Thus did London get the recognition of its Commune—its community,—and with it the Mayor. There was certainly reason for the suspicion and hostility of the old-fashioned Conservatives towards the new constitution. Some of the citizens, we are told, in the first exuberant joy over their newly-acquired liberties thought that henceforth there would be no need of a King at all. They pictured to themselves a sovereign State like that of Genoa, Pisa, or Venice, in which the City should be independent and separate from the rest of the country. I dare say there were such dreamers. Three years later, in 1194, we hear of citizens who boasted that “come what may, the Londoners shall never have any King but their Mayor.” Fortunately, the Mayor himself observed wiser counsels. And now we may ask what it was that the City got with its new form of government. The Mayor took over the whole control of trade, which had been in the hands of the mysterious Guild Merchant; but with this vast difference, that he was provided with powers to enforce his ordinances. He took over, in addition, the administration of justice, the maintenance of order in the City, the subjection of all the various Courts and Ward Motes under one Central Court, with its Magistrates, its Bailiffs, its Officers, and its Servants. London as a corporate body actually began in 1191. The Sheriffs lost a great part of their importance; the Aldermen became, but not immediately, Magistrates of the City and not of the Wards only; the citizens themselves began to elect their representatives to rule the City; the regulations of the various crafts passed under the licensing authority of a Judge and his Assessors, who enforced their commands by penalties. In a word, the Commune abolished the ancient treatment of the City as an aggregate of private properties, each of which had its own Lord of the Manor, or Alderman, and substituted one great City, presided over by a representative possessed of power and authority, and backed by the strong arm of the law. [Illustration: KING JOHN SIGNING MAGNA CHARTA After the painting by Ernest Normand in the Royal Exchange, London. By permission of the Artist.] The step, in fact, made the future development of London possible and natural. Wherever there is self-government there is the power of adjusting laws and customs to meet changed conditions. Where there is no self-government there is no such power. A long succession of the wisest and most benevolent Kings would never have done for London what London was thus enabled to do for herself, because, to use the familiar illustration, it is only the foot which knows where the shoe pinches.