that from 1888 to the present
time, has been notable in a special degree for the democratization and
systematization of local governing arrangements which has taken place
within it.

*186. County and Parish before 1832.*--The transformation by which the
institutions of local government have been brought to their present
status paralleled, and in a large measure sprang from, the
revolutionizing of Parliament during the course of the nineteenth
century. Two periods of change are especially noteworthy, the one
following closely the Reform Act of 1832 and culminating in the
adoption of the Municipal Corporations Act of 1835, the other following
similarly the Representation of the People Act of 1884 and (p. 177)
attaining fruition in the Local Government Act of 1888 and the
District and Parish Councils Act of 1894. At the opening of the
century rural administration was carried on principally in the shire
or county and the civil or "poor law" parish; urban administration in
the corporate towns, or municipal boroughs. The counties were
fifty-two in number. Most of them were of Saxon origin, although some
were the product of absorptions or delimitations which took place in
later centuries. The last to be added were those of Wales. Altered
often in respect to their precise functions, the counties retained
from first to last a large measure of importance, and at the beginning
of the nineteenth century they were still the principal areas of local
governing activity. From Saxon times to the fourteenth century the
dominating figure in county administration was the sheriff, but in the
reign of Edward III. justices of the peace were created into whose
hands during the ensuing five hundred years substantially all
administrative and judicial affairs of the county were drawn. These
dignitaries were appointed by the crown, chiefly from the ranks of the
smaller landowners and rural clergy, and as a rule they comprised in
practice a petty oligarchy whose conduct of public business was
inspired by aristocratic, far more than by democratic, ideals.

The principal division of the county was the civil parish, usually but
not always identical with the ecclesiastical parish. The governing
bodies of the parish were two--the vestry (either open to all
rate-payers or composed of elected representatives), which
administered general affairs, and the overseers of the poor who under
the Elizabethan statute of 1601 were empowered to find emplo