THE GOOD GOVERNMENT OF LONDON. T HE debate on Tuesday on
the government of London, roused by Lord Elcho's Resolution in favour of a central Governing Connell, was exceedingly dull. Lord Elcho put all the gram blings of West London together in a very good, but rather artificial speech, and Mr. Lowe, for once in his life, pleaded strongly the cause of democracy ; but the debate is very nearly unreadable. Sir James Hogg answered Lord Elcho like an attorney defending his bill of costs, with a profusion of rubbishy details as to engineering and other difficulties, and Mr. Cross put in the regular official plea that the work of reforming London was very big, and must be undertaken in a "practical" way,—that is, by a carefully devised Cabinet measure, which everybody knew before. There was no reality in the discussion, and therefore no interest, the speakers, Lord Elcho included, carefully avoiding the facts- which, with all men out-of-doors, really dominate the question. The first of these facts is that there is no ' cry,' either in London or the country, for a thorough reform, and the second is that an immense minority, possibly a majority, of influential Londoners doubt if there ought to be one. As to the first fact, nobody, we suppose, who knows the truth will seriously dispute our assertion. If Londoners wanted a great reform, wanted it as they wanted the purification of the Thames, they would have their great reform. There is no power in the country which could stand for two Sessions against a strong metropolitan feeling about metropolitan misgovernment. Everybody is a Londoner, more or less, and Peers and Commoners are all of them Londoners par excellence, people who live in London seven months in the year, who are " poisoned " by its water, " blinded " by its gas, and " ruined " by its smoke, and if they thought these evils sufficient to justify change, they could carry any change they thought advisable. It is nonsense to say they are exempted by their wealth from sufferings which the people resent, for the " people " in London are masters of the situation. They have only to march down Pall Mall on a sunshiny afternoon, in a way which the Clubs would recognise as indicating strong feeling, and the reform of the Government of London would instantly become the first political question of the hour. The truth is, Londoners whether Peers or proletaires, care very little .about the matter, not half so much as they do about questions apparently of much inferior political importance,—the Master and Servants Act, for example, or the Permissive Bill.
But they ought to care? We are not quite so sure of that. The government of London is a question which makes a great many "hard-bitten" Liberals very conservative indeed, very doubtful whether if they could secure a central government by volition, they would shut their lips to secure it. On the whole, and with many misgivings, we are inclined to believe that the absence of a central or united government is a loss to the Metropolis, that it extinguishes municipal ambition, im- pedes the growth of municipal feeling, and slightly lowers the political capacity of every resident Londoner. We should prefer, on the whole, to see London hated and loved as Paris is, to find its citizens profess and feel a local patriotism, and to elevate the consciousness of dignity of the entire population by placing the whole area of the Metropolis under a govern- -inent closely akin to that of the Three Kingdoms, with a central elective Council, and an executive Cabinet closely watched by a Cabinet in Opposition. But we cannot blind ourselves to the magnitude of the advantages which Londoners would risk in trying that great experiment. There is nothing like London in the whole world. Here are three millions and a half of people, all crammed together like sardines, producing no food, fed by a sort of daily miracle, possessing visible and moveable wealth such as the world never saw, comprising a proletariat counted by millions, and enclosing a criminal class of thirty thousand and a potential criminal class of unknown extent, yet coerced by no visible garrison, regu- lated by no central authority, held down by no military force ; and they all are fed, and all are safe, and all are, within the limits of a most lenient legality, free. Taxes, Royal and Municipal, enormous in their aggregate volume, are levied without a disturbance, criminals who might fill a corps crarme'e are arrested by unarmed boys, and a rent equal to that of a great State is collected, and collected with savage strictness, without a functionary more imposing than a bailiff. Order I Just try to levy the rates of Shoreditch in the working-quarters of Berlin. Freedom ! There are fifty public meetings in London every month, any one of which would whiten the hair of a Continental Prefect, but which Mr. Cross hears of with- out attention, or does not hear of at all ; and we have had " demonstrations " by the dozen, any one of which would in Berlin have been escorted by the soldiery, or in Paris have presaged a revolution, but which here are barely described by the reporters. What other city on earth is there where a food-riot or a rent-riot is unknown, while forty thousand people can assemble in its most fashionable park to hear a Cardinal demand from Parliament, amid applause, what every man of the forty thousand knows before-hand will be refused ? We may talk of the gas and water as imperfect, and so they are ; but where else can everybody get them for payment, or what stops the House of Commons from making both as perfect as sanitary reformers care to ask/ Is Paris so well watered, or Berlin so well supplied with light ? Certainly the absence of a Municipality does not prevent good water and gas, for that body would be coerced by the great " interests " more strin- gently than Parliament is, for in Parliament the "interests" cannot control the House of Lords. Paving and lighting, and the like, might be improved, but where else are they at once so good and so universal, and what are paving and lighting, compared with social order stringently preserved without the bayonet or the sabre ? As for taxation, it is bad enough in some parishes, and in all its incidence is, perhaps, unscientific, but head for head, the taxation of London is not a fourth that of Paris or New York ; while, wealth for wealth, it is probablynot a sixth, and its average positive amount is not 17 per cent, on rental. The incidence of the taxation is harsh, but does anybody pro- pose, even Lord Elcho or Mr. Lowe, to entrust any Council whatever, except the House of Commons, with the correction of the incidence of London taxation We think we see the Duke of Westminster's face, or Lord Overstone's, or that of any Member of Parliament, when informed that a Municipal Council, elected practically by manhood suffrage, is in future to adjust the taxation of London according to the comparative means of the taxpayers. The truth is, that London has secured, in a very strange and almost accidental way, the essen- tial conditions of good government,—security, freedom, light taxation, and the constant attention of the ablest politicians in the kingdom, and prudent men will not lightly sanction any change which may endanger that condition of affairs. Imagine a Municipality with the power of putting on an octroi, and London consequently unfed for forty-eight hours !
We by no means assert or think that a Central Municipalit' of London would of necessity impair its prosperity, or its order- liness, or its freedom, but it would be exposed to dangers which make it necessary that the new machine should be at once very strong, very pliable, and very equably hung. The new Government, in the first place, would be visible, which the present one is not, and would, therefore, be exposed to the full blast of that dissolving criticism under which half our institu- tions are withering up, would be catechised in Parliament and analysed in the Press till it would, in all human probability, be as timid and helpless a body as ever tried to govern what is really a great kingdom in itself. Or if it escaped this danger, which would be tenfold greater for it than for any provincial capital which Parliament has no interest in watching, and which is criticised by a Press as little anonymous as that of Paris, there would arise another and a greater one. The Municipality of London would be the lever of which every agitator, jobber, and seeker of public money would try to get control, and it is by no means certain that organisations which succeed in .Anaerica must fall wholly short of their object here. They could not succeed so grandly, because they would not own the, Jwigea, but they might succeed enough to make London a cesspool of municipal corruption. If they were adroit enough to use the phrases approved by the philanthropists and physical-science men, they could launch the Metropolis on a career of expense —for our borrowing power is scarcely tested, much less
for trade has undoubtedly facilitated Mr. Chamberlain's Let us briefly state the facts of the case. Mr. Allen is the wise projects, and where expenditure is limited by a system new Head Master—at least,has been head master for two terms, of levying taxes from poor householders as well as rich ones, and no longer—of Perse Grammar School, Cambridge. During which a Council of London would strain every nerve to abolish that time, and for some years previously, Mr Maxwell, a or to modify. This money might be wisely spent, and no Cambridge MA., and a Johnian, but a Wesleyan, had been doubt much of it would be so spent, but it would be head master of the Junior School, and previously to the lavishly spent, and a great deal of it might stick by the way to separation of the schools had been a master in the undi- influential vestrymen's fingers. They behave tolerably well, vided School, discharging his duties to the great satisfaction or even very well, in their parishes—many parishes are admir- of his previous principal, Mr. Heppenstall. Mr. Heppenstall's ably governed—but their temptations would be multiplied testimonial to Mr. Maxwell is as cordial as possible. He was tenfold, both as to the possible gain and the possible immunity. under him for several years, and " during the whole of that If there is one fact impressed on all observant men by the ex- time," says Mr. Heppenstall, " I found him a zealous, con- perience of thirty years, it is that the temptation of English- scientious, pleasant, and effective helper. He declined to make speaking men, when not restrained by a strongly knit and use of the cane, when all the other Masters were allowed to partly aristocratic society, is pecuniary corruption ; and if there use it, and yet he maintained a high standard of discipline, is one doubt fostered in the same persons by the same ex- and taught his boys to work cheerfully and vigorously. He perience, it is whether democracy cares to extirpate or correct was always popular with the boys, and took part in all their that vice. This would be the grand danger of the reformed amusements and games. His methods of teaching were in- Municipality, and before it is incurred statesmen ought to be teresting and intelligent, securing the attention and arousing convinced both that the improvement to be made is great— the activity of his pupils ; nor did he fail, as many masters which we. for our parts, admit—and that the new machine is a do, to overcome the idleness or help the stupidity of the reasonably perfect one, of which, as yet, we see no proof what- weaker boys. On the whole, I have never had a master in ever. Its essence must be a Council, elected by a democracy whom I could place more confidence, or from whose work I for purposes which do not call out democratic virtues, and be- got more assistance." He goes on to relate how, when the fore it is accepted, we want to see clearly something of the school was divided, he at once saw that the proper work checks provided in every other successful constitution. It is for Mr. Maxwell would be to organise the Junior School, and futile to talk of the success of the Councils in the provincial with what ability, in his opinion, Mr. Maxwell discharged his cities, as futile as to quote the Administration of Schwyz as a difficult task. Mr. Heppenstall's testimonial ends with saying, working model for a British Commonwealth. The organisa- " I shall be glad to hear always of Mr. Maxwell's success, as tion of a village may be perfect without its suiting a great I feel sure that it will be deserved, by his unflagging zeal, his State, and there is no town in England where an active self-denial in school, his thorough devotion to a schoolmaster's Councillor cannot see everything with his own eyes in a long work, and his thorough, Christian integrity, exhibited in every day's journeying : while in London, not only would the journey detail of duty." Such was Mr. Heppenstall's view ; and Mr. take weeks, but there is no single man living who would know Allen, who is evidently a candid man, as well as a supercilious
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