The Evening Star WEDNESDAY, JUNE 18, 1873.

Evening Star, Volume VIII, Issue 3222, 18 June 1873, Page 2

The Evening Star WEDNESDAY, JUNE 18, 1873.

The framers of onr Municipal Constitution, having had experience of the working of Ward selection in electing members of the Town Board, took the precaution of providing that the Mayor should have an expression of confidence, not merely by a section, but by the general approbation of the Municipality. We do not see that anything has occurred to render alteration in the system necessary. The intention was to prevent local influence being too prominent : for, if a Mayor is to be elected from the Councillors, it follows that one Ward for the time being must necessarily have greater weight than the rest, inasmuch as the Councillor chosen Mayor has previously represented it; and” it will have also the advantage, if any there be, of choosing one in his room. We do not attach any great weight to this view of the case, although we are quite alive to the fact that contingencies might arise in which undue preference might, in consequence, be given to a particular locality. A Mayor, whether chosen by the City Council or by the people, will feel that he has undertaken responsibilities necessitating his casting aside, during his term of office, all special bias in favor of particular neighborhoods. But there are other reasons against the suggested change which we think of greater imimportance. It by no means follows that the person who stands m the highest esteem with the civic legislature, is he who commands the most respect among the citizens. Men are generally chosen to represent the Wards because of their special interest in the prosecution of necessary works within them, and of their peculiar adaptation to see that they are properly carried out. The Mayor has other and higher duties to fulfil. He is not only chief citizen, but hitherto he has been a Resident Magistrate. He is supposed to have no special local leanings, and theoretically, as Chairman of the Council, he is expected to be an impartial dignitary, equally anxious that every portion of the circumscribed territory under his jurisdiction shall have equal justice meted out to it. On this ground, our leaning is towards the people retaining in their own hands the power of electing the Mayor. Nor do we see any injustice in this. It has been said many times, with great plausibility, that those who have devoted time and attention to the duties of Municipal Councillors, have a prior claim upon the suffrages of the citizens, and that the office of Mayor, should of right be conferred upon one of them. The inhabitants of the City have so far fallen in with this view as to give effect to it for some years past ) and, we are free to confess, with no disadvantage to the City. But it is one thing to claim the preference as a right, and another to have it awarded as a voluntary expression of general approbation and confidence. The fact that public opinion may be so much in favor of securing the assistance of some able and influential citizen, to aid in the deliberations of the representatives of

the wards, must have a salutary effect upon those Councillors who are looking forward to being chosen Mayor. Experience has shown that where ability and devotion to the duties they have undertaken are manifested, the citizens are not slow to appreciate those qualities, nor to show their approbation by their votes j and we are not sure that the power they retain of withholding that expression of confidence, is not equal, in its moral effects, to the chance of reward held out by the choice of Mayor, of certainty, falling upon one of the Councillors. By the advocates of change precedents are pointed to of Municipalities at Home and in Australia. Apart from the fact that the inhabitants of Sydney do not find the proposed system work well, we must remember that that of Great Britain is a compromise: as reforms generally are. Abuses had grown up in the old Municipalities, through too much power, without responsibility, being vested in Corporations. Funds had been misappropriated, snug billets provided for friends, and in many instances nice little pickings in one way or another awarded to the civic Councillors and Aldermen. We have a lively recollection of the intense opposition by the Tories to a remodelling of the old Corporations of England. How necessary it was, however, may be gathered from the following passage by an able writer : It is the less wonderful that the inhabitants of corporate towns should have come to this conclusion, when we find as appeared in the recent inquiry (1832 or 1833) that tew Corporations admitted any positive obligation to spend the surplus of their income for objects of public advantage. They regarded such expenditure as a spontaneous act of private generosity, rather than a well-considered application of the public revenue; and the credit to which the Corporation, in such a case, generally considered itself entitled, was not that of judicious administrators, but of liberal benefactors. From this rooted opinion that the corporate property was held in trust for the corporate body only, distinct from the community with which it was locally connected, the transition was not unnatural to the opinion that individual corporators might justifiably derive a personal advantage from that property ; and, accordingly, we find that at Cambridge the practice of turning the Corporation property to the profit of inviduals, was avoweq and defended before the Municipal Commissioners by a member of the Common Council The source of the evil is plainly pointed out in this passage : the Municipal Councils we not of the people

nor to them. They were, in fact, offshoots of the aristocratic constitution of Great Britain, and were only reformed after the democratic element was Introduced into the Commons hy the Reform Bill, in the time of William the Fourth. As our Municipal arrangements stand, the people are identified with every individual member of the Civic Council: no one stands between them. Locally they choose their Councillors, but the voice of the City must be given in favor of the Mayor. This we consider a far higher honor than could be conferred by a private arrangement amongst eight or twelve men, who might arrive at the understanding that, should they happen to remain in the Council until their turns come, each in succession, irrespective of fitness or the opinion of the City, should enjoy the privilege of chief citizenship. Under such a system responsibility must fall. For our own parts we see no advantage likely to ensue from change.