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This brick tower, the pledge of municipal rights, was begun in 1291, to replace an earlier one of wood, and finished about a hundred years later; the octagon, in stone at the summit, which holds the bell, having been erected in 1393-96.
It was the struggle, sometimes sullen, sometimes violent, of feudal lordship against municipal burgherdom. The able and imperious Philip the Handsome had tested the strength of the Flemish cities, and had not cared to push them to extremity.
While we know a good deal about the outward circumstances of The Theatre on account of the constant troubles which the Burbage family had to endure from the proprietor of the ground and the municipal authorities, and of the subsequent lawsuit, the reports we find about The Curtain are extremely meagre. We know neither when nor by whom it was built nor when it was pulled down.
Indeed, the fact on which I insist is much more clear and defined in the States than it is with us. In England the lawyers also obtain no inconsiderable share of political and municipal power.
In consequence of the passing of the municipal reform act, through the powerful advocacy of Lord John Russell, the government of the town passed to its own citizens, and became more or less democratic, not materially differing from the government of cities in the United States.
The Municipal Council instantly had martial law proclaimed on the Place de Grève, and the red flag suspended from the principal window of the Hôtel de Ville.
Under its auspices, the first municipal Christmas tree ever erected in Philadelphia was shown in the historic Independence Square, and with two bands of music giving concerts every day from Christmas to New Year's Day, attracted over two hundred thousand persons.
The municipal bodies voted what salaries they pleased out of the local funds, and named according to their pleasure the persons to receive the salaries.
These decisions by the courts may not appear to be in harmony with the letter of the constitutional provisions relating to municipal indebtedness, but they are hardly at variance with their spirit. The object of these restrictions was not so much to limit the rights of the property-owning classes as to protect them against the extravagance of the propertyless voters.
Thenceforward, the republican form of government, the municipal oligarchies, began to consolidate their power. Yet although the people as such were not sovereigns, but subjects, and rarely spoken of by the aristocratic magistrates save with a gentle and patronizing disdain, they enjoyed a larger liberty than was known anywhere else in the world.
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