to a close. Mr. WILLCOCK, in concluding a similar treatise upon the Municipal Corporations of England, before the Reform Act, disgusted with their petty disputes, intrigues, and corruptions, declared that they had long since ceased to have any beneficial operation, and added: "I have traveled through this work as a merchant from Medina to Damascus, a weary waste of way: there is as little to gratify the mind in the investigation, as to please the eye in the desert." Such has not been our experience in the present work. On the contrary, the extensive field over which we have just passed has presented at every turn new and interesting subjects for contemplation.

Our municipalities, in their creation and operations, stand closely related both to the Government and to the Law. They offer to the Legislator and the Jurist questions of perplexing intricacy and deepest moment. How thoroughly our municipal institutions are wrought into the frame work of our government and administration, how important the functions they are made habitually to perform, how closely in the exercise of their diversified powers, and in the discharge of their varied duties, they touch the daily life and affect the most important interests of the citizen, cannot ail to impress even the most inattentive observer. They are quickened by the spirit of the times, and in all their multiform purposes they illustrate its activity and enterprise. Wailed towns belong to a past age. The violence and insecurity of that age have passed away, but in their place, our chartered corporations, particularly our large cities, are encountering the perils, not less alarming,

110 Eng. Com. Law, 402, 411, per Crompton, J., cited, 11 House of Lords Cases, 714; Sprague c. Worcester, 13 Gray, 193, 1859, per Shaw, C. J.; Perry v. Worcester, 6 Gray, 544, 1856, and cases cited; Proprietors of Locks, &c. v. Lowell, 7 Gray, 223; Flagg v. Worcester, 13 Gray, 601, 605; McGregor v. Boyle, 34 Iowa, 268, 1872; Emery v. Lowell, 104 Mass. 13, 1870; City Council v. Gilmer, 33 Ala. 116, 1858; S. C., 26 Ib. 665; Barton v. Syracuse, 36 N. Y. 54, 1867; Conrad v. Ithaca, 11 N. Y. 158; Cowley v. Sunderland (mayor of ), 6 H. & N. 565, 1861. Further as to the right to maintain actions against bodies executing public works, under legislative authority, for the improper mode in which their powers have been exercised, see opinion of Blackburn, J., in Mersey Docks Cases, 11 House of Lords Cases, 713, et seq.; Broom Com, on Com. Law (4th ed.) 660, where the recent Eng lish cases are cited.

of corruption and fraud on a gigantic scale, engendered by the large revenues and official patronage at their disposal, and the disinclination, often the steady refusal, of the substantial citizens to take a controlling part in the management of municipal affairs.

How best to govern our cities is yet an unsolved problem in legislation; but it is clear, that for many of the excesses to which municipal bodies are prone the Conrts afford the most effectual, if not the only, remedy; and it is impossible to rise from the survey of the authority of the judicial tribunals over them, to enforce their rights on the one hand, and to enforce rights against them on the other, without profound admiration for the learning and conservative wisdom of the judges as displayed in the recorded judgments, which we have sought to photograph in these pages.

powers and duties, 781--802. Alienation. See DEDICATION; PROP-
Actions for damages caused by ERTY.