need of Standing Committees and Closure, unless the Imperial Legislature follows the example of Congress and attempts to pass more laws than it ought to. Obstruction need never again be feared, now the Irish question has obtained a proper hearing. The obstruction period of the Parliament of 1880, against which post factum precautions are now being taken, was not the first "block of business" the House has had to deal with. It imagined it had such blocks in 1848, in 1854, and in 1861, when it appointed Select Committees to consider how they should be relieved. It is four-and-thirty years since Sir Erskine May's Grand Committees were thought to be a crying necessity. Yet the House did not adopt them, and managed, nevertheless, to get through some important legislation. The Committee of 1861, like wise men, reported that "the old rules and orders, when carefully considered and narrowly investigated, were found to be the safeguard of freedom of debate, and a sure defence against the oppression of overpowering majorities." of themselves, all the storms blew over. So it will be in the future. None but an Irish party can successfully obstruct, and they only, because they are supported by the public opinion of their country. No English obstructives would be supported by English public opinion —unless, indeed, the House of Commons, after a damaging rivalry with a reorganized Second Chamber, had fallen so into Congressional ways that a party of filibusterers would earn the thanks of their country by attracting some public attention to its doings.

All the blocks passed away

Since the foregoing pages were put into type, Mr. James Russell Lowell has, during the present April, delivered his remarkable address to the new Independent Party, which has entered American politics for the avowed purpose of reforming them. All who are interested in this topic should read this speech, with its complaints of the dwarfed and unwholesome public life, of the ineptitude and uninterestingness of Congress, of the "little men" into whose hands the machine of the Constitution puts the national destinies, and its passionate yearnings for something loftier and purer for the politics of a great people. It is, at the least, a striking symptom.

With all this, it is strange what a fascination the American Constitution continues to exercise at a distance. It is the French Chamber now, it appears, which is to be shaped after it. General Boulanger, or rather M. Laguerre, his spokesman, for him, declares that what he meant by "Revision is to make the French Constitution more like the American.

THOMAS P. GILL.

LOCAL SELF-GOVERNMENT FOR LONDON.

I

HAVE been asked by many whether Mr. Ritchie's pending measure is satisfactory as regards London. To this question I can only answer Yes, and No. It is satisfactory or not according to the point of view from which it is looked at. Regarded as a complete plan for meeting the wants of Local Government in London it is very defective. Regarded as a step towards such a plan, it is a bold and important one, in the right direction, the necessary condition of all other steps, and based upon the principle which has been consistently urged by the Municipal Reform League, and which I hold to be a thoroughly sound one. Indeed many may think, I myself am inclined to think, that the matters which must be dealt with before a scheme approaching completeness can be formed, will be handled with greater ease and with more knowledge and certainty, after a general representative assembly of Londoners has been called into existence, than before.

The importance of the present step can hardly be gauged without looking back over the course which the controversy as to London Government has taken for some years past. I have just been reading over again a paper contributed to this REVIEW in February 1882 by Mr. Scott, the veteran and respected Chamberlain of London. He did not deny that a Local Government was required for all London outside the City—that is, for about 79 out of every 80 Londoners. But in favour of the City he skilfully put forward the wide differences of opinion expressed as to the nature of the Government required; availing himself to the full of such authorities as the Commissioners of 1853-4, Mr. J. S. Mill, Mr. Charles Buxton, and Mr. Torrens, to show that the lines of reform should be sought in the direction of building up separate municipalities corresponding with the then parliamentary boroughs. He certainly was able to show an imposing

array of opinion in favour of such a plan, and against a comprehensive or single Government. And he emphasized the divergences of opinion in the words of Lord Derby, who, with his rare capacity for tersely exhibiting all sides of a subject, had put the following questions:

"Are you to have one gigantic Local Parliament ? Or are you to break up the four million inhabitants into eight or ten distinct incorporated boroughs? Or are you to create, as in the case of the London School Board, separate bodies, charged with one separate duty?"

In the month of March 1882 Mr. Torrens, then representing an important London borough, wrote as follows:

"Thoughtful and frugal men have had too much cause to distrust pretentious projects of centralization, and they naturally fear being involved afresh in liability to jobbing without limit and profusion without end. There is not a man whose experience and judgment I am used to rely on for advice regarding local affairs or legislative changes who does not share these misgivings. Local independence is, I believe, greatly preferred by sensible people to any new-fangled scheme of municipal caucus. They think the ten cities of the Thames entitled, each of them to have the management of their own affairs. They are sick of the encroachments and usurpations of Whitehall, and they know that a monster municipality would prove but a form of transition through which we should pass into the custody of a paid executivea huge cage, into which, if ever our unwieldy metropolis were goaded or beguiled, its freedom would be gone."

It would in fact be easy to show that the leading idea, which, in the minds of the authorities above referred to and in those of many Londoners, created distrust of a comprehensive Local Government, was the fear of that horrible thing called "centralization." Some thought, with Mr. Torrens, that it would subject us more to "Whitehall," not seeing that Londoners were already subject to "Whitehall," for the simple reason that an enormous multitude of human beings had come together with common wants and interests, and, having no Local Government to regulate them, were forced to resort to the National Government for that purpose. As between "Whitehall" and London, the object proposed by the advocates of a Single London Government was not centralization but the very reverse. The only possible method of taking London affairs out of the hands of the National Legislature and Executive, was to establish a Single Local Government. Ten such governments would, as regards wants and interests common to the mass of London, be just as impotent as the existing thirty-nine; and the necessity for calling on the Crown and Parliament to help in every difficulty would be as imperative as before.

Besides the groundless fear of "Whitehall," there were those who feared that a Single Government would be unable to deal efficiently with the various needs of so vast a place as London. In that sense they deprecated centralization. That view is by no means

groundless, and something will be said about it presently. But the two views were, as always happens in such cases, very much mixed up by those who did not care to distinguish between them; and in the field of argument (for I here put aside mere interested opposition) the most formidable foe of Unity of London Government was the horror of centralization, and its most formidable rival was the scheme, recommended by such high authority, of Plurality of London Governments.

Other

While Mr. Torrens was writing the sentences above quoted, I was composing an answer to Mr. Scott, which appeared in the March 1882 number of this REVIEW. During the summer of 1880 a few private persons, including myself, resolved to work in combination for the purpose of enforcing on our fellow-townsmen the conviction that London required Unity of Local Government. We called ourselves the London Municipal Reform League. Our cardinal principle was this that the common wants and interests of Londoners required a common Government-viz., a Municipal Corporation of the ordinary English type, such as exists in other great English towns. matters were left to be worked out when the main principle should have been accepted: what precise area should constitute the London Municipality; what should be deemed to be common interests requiring a common Government, and what to be local interests which might be dealt with by a more strictly local authority; what should be the relation between the common Government and the smaller local authorities; what assimilations of municipal franchise and parliamentary franchise were required; from what areas the members of the Corporation should be elected, and other matters of less moment. Some of these questions are obviously of first-rate importance, when once it is decided to frame a single Government. But until that principle is agreed upon, it were idle, or worse than idle, to raise knotty questions of detail. So we set ourselves to familiarize people's minds with the idea of a single Government, and to prove by argument and illustration how urgently Local Government is required for London, and how impossible it is to attain the end except by Unity of Government.

It seemed a sadly uphill work at first. Weak in numbers; weaker in purse; viewed with suspicion by most of the constituted local authorities, and with dire hostility by some; working on non-political lines, and so coldly looked on by those who care most for party strifes; dealing with a subject on which the great mass of Londoners were apathetic, because they had not heard it discussed as a popular topic, and so knew not its value; with powerful and wealthy interests opposed to us; with high authorities adduced against our views; strong only in argument; we endeavoured by the dissemination of explanatory literature, and the delivery of innumerable addresses

*

among clubs, debating societies, and other associations, wherever a few persons could be gathered together, to fill people's minds with the conviction-first, that there was such a question as the SelfGovernment of London, which it behoved them to attend to; and secondly, that it ought to be resolved in our sense. A few obscure agitators our enemies called us, with the customary ascription of selfish motives and predatory aims. But before long the truth began to tell our numbers increased; so did our audiences; so did the interest with which they listened. Mr. Gladstone's Ministry thought it right to take up the matter. And, though that had the effect of throwing against us the forces of the most acrimonious. opposition that has existed in my lifetime, and so of giving to the movement a party character which we did not desire, yet it excited public interest to an extent otherwise quite unattainable.

In March 1882 I argued against Mr. Scott in the tone of a man who has to convince an adverse or indifferent majority. By 1884 the balance had inclined the other way. A powerful Ministry then for the first time propounded a measure based on the principle of unity, and it was accepted by the party which supported them. Sir William Harcourt's plan was bold and statesmanlike, and, if circumstances had admitted of the passing of any large English measure, it would probably have been moulded into a very valuable scheme of Local Government. He had thoroughly convinced himself of the necessity of a Single Government for London, and, if he erred, it was in applying that principle too rigidly. I have above intimated an opinion that London is too vast in size, and its affairs too multifarious, to admit of administration in all things from a single centre. I think that there should be District Authorities as well, and that in order to induce able and responsible men to work on such bodies, they should have, as the Vestries have now, a definite legal character, and important duties to perform. Sir William Harcourt's Bill proposed to sweep the existing Vestries and Boards entirely away, and to substitute for them bodies with only such powers and functions as might be allotted to them by the Central Government. I believe that if such a scheme had passed into law it could not have been worked well. But the blemish was one easily removable in Committee; and I yet hope to see the very difficult but necessary task of readjusting the areas and functions of the lesser Local Governments of

*It must not be thought that, in attributing this importance to the work of the League, I am forgetting the labours, self-sacrifice, and public spirit of individual workers, which first broke the ground. Long before the League was formed, Mr. James Beal devoted his time and means to the advocacy of London interests, and thoroughly grasped the principle of Unity of Government. It was he who first convinced me of the importance of the principle, and incited me to work for it. Mr. Firth made himself master of the subject, and compiled a book which is a mine of knowledge upon it. And those two, with Mr. Lloyd, the honorary secretary, have been the most powerful agents in the propagandist work of the League.