library of considerable size. Statutes, clauses, sections, and orders
have followed in rapid succession for the last generation or two. Our
forefathers were satisfied and gratified if they got a regal of
parliamentary notice of this kind once in a century, but no sooner did
the inhabitants find themselves under a "properly-constituted" body of
"head men," than the lawyers' game began. First a law must be got to
make a street, another to light it, a third to pave it, and then one to
keep it clean. It is a narrow street, and an Act must be obtained to
widen it; when widened some wiseacre thinks a market should be held in
it, and a law is got for that, and for gathering tolls; after a bit,
another is required to remove the market, and then the street must be
"improved," and somebody receives more pounds per yard than he gave
pence for the bit of ground wanted to round off the corners; and so the
Birmingham world wagged on until the town became a big town, and could
afford to have a big Town Hall when other big towns couldn't, and a
covered Market Hall and a Smithfield of good size, while other places
dwelt under bare skies. The Act by which the authority of the Street
Commissioners and Highway Surveyors was transferred to the Corporation
was passed in 1851; the expenses of obtaining it reaching nearly £9,000.
It took effect on New Year's Day following, and the Commissioners were
no longer "one of the powers that be," but some of the Commissioners'
bonds are effective still. Since that date there have been twenty local
statutes and orders relating to the borough of Birmingham, from the
Birmingham Improvement Act, 1851, to the Provisional Order Confirmation
Act, passed in 1882, the twenty containing a thousand or more sections.
All this, however, has recently been altered, the powers that are now
having (through the Town Clerk, Mr. Orford Smith) rolled all the old
Acts into one, eliminating useless and obsolete clauses, and inserting
others necessitated by our high state of advanced civilisation. The new
Act, which is known as the Birmingham Corporation Consolidation Act,