The Nineteenth Century , No 182, Apr 1892 [‎96v] (197/244)

682
THE NINETEENTH
April
Mr. Prothero concludes Ms animadversions by urging the Council
to confine itself within the four corners of the Act of 1888.
Till that Act is amended and embodies within it all the powers
enjoyed by other municipalities, there can be no peace between the
Council and Governments that withhold its just and legal powers. Till
these powers are conceded, the London programme of complete
autonomous government and administration will occupy the fore
most place in politics, even to the exclusion of many Imperial (ques
tions those political veterans superfluous that strut the stage of
Parliament and prolixity, and are periodically galvanised into life
by Liberals and Tories with the express but concealed object of
preventing the area of private exploitation being circumscribed by
municipal effort in the interest of the common good.
The Moderates have had their lesson : will they profit by it ? In
Imperial legislation and promises of future work there are signs that
the Grovernment have learned that negation supplies no bond, and
that a policy of drift and distrust will destroy any political faction,
however strong, in these epoch-making times.
Let Mr. Prothero and his political partisans cease carping at the
greatest political fact of this century—the nascent commune of
London that, in proportion to the attacks made upon it by vested;
interests, will play to Parliament the to I g that the Cordeliers and
Jacobin clubs played to the States-General a century ago. Its in
fluence will mo aid and dominate in a collectivist direction those
political principles and institutions that to-day are arrayed against it.
It must always be more popular with the people than Parliament.
It ministers to their municipal and material needs. Its activity is
seen in its parks, roads, and public places ; it enters over the thresh
old of its citizens' doors ; they feel its pulse, the people provide its
motive power 5 its victories and its gains are theirs, its defeats they
poignantly resent. Londoners, with the daily living presence of its
Council's loving care before them, stood up as one man and annihi
lated at the last election the decaying remnant of pinchbeck politicians
who would sell London bound hand and foot to be sacrificed to
Bumble and the middleman, and over its remains would promote a
company to exploit the profits of their city's funeral feast.
It is very difficult for one who predicted, three weeks before the
election, that ' the Moderates would get the soundest thrashing they
have yet received,' to do aught but rejoice at the victory that London
has secured over the enemies within her gates. To many causes that
victory has been attributed. But the real cause consisted, not as
Journal des Debats humorously suggested, in ' la question des dues';
neither was the success due to the staying at home of the Moderates,
although it is partly true that the Moderates are getting too respect
able even to vote reactionary. It was not due to the campaign of the
Liberal leaders, who, in the victory just achieved, have been beaten only