The City did not adopt the stipendiary system. Its aldermen/magistrates
continued in the more traditionally passive role with respect to criminal pros-
ecutions followed by most magistrates outside the metropolis. In part, the City
was able to maintain its own practices because its magistrates were not faced by
the crushing load of business that increasingly confronted the Westminster and
Middlesex justices. More important, however, was the City’s sense of its unique-
ness. It had pioneered procedures that continued to work well because they de-
manded only occasional work from its twenty-six aldermen—roughly one day
a month. It remained aloof from developments in other parts of the metropolis
because it had developed—in part by accident—a form of magisterial practice
that worked well enough in the circumstances of the second half of the century.
The City’s refusal to join with others was not simply a matter of a privileged en-
clave clinging desperately to an ancient and antiquated institution. Rather, it
was the sense that what had emerged in the first half of the century was working
satisfactorily enough and fitted the public’s needs. It was not a refusal to change
but the result of change that led the City authorities to take this view. It was a
position they would take on a number of other policing issues.
City Magistrates and the Process of Prosecution 113