small area, for if you do, it will be impossible to have skilled administration. There will be much less choice of persons, and those less competent for the task will be willing to undertake the conduct of public affairs. A popular assembly that has only a little work to do tries to transact public business by making speeches, the most ineffective way in which public business can be done. The parochial area is too small for the public to take an interest in what is being done. There is a good deal to be said for having only one municipality for the whole metropolis. But the business to be entrusted to their management would be too great, and it would give them the control of too large an amount of revenue, and it would be useless to attempt to obtain the consent of the House to such a measure. It is better to have local municipal bodies for the different boroughs, and that the central board should not be troubled with any business but such as is common to the whole. The boroughs offer a medium between the small size of an ordinary parish and the inordinate size of the whole metropolis. I therefore ask you to create municipalities for the parliamentary districts which shall exercise their powers under the Municipal Corporation Act, and concentrate the powers of the vestries."[1]
In a languid House the wise and calm reasoning of Mr. Mill evoked but little response. Some called his plan too complicated, some too crude, ministers declined the responsibility of giving it their support, and the second reading was not pressed to a division. At the dissolution, which soon after ensued, Mr. Mill lost his seat, and in 1869 Mr. C. Buxton undertook the charge of the bill. Further modifications, which had been made to propitiate the City, were not generally regarded as amendments; and a new Home Secretary, engrossed with legislative cares more urgent, prayed for a more convenient season, and promised in the interim a careful reconsideration of the subject. But Parliament is seldom in the mood to undertake laborious changes in existing institutions without some pressing necessity or importunate demand. Theoretic proof of anomalies, however clear, and promises of future benefits, however sanguine, go but a short way towards making a House on a spring afternoon when the weather is fair, or keeping a House during a summer night when the
- ↑ J. S. Mill in moving Second Reading, June 17, 1868.
