Bassishaw and Lime Street each return 4; Dowgate, Candlewick, Cordwainers, Cornhill, Queenhithe, Vintry, and Walbrook, 6; Bread Street, Bridge, Billingsgate, Broad Street, Cheap, Coleman Street, Cripplegate Within, and Cripplegate Without, Tower, Langbourn, Castle Baynard, Aldersgate, Aldgate, and Portsoken, 8; Bishopsgate and Farringdon-within, 14; and Farringdon-without, 16. These true representatives of the citizens constitute the Court of Common Council, under the style and title of "Court of the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and Commoners of the City of London in Common Council assembled." It requires the presence of the Lord Mayor, or his deputy--an alderman who has passed the chair--two aldermen and thirty-eight common councilmen, to make a quorum. There are usually twelve ordinary meetings in the year, and on an average thirteen extraordinary meetings, convened for special purposes by a requisition to the Lord Mayor signed by seven members. The proceedings are conducted as nearly as possible according to the routine of the House of Commons, and embrace a vast variety of subjects of local and sometimes national importance. The Court has a double function --legislative and executive. In the former capacity it enacts by-laws for the better government of the Corporation, in conformity with immemorial usage confirmed by 15 Edward III., and again more recently and fully by the Municipal Corporations Act. The charter of Edward III. authorizes the mayor and aldermen, with the assent of the commonalty, "where any customs theretofore used and obtained proved hard or defective, or any matters newly arising within the City needed amendment, and no remedy had been previously provided, to apply and ordain a convenient remedy, as often as it should seem expedient; so that the same were agreeable to good faith and reason, for the common advantage of the citizens, and other liege subjects sojourning with them, and useful to king and people." Vested with such powers as these, the Corporation of London are clearly competent to introduce whatever reforms circumstances may render desirable. As practical men of business, the Court of Common Council may fairly be supposed to be the best judges as to the nature of the amendments to be made, and the right time of making them. Persons engaged in commercial pursuits are not usually obstructive, or opposed to useful innovations. On the contrary, being wedded to no theories, they are constantly impelled to change, and to act upon each emergency as it arises. The past history of the City of London is one long illustration of this position,--it is an uninterrupted series of reforms, many of them rather beneficial to the nation at large than to the Corporation itself. On what grounds, then, is it justifiable to supersede this salutary internal action of the Corporation, and to exercise the arbitrary power of the legislature to enforce crude and inapplicable innovations?