The richest and most influential per sons, however, being generally chosen by the inhabitants at large to the highest places in the municipal councils, were often tempted to seek the perpetuation of their authority without the necessity of frquent appeals to the popular voice, and even to usurp powers which it had not de legated at all. Such usurpations how ever were often vigorously resisted by the community at large ; and the contests were sometimes so violent and obstinate as to lead to bloodshed. But in course of time, the crown itself, so long indiffer ent to the details of municipal arrange ments, found sufficient motives for encou raging these endeavours of internal par ties to form close ruling bodies, irrespon sible to the general community.
We find faint indications of this policy in several of Henry VIL's charters ; as in one to Bristol in 1499, establishing a self-elective council of aldermen; who yet, though justices, had no exclusive power of municipal government. But the fierceness of religious dissension, which divided the whole nation at the dose of the following reign, made the management of the House of Commons an object of primary importance to either Catholic or Protestant successor to the crown. This therefore was the sera of the most active exercise of the prescrip tively discretional power of the sheriffs to determine within their several baili wicks, in issuing their precepts for a general election, which of the municipal towns should, and which should not, be held to be parliamentary boroughs. To arbitrarily omit any of the larger towns, or even of the smaller ones, which in public estimation had a prescriptive right to be summoned, was too open an attack on the freedom of parliament to be now ventured upon. The calling of this right into action in boroughs where in it had lain dormant from the begin ning, or, though once exercised, had fallen into disuse from alleged poverty. decay, or other causes, was a more plau sible course of proceeding ; and notwith standing the evident partiality with which it was conducted, was permitted to pass without legislative interference. [COMMONS, ROUSE OF.] Accordingly we find in the reigns of Edward VI., Mary, and Elizabeth, besides seventeen boroughs restored thiparliamen tary existence, forty-six now first begin ning to send members, making altogether an addition to the former representation (as no places were now omitted) of sixty three places returning 123 members. But the most important feature in this policy of the crown at this period—that which mainly contributed to attain the object of that policy—was its novel assumption of the right of remoulding, by governing charters, the municipal constitution of these uew or revived parliamentary bo roughs. Most of these charters expressly vested the local government, and some times the immediate election of the par liamentary representatives, in small councils, originally nominated by the crown, to be ever after self-elected.
This was the first great step on the part of the crown in undermining the political independence of the English mu nicipalities. The successful working of the application of this novel principle to the new or restored parliamentary bo roughs, encouraged the Stuarts not only to continue this system of erecting close boroughs, but to make a second and a bolder advance in the same direction, by attacking the constitutions of the pre scriptively parliamentary municipalities themselves.
In the twelfth year of James I., it was declared that the king could, by his charter, incorporate the people of a town in the form of select classes and common alty, and vest in the whole corporation the right of sending representatives to parliament, at the same time restraining the exercise of that right to the select classes ; and such was thenceforward the form of all the corporations which royal charters created or remodelled. After this fashion it was that, under James I. and Charles I., seventeen more parlia mentary boroughs were revived ; and that James created four, making a total addition to the borough representation of forty-one members, besides the four mem bers for the two English universities, which James first introduced.
After the reign of James II., no at tempt was made to recur to the Stuart measures against such of the corporations as still retained in whole or in part, a po. pular constitution ; yet " the charters which have been granted since the Re volution are framed nearly on the model of those of the preceding era : they show a disregard of any settled or consistent plan for the improvement of municipal policy corresponding with the progress of society. The charters of George HI. do not differ in this respect from those granted in the worst period of the history of these boroughs." (Report of Com missioners of Corporation Inquiry.) The abuses existing in Municipal Cor porations had thus, for more than two centuries, been a matter of constant and nearly universal complaint. Any gene ral remedy was however impracticable, while abuses in the representation of the people in Parliament were to be main tained. The rotten and venal boroughs, of which the franchise was abolished or amended by the Reform Act, were the chief seats of corporation abuse : and the correction of the local evil would have been the virtual destruction of the system by which the ruling party in the state re tained its political power. Every borough having the privilege of returning a mem ber to Parliament, was indispensable to one or the other of the leading political parties, and in these boroughs the greatest abuses naturally prevailed, because im punity in the neglect of duty and in the maladministration of the funds of the community, was the cheapest and most convenient bribe by which the suffrage of the corporations could be purchased. Im punity being thus secured and perpetuated in the most corrupt of the Parliamentary boroughs, it would have been too hazard ous an experiment on the toleration of the people to have undertaken to reform the comparatively insignificant abuses of the non-parliamentary boroughs. The greater abuse thus served to shelter the lesser, until the passing of the Reform Act, which, in destroying the importance of the corrupt Parliamentary corporations, rendered certain the speedy re-organiza tion or the abolition of the whole, as the respective cases might require.