What Happened to the English Parish

Abstract

THE examples of Bethnal Green and Manchester-to which many others might be added-will suffice to give the reader an impression of the disjointed and confused state of local government, brought about by the uncertainty of the law and the divided jurisdiction of rival authorities. We have now to trace the development, out of this chaos, of a local government at once practicable, authoritative and moderately democratic. The most notable examples of this type or stage that we have as yet discovered are the ancient seaport of Liverpool, which at this time was rapidly growing in population and wealth, and certain of the urban districts adjacent to London, such as Woolwich, Greenwich, Chelsea and Kensington. One condition common to all these cases was the practical withdrawal whether by abstention or absence of any hostile interference by such authorities as the justices of the peace or the courtleet. The extra-legal constitutions thus developed varied in detail from parish to parish, but resembled each other in certain main features. They all systematized the franchise and procedure of their constituent public meetings; they all created a representative body, to which the actual administration was confided; they all developed a salaried executive staff, effectively controlled by the representative body; and this representative body itself remained intimately connected with, and genuinely dependent on, the whole body of constituents, by the medium either of authoritative public meetings or the referendum. We can best describe this later evolution of the vestry, not by taking the history of any one parish or by confining ourselves to any one decade, but by dealing separately