representative county boards, but all hitherto have perished still-born. Perhaps the next venture

may be more prosperous.

As regards the franchise, the right to vote at parliamentary elections and the right to vote for purposes of local government alike rest on the possession or occupation of land or houses. No amount of mere funded property, no payment of income tax, will give a vote. As regards taxation, however, there is this difference between national taxes and local rates: the Central Government taxes both real and personal property, while rates fall exclusively on land and houses. This different incidence of burden is important because of the question of Treasury subventions for local purposes, and of the further question whether personal property should not be made to contribute to the rates. A large part of local expenditure directly affects and benefits houses and land; but such matters as poor relief and elementary education have no connection with local property. It would therefore seem fair that the expenses of such matters should fall at any rate in part on actual income as well as on visible expenditure. As regards the method of voting at parliamentary elections, every voter is on an equality with respect to the number of votes that he can give, the number depending, except in the anomalous three-cornered constituencies, on the

Mr.

number of members to be elected. At local elections various systems of voting have been introduced. In some cases-as, for instance, in local board elections--the system of plural voting prevails; and the number of votes that an elector can give varies from one to six, according to the amount at which he is rated. John Stuart Mill approves this principle in local matters. There are, he says, the same strong reasons for plurality of votes as in the case of the National Parliament, and there is not so decisive an objection in the inferior as in the higher body to making the plural voting depend on a mere money qualification; for the honest and frugal dispensation of money forms so much larger a part of the business of the local than of the national body that there is more justice as well as policy in allowing a greater proportional influence to those who have a money interest at stake.1

Another point of contrast is the position of women. At a parliamentary election a woman cannot vote, neither can she serve as a member of Parliament. But a woman may exercise all local franchises if she be qualified in other respects, and she also may fill most local offices. It has been judicially decided that a woman may be a commissioner of sewers, governor of a workhouse, keeper of a prison, gaoler, parish constable, returning officer for a parliamentary election, guardian, and overseer of the poor. In the case of the overseer, the judges rather ungraciously intimated that a man ought to be appointed, but that if there was no man available a woman was the next best thing. Women have come forward lately in a good many instances to serve on school boards, but 1 Representative Government, ch. xv.