Management and Revenues of the City Companies.

In the city of London are upwards of seventy companies of an origin and institution analogous to the Merchant Tailors of Bristol. The several professions and trades in the city are incorporated into distinct fraternities, consisting mostly of a livery and freemen, governed by a master, wardens, and court of assistants, which last appears an encroachment on the rights of the freemen: indeed, courts appear to have been unknown prior to the accession of the Scottish dynasty, when they were obtained probably through corruption or intrigue. Persons exercising any trade in the city, not free of one of the companies, are liable to penalties. The livery are chosen from the freemen, and enjoy important privileges in the election of members of parliament and the principal city officers. Refusing to serve on the livery subjects to a penalty, and a fine is payable by each person taking up his livery, varying from £3 to £200.

The power of the incorporated trades to inflict penalties for not being of their fraternity is, occasionally, productive of hardships, for which it is impossible to discover any pretext of utility. Not long since a poor old Irishman was getting a scanty living in the city by shaving and hair-cutting, but not being a freeman, for the profits of his trade were inadequate to the purchase of that qualification, he was proceeded against by the ancient Corporation of Barbers. The fine was inflicted; and the worshipful Company actually took their unfortunate brother of the soap-suds in execution, and kept him in prison about four months. How much longer he would have been an inmate of the “stone jug,” as the gaol is called, cannot be conjectured, had not Mr. Barrett made several applications to the clerk of the company, and procured his liberation. Another instance is worth mentioning, but in doing so we do not mean to cast any imputation upon the company exercising the power of exclusion, which they undoubtedly possess. A poulterer was sued in the Mayor’s Court for having a stand in Leadenhall-market—not because he was not a freeman of London, but because he was not a freeman of the Poulterers’ company—and the customary penalties were ordered to be paid. Whitecross-street prison became the refuge of the unsanctioned poulterer, who still remains locked up for the infraction of the company’s by-laws.

Such arbitrary interferences with the freedom of industry are wholly indefensible at this period; and we are glad to learn that Sir James Scarlett intends to bring before the Legislature the subject of corporation abuses. Undoubtedly the companies were originally instituted for the double purpose of protecting the community against fraud, and their respective mysteries from deterioration; with the exception, however, of the Apothecaries and Goldsmiths these duties have ceased to be exercised. Indeed, as the companies are now constituted, it is impossible such functions could be discharged; in many of them not a single member is of that trade the name of the company imports, which, we believe, is the case of the Merchant Tailors’ and Mercers’, most of whom are merchants of the first class, bankers, and insurance-brokers. Like ancient bodies generally the duties have been suffered to expire, while the appropriation of the revenues, salaries, and fees has been carefully preserved, or enormously augmented.

The revenues of the city companies are very great, and principally arise from the management of charitable trusts. The aggregate incomes of the twelve principal companies is supposed to amount to £500,000 per annum. Out of these revenues the splendid halls of the fraternities have been erected, sumptuous entertainments given, and the enormous emoluments of their clerks, amounting in some instances to £3,000 or £4,000 a-year, paid. As trustees they have the letting of a large portion of the houses, offices, wharfs, and warehouses in the metropolis; in the country they have numerous manors and estates, messuages, tenements, church livings, and impropriate tithes, and vast sums vested in the public funds. The masters, wardens, and assistants are the virtual disposers of this property; they have the letting of the lands and tenements; they contract for repairs, alterations, and improvements; they present to the livings and receive the tithes and dividends. They also select the objects of their charities; and interpret the will, deed, or letter patent by which they were created. The commonalty of the Companies have no share in these functions; the power is engrossed by the parties mentioned, who elect themselves, forming a secret and perpetual conclave, into which no one is admitted, unless connected by ties of friendship or consanguinity.

It is the arbitrary exercise of these unauthorized powers that has tended to generate the hostile spirit which now subsists between the governing juntos and the liveries of several of the companies. Some intelligent and spirited gentlemen of one of the principal companies, the Merchant Tailors’, have, in fact, hoisted the standard of rebellion against their oppressors, and are fully intent, either by legal or more effective means, of obtaining a restitution of usurped rights. From what we know of the chartered privileges of some of the companies we are well convinced of the validity of the claims of the non-contents, and we heartily wish them success in their laudable exertions. It would, indeed, be a lasting reproach to the general body of the livery of London, and not at all in accordance with the reputation they bear for intelligence and independence, if, while the great Oligarchy of the state is about being reformed, they suffered the little miniature types among themselves to continue, without undergoing a similar process of regeneration. But it is not merely the recovery of just rights, they have objects of substantial utility to attain. The trust-revenues of the companies are enormous; for want of due responsibility in the administrative committees they are, for the most part, lavishly and improvidentially squandered; in lieu of being judiciously appropriated to the objects for which they were charitably bequeathed, they are expended in personal indulgence, in political intrigue, in conciliating the favour of strangers, and in providing lucrative appointments for relatives and dependents. The courts too ought to be opened, and self-elected cabals no longer have the power of passing oppressive by-laws, of declaring new forms of eligibility, of arbitrarily accepting or rejecting candidates for their livery, or imposing upon them new and exorbitant fines.

Constituted as these bodies are, no opportunity is afforded to detect or punish their delinquencies. They form, in short, a great blot in our social economy, which, by some oversight, has escaped those gradual reforms that have been partially, at least, introduced into other departments of public administration. Of the power and constitution of the several branches of the general government, and of the way in which the functions of each is administered, ample information, for the most part, is laid before the public; but of the proceedings of corporations no one knows any thing. There is no publicity—no control—nor responsibility any where. All that is known of them is that they have a perpetual generation among themselves—that they have many good things in their gift, which they either appropriate to their own use, or bestow on those with whom they are intimately connected—that they have much feasting and banquetting at other people’s cost, and that they maintain a reserved and pompous demeanour towards those from whom they originally derived their power, and for whose benefit they were created.

The members of the Merchant Tailors’ Company, to whom allusion has been made, have endeavoured, through the medium of the press, and by instituting proceedings in a court of law, to reform the abuses of their Company, and to stimulate the members of the other incorporated trades to corresponding exertions. From a statement published by these gentlemen in The Free Inquirer it appears that the annual revenues of the twelve principal companies of the city of London exceeds five hundred thousand pounds; one hundred thousand of which is expended in luxurious entertainments, by a select class, called councillors or assistants; and near forty thousand pounds is divided yearly by the Twelve Legal Pillars, who condescend to stand for and act as clerks, to the no small annoyance of those who make inquiry into their own corporate property.

In addition to the twelve worshipful brotherhoods, as they are designated, there are sixty minor companies—the Stationers, Apothecaries, Dyers, Armourers, Sadlers, Cordwainers, &c. whose united incomes yield another half million; the disbursement of which no one hears of, no printed account has ever been known to be circulated, and no answer is ever made to any but the privileged class; as this revenue cannot be allowed much longer to remain in such profound secrecy, and in such corrupt hands, Mr. Franks has suggested that it be formed into a general fund for the education of the youth of both sexes, and the support of the poor of the city.

The chief facts to be borne in mind relative to the city companies are the following:—

Of these Companies, there is scarcely one in the immunities of which the liveries at large are allowed fairly to participate, and in which the election of the master, warden, and courts are made conformably with the constitutional laws and charters. They are mostly managed by cabals, consisting of two or three families and their favourites, who have succeeded to the possessions and privileges of their societies, with a regular, and, apparently, as indefeasible a claim as any legitimate despot succeeds to his sovereignty. To these authorities the liveries have hitherto bowed, with the patience of serfs, and submitted not only to be deprived of the more substantial enjoyments of their respective corporations, but also to be disseized of their elective franchises, in the appointment of masters, wardens, assistants, and committees.

The chief reason which can be alleged for this supineness, is the ignorance in which the liverymen have been kept of the rights and powers they legally possess. With one or two exceptions, the charters of the companies have never been published, but, for reasons too obvious to mention, have remained under an impenetrable veil, either among the records in the Tower of London, or the strong boxes of the several courts of assistants, whose uncourteous demeanor, together with that of their clerks and underlings, to members seeking information, is only equalled by the patient endurance of the latter, in submitting for so long a period to their usurped authority. The advantages that would result to the liverymen and freemen by the restitution of their ancient rights, those rights of superintending their fiscal administration, and of choosing their officers and courts, (if the last be a legal part of their institution) are both numerous and important.

In the first place, the governors would be made responsible to the governed, and a few individuals no longer be allowed to pervert the revenues and influence of the societies to their own private purposes of favouritism, intrigue, and aggrandizement.

Secondly, and agreeably to their original institution, every member would be equally and alike a brother of the fraternity, eligible to elect and be elected to all places of trust, patronage, and emolument.

Thirdly, exclusive and disqualifying by-laws, intended to deprive the general body of the liverymen of their rights, could not be enacted; neither could arbitrary and oppressive fees on apprenticeships, freedoms, and liveries, be enforced: these unjustifiable extortions have been often screwed up and levied, merely to minister to a lavish expenditure in objects wholly foreign to the interests of the fraternities.

Finally, an efficient and watchful control would be established over the management of the numerous charitable trusts, and ample revenues of the companies.

The last would be one of the most important advantages resulting from the re-establishment of the general rights of the fraternities. The practice of self-auditing and self-election has long precluded the members of the companies from a knowledge of their own affairs; and it is only by the recent inquiries of the Charity Commissioners, that authentic information has been obtained of the magnitude of their revenues, patronage, and possessions. From these inquiries it appears that nearly the whole of the land and houses in London has been left in trust of the City Companies, for charitable uses; that they also possess, in the same capacity of trustees, in the country, numerous manors, estates, messuages, church livings, and tithes of parishes; that the revenues arising from this property amount, in several instances, to £20,000 or £30,000 per annum, and that not one-twentieth part of this income is expended on the poor, or other objects for which it was benevolently bequeathed. It is seldom the courts increase the amount of their eleemosynary disbursements; notwithstanding the vast augmentation of value in the trust-property, they neither multiply the objects of their charities, nor increase the allowances originally fixed by the donors, in total ignorance of the future produce of their bequests. The objects on which the surplus revenues are principally expended, consist of the expenses of committees, law-agency, and surveyors’ charges; in pretended repairs and improvements; in ostentatious buildings; in luxurious feasting for the parties and their friends; and in extravagant pensions and gratuities to favourite servants and dependents. For these purposes the revenues are never too much—generally too little,—and they are compelled to resort to the monstrous expedient of taxing their disfranchised brethren, to supply the deficiency.