The councilmen or as were also members of the county courts. The legislative powers of the municipal corporations were limited to the authority to establish local ordinances, not repugnant to the laws of England or the assembly of the province. These were mainly police ordinances for the maintenance of order and the prevention of nuisances, such as rules against fast driving, regulating the cleaning and paving of streets by the householders, and requiring precautions to be taken against fires. But there were also ordinances regulating business, by fixing the prices of food, and (in Albany) regulating trading with the Indians; while others attempted to guard the morals of the community, by requiring the observation of the Lord's Day, and (in Philadelphia) forbidding theatrical performances. The administrative powers of the colonial corporations, like their legislative authority, were almost exclusively over matters of special interest to the small urban communities, and seldom included any of those matters for which there was a general system over the entire province. Thus the management of the militia, the administration of the poor laws, and the assessment of the taxes levied by the assemblies were in no cases subjects of municipal action. The borough authorities were all empowered to hold markets and fairs; several of them were authorized to establish ferries; and New York, Albany, and Philadelphia controlled the local docks and wharves. In the eighteenth century, other local needs became pressing in the larger places, and as the charters conferred no authority on these matters, the corporations found it necessary to secure special grants of power, which, however, came now not from the governors but from the colonial assemblies. Under these statutes, adding to their chartered powers, the more important towns 1 entered on some new lines of activity-constructing streets and drains, purchasing fire engines, and toward the end of the colonial period providing street lamps and establishing a night watch. In Philadelphia, surveyors for regulating the construction of party walls were authorized as early as 1721. These grants from the assemblies to the municipalities, while increasing the actual functions of the latter, tended to change the relative status of the two authorities, making the municipalities subordinate to the assemblies, though as yet it was not recognized that a colonial assembly could pass an act directly contrary to a charter provision. The prime cause of the change was the fact that the municipal corporations had in no case any charter power of taxation, and when they desired to enter on undertakings involving taxation they could not proceed until authority to tax was secured. The colonial legislatures do not seem to have hesitated in granting the desired authority whenever needed, and the local authorities were probably not seriously hampered in their activities by the necessity of securing special grants. By the close of the colonial period all of the more important municipalities had received authority to levy certain taxes. But as yet the power was granted only for specific purposes, usually with a strict limitation of the amount of each tax, and often restricting the levy to a certain number of years. Thus even during the colonial period we may see the beginning of a distinctive American development differentiating the municipalities in the colonies from those in England. Close corporations were the exception; the mayor was already an active and the most important official in the city government; central control over the municipalities existed from the first in the governors' power of appointing mayors, while the way was paved for a more active control through the special legislation of the assemblies in response to the demand of the municipalities for larger powers than those conferred in their charters. Several urban districts in the colonies remained without the special organization or charter of the English borough. Boston and other New England urban centers found the town meeting system of the rural communities sufficiently elastic for municipal purposes. Under this system, the "freeholders and other inhabitants assembled" in town meeting were not merely electors; they constituted a deliberative body on all questions of town government. They discussed, amended, adopted or rejected orders and by-laws; they determined the purposes for which public money should be expended, down to the smallest details, and they fixed the exact amount to be raised by taxation. The nearest analogy to a mayor was the moderator of the town meeting, but his duties were purely those of a presiding officer. The principal administrative work was performed by the prudential or executive committee, known as the selectmen; the overseers of the poor, and later the school committee, were also committees of the town meeting, while there was in addition a goodly number of minor and unsalaried offices. As Baltimore and Charleston became sufficiently populous to demand special measures, these were decided on by the assemblies of the respective colonies, and carried out by legislative commissions. The Baltimore Board of Town Commissioners, of seven members named by the assembly in 1754 for life, directed the administrative affairs of that growing port. Possibly this legislative action was preferred to charters of incorporation from a royal governor because of the growing opposition to the latter official in the years preceding the war for independence. It is certainly significant that no municipal charter was issued in any of the colonies after 1746. The revolt of the colonies from Great Britain and the new State governments brought about several changes in municipal government. The substitution.of elected for appointed governors changed. the significance of the appointment of mayors, but there was no immediate attempt to transfer the selection of such mayors from the State to the locality. Of more importance was the change in the charter-granting power. Immediately after the Revolution there appeared a considerable number of municipal charters: In 1783, Charleston, S. C.; in 1784, New Haven, Middletown, New London, and Norwich, Conn., Newport, R. I. (temporarily), and Nashville, Tenn.; in 1785, Hudson, N. Y. The charters of incorporation for these were not, however, issued by the State governors, but, as was to be the universal rule in the United States, by the State legislatures, in the same manner as statutory acts. By this change these charters could not claim the privileges of a special grant which could not be violated; they were simply legislative statutes, and as such liable to be altered, changed, or revoked by subsequent stat utes. There does not seem to have been much discussion on this change in the charter-granting power; the way had been prepared by the frequent additional grants of authority by colonial assemblies to corporations chartered by executive authority, and the tendency of the new State governments was so strongly in favor of the legislature and against the executive that the new custom was established without question. In the organization and powers provided for, these first legislative charters followed very closely the charters and powers of the existing municipalities, and there are no important developments in municipal organization or functions. It is not surprising to learn that none of the new cities were to be governed by close corporations, and the principle of an elected council was now firmly established as a fundamental rule in American municipal government. Even the close corporations of the colonial days were not permitted to continue. In 1787, the Virginia legislature passed an act declaring that "the former method of electing common councilmen for the borough of Norfolk is judged impolitic and unconstitutional," and providing for election by the freeholders and inhabitants of the borough qualified to vote for burgesses to the assembly. In 1789, Philadelphia received a new charter from the State legislature, which likewise provided for a popular election of the municipal council. These statutes are also significant as marking the complete legal supremacy of the legislatures over the municipalities, since not even the existing charters are recognized as barring any measure the legislature might feel disposed to enact. In the closing years of the eighteenth century there was a new series of municipal charters. Schenectady, N. Y., became a city in 1795, Baltimore in 1797, Savannah and Augusta, Ga., in 1798. The Baltimore charter and an amendment to the Philadelphia charter passed in 1796 mark the introduction of the bicameral system into municipal government. In Philadelphia the legislative power was vested in select and common councils, both elected on general ticket, in neither of which the mayor, recorder, or aldermen found a part. In Baltimore one house of the municipal council was composed of two members from each of the eight wards, elected annually; while 1 Ch. 72. Hening; Statutes of Va., XII, 602. |