ABSTRACT
The first is local government, the devolution of functions and powers to locally elected representative authorities - principally the councils of counties, county boroughs, boroughs, urban districts, and 'towns'. The system of local government developed in Great Britain and Ireland in the nineteenth century was one of two systems of government to cope with virtually all public business. Local government embodies the concept of local democracy as an integral feature. The structure of the local government system derives, on the one hand, from the British tradition of civic autonomy and, on the other, from the British practice of placing the onus for law and order in the countryside on the local gentry, whose representatives were designated 'Grand Juries'. The democratic element in local government was not only lessened by the concentration of functions in fewer authorities; local government also became markedly more bureaucratic - and more efficient.
