INTRODUCTION. THE aim and object of the writer of the pages here presented to the public, being practical utility, he will abstain from discussing minutely those often agitated questions, the origin and gradual growth of municipal corporations; nor will he prefix to the act now passed for their regulation, a continuous synopsis of its contents. He will only endeavour to draw attention to such parts of the act as he deems most important, and also as being novel, most liable to misconstruction; more particularly to those parts which set forth the new municipal constitution, and to this rather than to the powers and duties to be exercised by its members, when completely organized. Whatever may be the real antiquity of municipal corporations, it has been usual to consider the period of their first probable existence to be at least as early as the reign of Richard the First. (1) It is commonly said of many municipal corporations, that they claim to be such by prescription, a phrase which, taken strictly, imports an existence from the earliest time of legal memory, which reaches back to the reign of that sovereign; although in practice, it is intended only to imply that their origin cannot be shewn to have been at a later period. The nature of their origin and growth is well expressed by Mr. Kyd, who observes, in the preface to his excellent treatise, "that at their first introduction, corporations were little more than an improvement on the communities which had grown up imperceptibly without any positive institution; and that for a considerable period, the shade which distinguished the one from the other, was of a touch so delicate as to require the most minute attention, and the most discerning eye to distinguish." (2) These observations of Mr. Kyd are made with reference to corporations in general, but they are particularly applicable to the case of municipal corporations. The difficulty in ascertaining the precise time and manner of their growth, arises in a (1) See on this point, Kyd on Corporations, vol. i. p. 2, and the very valuable work of Mr. Serjeant Merryweather, and Mr. Stephens on the History of Boroughs and Municipal Corporations. (2) Kyd on Corporations, Introduction, p. 2. great degree from the fact that the law with respect to the rights, privileges, and liabilities of collective bodies of men was not always so strictly and precisely defined as it now is. For instance, it is now a characteristic privilege of a corporation, and of no other collective body of men, to be capable of taking and transmitting lands in perpetual succession; but this privilege does not appear to have been at all times peculiar to a body of men expressly incorporated. (1) Again, the capacity of suing and being sued in its collective capacity, is another characteristic of a corporation; but in ancient times there are many instances of other collective bodies of men suing and being sued in the same manner; (2) and the now daily prac (1) See instances quoted in Kyd on Corporations, vol. i., introduction, p. 4, &c. See amongst other instances-a grant of Middlesex, by King Henry I. to the citizens of London and their heirs, at the farm of 300l., and that the citizens of London might place whom they would of themselves to be sheriff. The word heirs in this grant appears to be equivalent to successors;" for it is manifest that it cannot be, and never has been taken in the sense in which it is ordinarily understood in private grants. It is stated by Mr. Serjeant Merryweather, and Mr. Stephens, in the work above referred to, pp. 677, 860, that the first charter of incorporation to a municipal body, was granted to Kingstonupon-Hull, in the reign of Henry VI. by which it is presumed, is meant that it is the first charter in which words of express incorporation are found, for in p. 857 of the same book is recited a grant by King Edward the Third to the burgesses of Kingston-upon-Hull, their heirs and successors (amongst other things) that they might elect yearly from among themselves one mayor and four bailiffs. (2) See the instances in Kyd on Corporations, Introduction, p. 10, &c. |