THE CITY COMPANIES.
IT was plain from the first that nothing practical or imme-
diate could come from the Motion about the City Com- panies. Mr. James made out what Mr. Gladstone justly called a very strong case in favour of doing something, but even Mr. Oladstone's ingenuity could not discover a reason for doing the _particular thing which Mr. James proposed. The Crown has no legal power to demand such information as was asked in the Motion, and when similar information has been obtained by a Royal Commission, it has only been when the persons about whom the inquiry was made were ready to furnish it of their own free will. It does not follow, however, that Mr. James's -Motion will be of no avail, because it did not answer the par- ticular purpose which its author had in view. The Companies are at this moment indignant at being asked to give an account of their administration, and their indignation natu- rally leads them to take the most independent possible line in answer to Mr. James's challenge. What business is it of yours or any man's, they ask, how we spend our money ? It is as much our money as the property of any Member of the House of Commons is his money. If we have con- sented to furnish particulars of any part of it to the Charity Commissioners, it is only because we wished to have the benefit of their experience in disposing of it. The £99,000 a year which we have made over to them was made over under no compulsion. The Commissioners no more had power to take it under their charge without our consent than they have power to administer the pennies which a member of a Company may choose to give to a crossing-sweeper. In fact, as the Lord Mayor put it, the whole of the property under the Companies' control "is watched over most sedulously, and appropriated to some good work or another in the way of technical education, charities, or any other object which may happen to come before them." It is probable that the general words with which this sen- tence ends were prompted by a sudden recollection that there are some good works to which money is appropriated which scarcely fall under either of the specific heads which he had just mentioned. The Lord Mayor saved himself by the phrase," or any other object which may happen to come before them." But even while the words were in his mouth, he must have reflected that the necessity of employing this convenient circumlocution rather -weakened the case he had to support. It is one thing to call on Mr. James to stay his sacrilegious hand, if the bodies against which it is raised can be truly described as appropri- ating the whole of the property under their control to technical education and charity, and another thing to challenge him to leave the Companies alone, because their money is appropriated to any object that may happen to come before them. There is a vagueness about the latter phrase that suggests a good deal of expenditure which, to say the least, it would be difficult to classify. To give a man a dinner, for example, is not exactly technical education, and when the donee of it eats more than is good for him, it cannot, strictly speaking, be set down as charity. It is popularly supposed that a large proportion of the gross income of the Companies is spent in this way, and though a certain amount of hospitality is proper and becoming in bodies like the City Companies, there are not wanting those who say that the sums expended in this way represent a good deal more than a fair per-centage of the Companies' receipts.
We are not without hope that, when they are not actually girding themselves up to meet a hostile motion, the Companies will themselves admit that the Lord Mayor made too large a claim on their behalf. In affairs of this kind, it is always to be desired that the possessors of trust property should continue to possess it, provided that they will administer it in accord-. ance with the best lights of the time. It would be a matter of sincere regret to us to see a single City Company destroyed. They have a history of which they may justly be proud, and if they will only show themselves as competent to manage their money in the nineteenth century as they showed them- selves in the middle-ages, no one who is not a mere vulgar iconoclast would wish to take it out of their hands. We ask the Companies seriously to consider whether it is not good policy
to set their own house in order, rather than to trust to an un- proved conviction that it will never be set in order for them. Let them just consider the effect which is likely to be pro- duced by the mere comparison of the Lord Mayor's statements with those of Mr. James and Sir Charles Dilke. The Lord Mayor said that in 1865-6 the Companies placed an annual income of £99,000 under the control of the Charity Commis- sioners. Since that date the annual accounts of this property have been faithfully rendered to the Commissioners, and no change has been made in the administration of the Charities without the consent of the Commissioners being first had. Of this large income nearly £54,000 is expended in the main- tenance of almshouses, £19,000 is expended on education, schools and other parish objects take just £18,000, and the apprenticing of children nearly £6,000. Certainly if £99,000 were all that had to be accounted for, the figures could not come out more satisfactorily. But £99,000 a year, though a large sum in itself, somehow looks small when it is set by the side of that gross estimated rental of £500,416, which, according to Mr. James, the rate-book shows the Com- panies to possess in the City of London alone, or by the side of that estimated annual income from all sources which Sir Charles Dilke thinks may reach to a million sterling. It may be that these figures are very much too large, that many de- ductions ought to be made from the gross estimated rental in the City, and that the property of the Companies, other than their real property in the City, is by comparison of small value. But so long as the Companies withhold their balance- sheets from the public view, they will be exposed to these and similar exaggerations. 44 Omne ignotum pro magnifica " is as true of other people's incomes as of anything else, and unless the City Companies are prepared to stand on their absolute independence of Parliamentary control, they will do well to anticipate Parliamentary inquiry. Mr. Goldney spoke on Wednesday of the "threatening language of the right honour- able Member for Greenwich," and described it as "not calculated to induce the Companies to give any information whatever respecting their property." When we turn to Mr. Gladstone' speech to see what this threatening language really was, we- find that it consisted of an expression of the speaker's earnest desire that the Companies should be raised to the highest point of efficiency, and that their vast property should be bestowed in a manner that would conduce to the greatest public advantage,. "through their machinery, and by their hands." To tell a man that you hope he will use his money well can hardly be fairly described as threatening language. At least, if it is, it is a species of threat which everything in the nature of a public body has sooner or later to listen to. It was by way of warning simply that Mr.. Gladstone added that if the City Companies resisted all friendly overtures, "the day might come when reform would advance- with bolder front and different objects, and it might be deter- mined to apply these vast revenues otherwise than through the machinery of these Corporations." If the Companies are wise in their generation, they will effect the neces- sary reforms in their constitution while the country is in its cold fit of Conservatism. If they wait till Liberal doctrines are again in the ascendant, they may discover that their willingness to serve the public is no longer believed in, and that Parliament is of opinion that, in order to derive the greatest public advantage from their property, it will be- necessary to administer it through other machinery and by other hands.
We should regret this, because we are always loth to disturb the traditions and associations which grow up in the course of centuries round societies which have played BO great a part in the municipal history of England as the London Companies. Even when dealing with the petty Corporations that were omitted from the Municipal Reform Act, we should like to see the form of each corporation preserved, and much more should we wish this with such large and popular bodies as the London Companies. There is no need for them even to publish a pre- cise account of their income and expenditure, if they take care that the greater part of that income, and not merely, as now, a tenth or a fifth of it, shall go to objects of undoubted public utility. If such acts of munificence as the addition of a new wing to the London Hospital by the Grocers' Company were more frequent, the position of the London Companies would be too secure to be reached by any change of opinion from Conservative to Liberal, or from Liberal to Radical. The Lord Mayor assured the House of Commons that the City Companies were composed of men of honour, integrity, and respectability, who had not the slightest desire to take anything to which they were not fairly entitled. We do not need any assurance of the kind. We do not accuse the officials of these Companies of putting money into their own pockets. We only say that no wise man would care to have the administration of a semi- public property, which is alleged to amount to a million a year, and refuse to say how this vast revenue is spent. The better the affairs of the Companies can afford to challenge inspection, the more foolish it is of them to try to avert it. The explan- ation of this singular secretiveness probably is that though the uses to which the property of the Companies is put are perfectly consistent with the "honour, integrity, and respectability" of those who have the control of it, they are not such as would commend themselves to any one who has not grown accus- tomed to them by long habit. It would be interesting to know, for example, how much of the income of certain Com- panies goes in utterly unnecessary eating and drinking, how much in foolish presents to members or their wives, how much in gifts which, in the light of our present improved theories of charity, are positively mischievous. None of these ways of spending a Company's money imply any want of honour, or integrity, or respectability in those who manage the Com- pany's affairs ; they only imply a want of intelligence in administration. But it must not be forgotten that all the time that money is being wasted on these useless, if not hurt- ful objects, funds are urgently needed for objects closely con- nected with these Companies, at all events, in their historical aspect. It was part of the original idea of the City Companies that they should exercise an effective supervision ever the trades which they represented. In modern times there is little room for supervision of this kind. But the same end may be attained, though by a different route ; and if the Com- panies would provide standards of workmanship, and supply the means of teaching workmen how to come up to their standards, they might do more to discourage bad work than a system of inspection and condemnation could possibly achieve under the existing conditions of trade-life. If the fact that a work- man had satisfied the requirements of a Company were a suffi- cient testimony to his proficiency, if the fact that a piece of work had satisfied the requirements of a Company were suffi- Oient evidence of its excellence, the position of these Societies in a manufacturing community would be far more eminent, and far more unassailable, than it can be made by either dinners or doles.
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