ABSTRACT
When in our generation Corporations and their accounts are mentioned, it is understood that communities are referred to existing under the Municipal Corporations Acts as originating in 1835, and resting ultimately under the Act of 1882. In the case of Manchester, that, indeed, would be only to look back over a time covered by the period during which our venerable Town Clerk has held his local title and appointment, and during which, too, our no less worthy City Treasurer has also held office in our Corporation. Although forty or fifty years necessarily cover the larger part of the period of man's active life, and we can all unite in the hearty and common wish that we may yet for many years to come see the familiar and characteristic figures of our friends, it is not a very long space in the history of an organised community.
