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14
To the Honourable the Commons of Great Britain and Ireland, in Parliament
assembled.
The humble Petition of the estry of the Parish of St. James and
St. John, Clerkenwell, in the County of Middlesex,
Sheweth,
1.—That your Petitioners are one of the Vestries mentioned in
Schedule A in the Metropolis Local Management Act, 1855, and have
an area of 380 acres, a population of nearly 70,000 inhabitants, and
that the value of the property theroin amounts to about £405,000
gross and £335,000 rateable.
2.—That your Petitioners have considered the London Government
Bill now before your Honourable House. That whilst deeming
it desirable there should be a central authority having jurisdiction
over those matters which belong to the Metropolis as a whole, they are
of opinion that the powers and duties proposed to be given to the
central authority by the Bill are such as would prove unworkable and
impracticable, and would virtually destroy Local Self-Government in
the Metropolitan districts.
3 —That the management by Englishmen of their own affairs
and the power of raising and applying their money for their own
purposes, known as Local Self-Government, has for centuries distinguished
Englishmen from other nations, and that principle has,
through all time of English history, received the support of England's
best Statesmen, and good legislation should, in the opinion of this
Board, be directed to foster and expand that characteristic, as freedom
of thought and action is as much needed as a principle in Local
Legislation as it is in Imperial Legislation. In the opinion of your
Petitioners the London Government Bill is distinctly opposed to the
principle of Self-Government and the freedom of that Institution, and
ought to be opposed by all classes of Englishmen who desire to think
and act for themselves in matters which affect themselves, unless so
amended as to leave Local Self-Government unimpaired.
4.—That in the opinion of your Petitioners the Metropolis
Management Act (Sir Benjamin Hall's Act, 1855) has been productive
of great benefit during its operation. Under its provisions vast improvements
have been effected in London and for the benefits of its
inhabitants, and under its powers all the inhabitants of London who
have felt any real interest in its management have been afforded the
opportunity to become personally interested in such management, and
it may be fairly inferred that if any considerable or influential portion
of the inhabitants of the Metropolis had been sincerely impressed
with the opinion that more judicious measures could have been
adopted some effort to become personally interested in such management
would have been made to give effect to those views during the
long period which has elapsed between 1855 and the present time.