ABSTRACT
The area over which the Municipal Corporation extended, its membership, and the number and character of its officers, for instance, were dependent on the kind and extent of the powers which it possessed. A Municipal Corporation, too, might own land outside its own Borough, and might even be, in its corporate capacity, Lord of a Manor, the Bailiff to whom a “Bailiwick” had been granted, or the Steward or Lord of a Hundred. In one direction, it may be thought that the Municipal Corporation had an additional By-law-making power, namely, in the regulation of artificers. Thus, the geographical extension of a Municipal Corporation can be represented only by an indefinite number of circles, differing among themselves from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. With the Municipal Corporation as with the Parish and the County, it was the actual local usage that was significant, rather than law and the lawyers.
