Sacramento daily record-union., 1889-09-29
1.-THE CITY OF LONDON. i"
& CLOSE CORPORATION WITH MANY
RELICS OF ANCIENT TIMES.
Singular Customs Still Observed-The
Gulidhan Giants-Some Notable
Mayors and officials.

A city which, according to tradition, has
had an existence since B. c. 1107, over 800
years before the foundation of Rome, must
exhibit in its governmental forms many
evidences of the changes through which it
has passed; but, even when due allowance
is made, it is a matter of surprise to find
so many variations in estimates in the ex-
tent and population of the English me-
tropolis. For while the Register General,
in his table of mortality, gives the area
at 1884 acres and the population at s.
S16,4S3, the Criminal Court London has
26S, ,391 acres and 4,457, ,102 population,
and the Police London has AL, i,559 acres
and 4,766.661 population, the differences
being due to the fact that the jurisdictions
are not coterminous.
In the heart of the worlds financial and
commercisi capital there is district, COM
prising oHiy 66S acres, the government ct
which is one of the most curious survivals
| of mediayalism to be found even in a
! country where old customs linger long after
their significance has vanished. This part
of the metropolis is known as "the CITY,"
| while the rest of London is the 'town.n y
Indeed, to every Englishman, in every part
of Great Britain, to go to London is to "go
to town." since everywhere else in the
tight little island you are supposed to be
in the country, SO completely does the
social political and commercial Importance
of the metropolis overshadow the rest of
| the island
So far as resident population is sconcerned
| the city is Insignificant. According to
| Whitaker, scarcely more than $4,000 per-
| sons have their homes or sleep within the
sacred precincts. Great commercial es-
J Establishments, banks, mercantile houses and
shops crowd the city, SO that over 100000
persons who gain their bread by work in
the city enter and leave it every day, hav-
| ing their homes in various districts of the
metropolis. Here also are vast churches,
erected and endowed at a time when men
lived in the city, and queer sight it is on
Sunday to see great church with score
| of salaried clergymen officiating within
| the chancel, while a dozen to twenty wor-
shipers-old women who clean the neigh
| boring buildings, watchmen, anitors, a
| few clerks paid to live in their EMPLOYERS
| offices-constitute the congregation. Small
as it is in area and population, the city is
| far from small in importance, and its cor
porate government enjoys many privileges.
! Highly valued, too, are these, and ieal-
ously are they guarded from all encroach-
, ment. No British regiments, except the
monarch's body guards, can pass through
the city in martial array when the troops
come 10 the city gates, or rather to the
| points where the gates once stood, the bay
onets must be removed from the guns. the
colors furled, for the city has been sacred
from the Kings troops since the time of
the Edwards. The city has its own police,
and some years ago when proposition
was made to put the city and metropolitan
| police under one board, such was the out
cry from the city people that the project
was Immediately abandoned.
The city is divided into TWENTY-FIVE
wards, each having one Alderman, who
has life tenure of office. The Common
| Council consists of 206 members, thus the
city has a sort of little Parliament of its
own for the transaction of its business.
The principal buildings of the city gov
ernment are the Guildhall and the Man
sion House. The former dates from the
beginning of the fifteenth century, when a
hall was built with various offices for the
use of the city. This structure was de-
stroyed by the great fire of 1866, and so
extensive were the additions to the build
| ing, erected after the flames subsidized, that
the present structure may be said to date
from the beginning of the nineteenth CEN
tury. The hall is one of the most mag
nifcent public rooms in the world. 1t
will comfortably seat 1000 persons. The
| allied sovereigns were entertained in it in
1914, after the battle Of Leipsig, and when
Napoleon III. visited London in 1856, a
grand banquet was given in his honor in
| this hall, on which occasion all the nobil-
| ity of England and most of that of France
was gathered within the walls of Guild
hall.
What the bear was to the Government
of the traditional Swiss city the statues of
! Cog and Magog are to the city of London.
Whether the City Government would go
on without them is unknown; but certain
| it is that they have been regarded as so
| important that from time to time they were
replaced whenever they fell into ruin.
Three times did Cog and Magog distribute
| their wooden fragments on the payements
| beneath their inches, and three times were
new statues put in the old places. Much
brain matter has been expended in coniec-
the most reasonable explanation is that
they were once employed in the Lord
Mayors show, and were annually taken
from their perches and placed on floats in
the procession. Many cities in the late
middle ages had annual parades similar to
the Lord Mayors show, and of these giants
were leading feature. Often they were
genuine, as Europe was ransacked for men
of great stature to walk in the parade, but
when real giant was unattainable, a
wooden substitute was manufactured and
placed on float in the parade. 1t is posi-
lively known that Cog and Magog were
so used on more than one occasion, and
| though the show has been practically
abolished, Cog and Magog remain as its
relics.
Next in interest to the 14-foot giants OF
| the Guildhall are the city emblems, the
mace, the seal and the purse. The mace
closely resembles that used by every other
civic corporation of England. for no cor
| porate body there appears to be able to
maintain its existence without mace. In
| England mace is the emblem of power.
| Parliament has its mace, but the conven-
tional form of the mace now differs greatly
from that which prevailed when the mace
was weapon and not an emblem. Then
it was short wooden staff with a round
spiked metal head, was always favorite
| weapon with horsemen and with warlike
priests, who, by law of the church, were
| forbidden to use or carry sword. The
London seal and purse are reverenced
equally with the mace, and on meetings of
the Council all three must be produced
and placed on the table of the Council
Chamber before business can be transacted.
In all British history the only man to
treat these emblems with disrepect was
Oliver Cromwell, who had the hardihood
to call the Parliament mace bauble and
ordered the city mace to be locked up.
The highest Office of the City Govern
ment is, of course, the Mayoralty. In
olden times the chief officer of London
was called the Portreeve; after the con-
quest he was denominated the Provost, and
not until the time of Henry ii. did the
| French word Marie come into use. In only
| four cities in the British Isles-London,
Dublin, Edinburgh and York-is the
| Navor Iir,if,ad lo orJ Nfo,or