The Nineteenth Century , No 182, Apr 1892 [‎98r] (200/244)

1892
LET LONDON
685
representative supervision than now prevails, and which the Council
now possesses in its committees.
A cabinet or executive does, and will, weaken the responsibility
of individual councillors and committees. In Parliament this is
shown by the disgraceful indifference of members to the Army,
Navy, and Indian Estimates, involving scores of millions of money,
that are rushed through an empty House.
If a cabinet is established, then the personal attention and
responsibility that has characterised this Council will disappear;
and when that happens the beginning of bad municipal government
begins. Municipal government in England is as pure and as good
as it is simply because the primitive communal system of open
individual and collective responsibility has been maintained. Every
instance of municipal decadence has only taken place when this
healthy system has been departed from. As sure as large empires
mean small men, so does centralised, secret, and internal control
produce elements of political intrigue, weaken the moral and civic
responsibility of representatives, and open up the possibility of
machine politics—always the precursor of nepotism and neglect.
The Council has really done so well in the past—its last decision
to exclude all members from committees that came in contact with
trades or callings in which they are interested, its refusal to allow
any two councillors from the same district, or relatives, to serve on the
same committee, are but several of many alterations it has already
effected in the right direction.
hat it has to do in the future is to deserve the full and generous
confidence of its constituents. This it will achieve not by plausible
but prospectively dangerous schemes of centralising internal con
stitution, but by treading the broad open path of democratic publicity
and vigilant undivided, uncontrolled responsibility.
This it will do; and if, in the three years that are before it,
the Council completes its present negotiations for the purchase of
the tramways and water services, develops its housing scheme, presses
forward its necessary works of main drainage and other large under
takings, it will do all that can be expected. If it acts with the same
public spirit, and maintains its present reputation for incorruptibility
unsullied, I^ondon will at the end of its term of office show its un
divided support and approval by a renewal of its confidence and its
votes.
John Burns.
Vol. XXXI—No. 182 3 A