LONDON VESTRYDOM.
THE annual farce of the Vestry elections has just taken place in London, and the government of this great city is again entrusted for another twelve months to the undisputed sway of Bumble. The two pillars of Local Government in the Metropolis are formed in two totally distinct ways. The Boards of Guardians, which are perhaps the most important, retire en mane every year (all but the Magistrates, who are ex-officio members); but they are elected in the worst and most unsatis- factory way ever yet devised. They are elected by the rate- payers by voting-papers, left at the houses of the ratepayers by the police one day, and called for the next, on a system of plural voting, by which each individual has one or more votes, answering to the value of his rating qualifica- tion. Under this s, stem, one individual can have as many as twelve votes—six as owner and six as occupier— and in the case of business premises of considerable value, these twelve votes may practically be multiplied to any extent, each partner in a firm being able to give his twelve votes. The voting-paper system is so lax, that it has been emphati- cally condemned as the most liable to perversion of any yet devised. How it works practically may be gauged by the fact that in Chelsea, at the last election, 10,462 voting-papers were sent out, 8,393 were got in, of which 4,302 were good, and 4,091 informal ; no less than 3,629 being blank, and 462 otherwise spoilt. It is quite a chance who gets elected, and if the election were not worked by ratepayers' associations, it would be an even greater chance than it is. The fruits of the system of election are perhaps best seen in the Metropolitan Asylums Board, which is the cream of the Boards of Guardians, consisting mainly of delegates elected by them. It was their management that produced the Homerton Hospitals case, the greatest of all scandals of corruption that England has furnished in this generation. But bad as the system of election of Guardians is, it is questionable whether, as at present conducted, it is not more satisfactory than that of the Vestries. Hardly have the Guardians' elections taken place, than the Vestry elections come on, and the harassed ratepayer, who fondly hoped that he had done his duty as a citizen by filling up a voting-paper for the Guardians, is suddenly called on to attend a meeting and show his hand for a vestryman ; and if a poll is demanded, to attend the next day and put in his ballot-paper fcr the same vestry- man. Only one-third of the Vestry go out every year, so that, however eager for a revolution in Vestry manage- ment the constituency may be, it cannot attain its desire except by a successive series of elections spread over three years. The time for the show of hands is generally arranged to take place at the most inconvenient hour possible—at 11 o'clock, or even 10 o'clock in the morning—and except by going to the Vestry Hall, it is almost impossible for any one to find out when and where it is to take place. Whether owing to these causes, or to the more general cause that with the present divided jurisdictions and dissipated energies of local governments the Vestry elections have no attractions for any one, the fact is certain that in the elections of these bodies, who between them dispense an income that many independent or quasi-independent States would envy, rather less interest is taken than in a meeting of the Ebenezer Brick-Lane Branch Temperance Association, and considerably less than in the local flower-show or athletic sports. Thus, in St. Mar- garet's, Westminster, where there is a population of 60,000, and which is divided into three wards of about equal popula- tion, in one ward three retiring members and one new member were elected without even a show of hands ; in No. 2 Ward, six people stood for five places, the highest number of votes was 24, and the last of those elected, in virtue of the magnificent show of five hands, became a vestryman for three years ; in No. 3 Ward, where we are informed that " consider- able interest was shown in the proceedings by a numerous attendance of parishioners," ten candidates stood for eight seats, the most popular got 23 votes, the eighth got in with 12 votes. In neither case was the interest con- siderable enough for a poll to be demanded. In another section of what used to be the premier borough of England, the parish of St. George's, Hanover Square, now one of the largest, if not the large t, borough constituency in the country, with a population of 89,500 people, at Knights- bridge, eleven gentleman stood for nine seats, and the head of the list had 36 votes ; at the out-ward, Sir Walter Phillimore headed the list of twenty-two candidates for twenty-two places with 124 votes, the lowest, who was also elected, getting 39 votes. In Kensington, which is supposed to be one of the best-managed parishes in London, and has a population of 163,000, at the Brompton Ward the interest in the proceedings was so great, that one gentleman who wished to address the meeting on Vestry accounts was only quieted by the police threatening to remove him by force. Twelve people stood for nine vacancies ; the first elected got 86 votes, and the last, 37. In Chelsea, Sir Charles Dilke headed the poll in his ward, and obtained the largest number of votes in the parish, which has 88,000 inhabitants. and that number was 52. In another ward, 36 votes sufficed to place a candidate at the head of the poll, and eight to get another in. We have purposely selected the parishes at the West End, because we do not hear in them of the scandalous abuses and scandalous scenes which are perpetrated in some places, and because it is urged that more interest is now being manifested in parochial affairs; and the names of Sir Charles Dilke (who, by the way, has been a vestryman for years), of Sir Walter Phillimore, of Sir Roper Lethbridge—to take three members for three different Vestries—who are Members or candidates for Parliament, seem to show that this is the case. In none of these cases, however, was a poll insisted on, and it may be said that they are not a fair test. But the fact that no poll was demanded is in itself a proof of the absolute want of popular interest felt in the elections, and therefore of the absolute want of popular con- trol. And the cases where a poll was taken tell the same tale. Islington owns to a population of 282,000. In one ward, the highest number of votes polled was over 900, the biggest vote recorded in the whole Vestry elections. But if any popular interest was really awakened, the poll should have been over 9,000. In most places where a poll took place, the number polled was nearer 100 than 500, in constituencies which at Par- liamentary elections poll their thousands.
The multiplicity of bodies, the multiplicity of elections, the variety of methods of voting, the confusion of areas, the variety of qualifications, and the mixture of inconsistent elements, such as ex-officio Magistrates with the Guardians, and Church- wardens with the Vestries, who act in a purely secular and civil capacity, are the mischiefs which make local government in London a farce, and an expensive, demoralising, and degrading farce. Public spirit in London parochial politics is for the present extinct, and the presence of a few notabilities only serves to conceal the fact that they are governed by a ring of builders and contractors, and others who have some private interest to promote. The Vestries of London will remain a standing scandal to the reputation of Englishmen for practical common-sense and political sagacity, until they are brought into definite subordination to a common central government, popularly elected and responsible to the people, and are made parts of one collective whole, instead of being the disjecta membra of a disorganised Bumbledom.
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