ABSTRACT
During the eighteenth century the anarchy of local autonomy was heightened by the fact that there was nothing that could be regarded, either in theory or practice, as a system of Local Government. The distinct organs of government are found superimposed one on the top of the other, at different periods of history, for different purposes, by different instruments and with different sanctions. The democratic conception of the equality of all men in the service of the community was, it is needless to say, entirely absent from the general obligation to undertake public office still embodied in the old-established local institutions of the eighteenth century. At the close of the seventeenth century governmental authority was frequently vested in a group, a company or a corporation associated for some production or supply of services or commodities.
