MUNICIPALITY, or MUNICIPAL COR PORATION. A town or city possessed of cer tain privileges of local self-government; also the governing Innly in such a town. Municipal in stitutions date back to the Roman Empire. The provincial towns of Italy, though subjected to the rule of a Roman official, were allowed to en joy the right of regulating their internal affairs. A class of the inhabitants called the curia, or
Before the Norman Conquest the English burghs were subject to the rule of an elective officer called the •portrevc.' who exercised in the functions siniilar to those of the shire rose in the shire. The Normans recognized the already existing privileges of the towns by granting them charters. One of the most im
portant of these privileges was the /inn,, bury!, or lease of the town to the inhabitants in con sideration of the payment of a fixed sum in lieu of all feudal dues. This involved the right of the inhabitants to elect their own magistrates, the independent exercise of jurisdiction in their payment of the local taxes. and the perfornmnee of the quota of taxes assigned by Parliament. A sheriff or viscount was placed by the King over each shire, and a bailiff instead of the former elective officer over each burgh. In the larger the bailiff was allowed to assume the NOT 111:1 11 appellation of mayor. The municipal fran chise secnis to have been vested in all the resi dent and trading inhabitants. who shared in the payment of the lot-al taxes and the performance of local duties. Titles to freedom of the town were also recognized on the grounds of birth, appren ticeship. marriage, and sometimes free gilt. In all the larger towns the trading population (-nine to be divided into guilds or trading companies, through membership of which admission was ob tained to the municipal franchise. Eventually the whole community was V111'011141 in one or other of the guilds. each of which had prop erty, its by-laws. and its eoninion hall. and the community elected the chief officers. It was on the wealthier and more influential inhabitants that municipal offices were generally conferred; and it gradually became the practice for these func'tionarie's to perpetuate their authority by Contentions and disputes arose re garding the right of eleetion, and eventually the ("rown threw the weight of its influence into the scale of self-elective ruling bodies. was the period of incorporation, when (hailers were granted incorporating not the inhabitants of the town. but the governing No new govern mental powers were eonferred. but the corpora tions were given the right to hold property and to sue and be sued. The desire of the Crown to control the representatives which the 1 OW11, were now ;1 IIIM(.11 to send to P?1Ili:111w11i led to a reek less policy of granting municipal eliarters. so that presently the urban eominunities were in Partin 1111(11t. During the period of the early Stuarts the writ of Quo ll'orronfo was used frequently to (11)1111' the of their liberal charters, with a view to replacing them with charter'- of a less liberal type. in order that the Crown might the more easily control the Par liamentary representation of the towns. The burghs of Scotland hail a history inuell like that of the burghs of England; their earlier charters \Vett( mere recognitions of already rights. and were granted to the inhabitants at large. 111 the course of the fourteenth and fifteenth ern lurk., 1114- municipal suffrage fell more and more into the bands of restrieted bodies of men until an am of 1169 gave to the councils the right of their sueec sots, 1,141 and new emon it together electing the cglice-bearers of the corporation. This state of t 1,33. not \Vit6om 11111(11 (.1(111111aillt. In the Scot tish burghs the several trades possessed a much more O'0•111qiV1( 11101101101y than in England. with the outer). for Parliamentary reform arose an outcry for municipal reform; and a separate municipal reform act putting an end to the close system was passed for each part of the kingdom.