IV. Finance and Politics in Urban Local Government in England, 1835–1900

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Abstract
One of the chief features of the history of nineteenth-century England was undoubtedly the increase in the size of cities, and in the proportion of the total population who lived under urban conditions. Since this process turned out to be a long-term trend, the urban communities, especially the larger ones, were always historically more important than the statistics of urban to rural population in any one decade would have suggested.2 They were the growing points of the new society, and decisions taken there were to be of cumulative significance far beyond the borough boundary. The problems of the towns in any one generation became increasingly the problems of the nation in the next. For instance, it was assumed in 1848 that the administrative measures under the Public Health Act of that year were applicable to urban areas only. By 1872 it had been realized that they would have to be extended to the country as a whole.

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