The Municipal Reform Movement of England at the Time of the Industrial Revolution

Abstract

When was the modernization of English boroughs and towns accomplished? They were, in the author's opinion, still under the control of semi-feudal or transitional local powers even at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. The traditional strata of free and unfree burgesses still survived, on the one hand, in boroughs incorporated before the Puritan Revolution. In some boroughs they could be seen distinctly and in others vaguely. The unfree were sometimes restrained in free trade. The incorporated boroughs were, in all respects, not modern local governments but machines to manage corporate properties. What was, on the other hand, the situation of such industrial "open towns" as Manchester and Birmingham? There was not any oligarchic power that was seen in the incorporated boroughs. There was, however, a more backward and more irrational power wielded by such a landlord as Sir Oswald Morsley in Manchester. Through the pre-capitalistic mechanism, he tried to exploit profit produced as a result of the progress in the capitalistic industry. He collected, for instance, Market toll customarily from both manufacturers and workers in Manchester by his seigniorial power. English boroughs were, without distinction between the incorporated boroughs and "open towns", under the rule of pre-capitalistic local powers at the latest of the early nineteenth century. It was the municipal incorporation movement that swept away the local powers, and the Municipal Corporations Act of 1835 was obtained as a result of the movement.