SECOND READING.

HC Deb 13 April 1888 vol 324 cc1210-86

[ADJOURNED DEBATE.] [SECOND NIGHT.]

Order read, for resuming adjourned debate on Question [12th April], "That the Bill be now read a second time."

Question again proposed.

Debate resumed.

MR. RATHBONE (Carnarvonshire, Arfon)

said, that when the clock struck 12 yesterday he was endeavouring to show the House what would be the position of the different local Governing Bodies under the enacting clauses of the Bill, which produced hardly any simplification of areas, rates, or administration, and, indeed, would seem in some cases likely, without Amendments to the Bill, to add to the confusion already existing; and he intended to show later that it was extremely unlikely that the permissive clauses would be acted upon. He pointed out that, in a large populous Union in the North, 14 out of 17 Governing Bodies were left, several of them too small to undertake the general work of Local Government; that in the counties of cities no appreciable simplification was made. Now, let them see in what position the inhabitants of an ordinary urban or rural district in England found themselves. On reference to Mr. Wright's book on Local Government and Taxation, which he conceived was the standard work on these subjects, he found that the inhabitants of an ordinary municipal borough lived in four areas—the borough, the parish, the Union, and the county. The only change under the Bill would be that in some cases the borough would be called an urban district. The inhabitant of an ordinary municipal borough now lived under six authorities—the Council, the School Board, the Vestry, the Guardians, the Quarter Sessions, and the Burial Board. Well, the Bill abolished the Burial Board; but it cut the business of Quarter Sessions in two, giving part of the work to the County Council, and leaving part to the Quarter Sessions. He paid four rates—the borough or general district rate, the poor rate, the county rate, and the burial rate. Well, there did not seem to be any change there. The inhabitant of a Local Board district also lived in four areas—tho Local Board, the parish, the Union, and the county. The first would be called an urban district, and that was the only change. That inhabitant lived under six authorities—the Local Board, which would now become the District Council, the Burial Board, the Vestry, the Guardians, the School Board—where there was one—and the Quarter Sessions. The Burial Board disappeared, and the County Council was created. He paid the three rates—the general district rate, the poor rate, and the county rate, which all remained. The inhabitant of a rural parish also lived in four areas—the parish, the Union, the highway district, and the county. A local district was created in which the highway district was merged. He lived under six authorities—the Vestry, the Burial Board, the Guardians, the School Board, the Highway Board, and the Quarter Sessions. An entirely new Board was created to deal with the sanitary work, hitherto done by the Guardians, and with which the Highway Board and Burial Board were amalgamated; while the business of the Quarter Sessions was cut in two, like that of the Guardians, and a new Board created to carry it out. He would still pay four rates—the poor rate, the special poor rate, the county rate, and the highway rate—as before. They would thus see that while a certain number of the smaller functions of Local Government were to be given over to the new Rural District Council, the three greatest and most important branches of local administration and taxation—that of the Poor Law, of Sanitary Work, and of Education—were now to be entrusted to three Bodies instead of two. That was certainly not consolidation or simplification, and the consequence of it would be that it would continue as difficult as ever for a ratepayer to know by whom he was being taxed or rated, or to take an intelligent interest, or exercise any independent control over those most important provinces of local administration affecting the health, the property, and the character of the people in his district. He was perfectly aware that, under Clause 59, the County Council was empowered to frame schemes for simplification and consolidation of districts. But he would venture to point out that if a Government in so splendid a position as the present Government did not venture to tackle this task, was it likely that a County Council, upon whom they laid no obligation to undertake the work, and who had no special motive to undertake it, and who could offer to those Local Authorities no reduction of rate or other inducement to reconcile them to it, and had no large funds of their own, out of which to provide the necessary compensations for vested interests, was it likely that if they passed the present opportunity, and parted with the present power of simplification, it would ever be accomplished until the burdens of local taxation had become absolutely unbearable? And were they in such a position, industrial or otherwise, to risk such increasing drains upon their resources? He was afraid that if the chance was missed, nothing short of the impending bankruptcy of their Local Bodies would force the County Councils to put their hands into the hot water which appeared to frighten even Her Majesty's Government. The object of Local Government Reformers in demanding a simplified system in their Local Government and Taxation was not to obtain ideal uniformity and symmetry, but to guard against what he would show was a most terrible danger to the prosperity and character of this country—namely, the growth and increase of expenditure and debt, and the corruption and demoralization which ensued from profuse and wasteful expenditure. Not only did the complication make impossible intelligent interest and control in these matters, but it also made it almost impossible to apply an efficient check on expenditure. All who had studied these matters knew that democratically-constituted Bodies were very energetic, but were apt to be very extravagant, and the danger of extravagance in local matters was most serious. Their Municipal Bodies had not always or generally been most prudent. They had done a great deal of good work, and had a good deal that was valuable to show for their expenditure; but that expenditure had often been dangerously extravagant; and now that the prosperity of the country was no longer advancing by leaps and bounds they were beginning to feel the effects of it. Certain towns, no doubt, had much good work to show for their outlay—such as Birmingham. But Birmingham was remarkable for the amount of civic virtue that it contained, and it had also had the advantage of the leadership and direction of a most distinguished administrator. America had long possessed democratic Local Bodies. The people there were of our own race, with the same instincts of popular government, and this country might therefore gain some useful lessons from their experience, which had been gained at a cost which would be ruinous to an old country like ours. The Federal Government had had to come to their relief, and their debts had sometimes been reduced by repudiation. But even at the present time in nine cities of one of the older States the interest on the local debt was about equal to the whole expenditure for all other purposes whatever, while the debt was equal to one sixth of the entire capital value of the assessed capital freehold value of the property, real and personal, of their inhabitants. They must remember that in speaking of America taxation was levied on the capital or freehold value of property, and not on its income. In two of these cities the debt was equal in one case to a little less, and in the other to a little more, than one-half of the whole assessed capital value of the whole property, real and personal, which was liable to taxation within them. Circumstances called his attention some 40 years ago to the management of the town of New York. The rating was at that time ⅝per cent upon capital, a pretty handsome rate as they would consider. It was now 2¼ per cent upon the total capital value of the assessed property of New York, which included personal as well as real property. Such a rate of taxation in England would absorb the whole net average income which a landlord derived from landed property, as he believed in England landed property did not now pay more than 2¼ per cent net on its value. It was as a consequence of that experience that 10 of the principal States of America had put an absolute limit on the borrowing and taxing powers of their Local Authorities. And that limit had been found to work admirably. It was not only a check to borrowing and waste, but it had made the administration of the cities at the same time purer and more efficient than it was before. And in Chicago, a city of Illinois, one of the States in which the check had been longest in existence, it had stood the tremendous strain of the burning of the city, and he saw in the last report of that city that while they alluded to the difficulty of carrying out as rapidly as they could wish all the improvements that were urged upon them, they spoke most highly of the beneficial effect of this limitation. But to show the necessity of such a check they need not go beyond their own boundaries. They found that in 18 years, while the rateable value of England and Wales had increased 47 per cent, the local expenditure had doubled, and the loans outstanding at the end of the financial year had increased from £33,000,000 to £147,000,000. But the most dangerous feature was, that that system of borrowing, far from being checked with the less rapid increase in the prosperity and wealth of the country, was still advancing by "leaps and bounds." The increase of local indebtedness in 1886 was £8,200,000; and while America was not only putting these stringent limitations on debt, but also limiting to something like one-half or one-third the period of time allowed for repayment here, we, who had not her enormous undeveloped resources to depend upon, seemed to be taking no such precautions. The Government had, in principle, admitted the necessity of placing an absolute check upon the borrowing by Local Authorities, for they had put an absolute limit on the power of the County Council to borrow. The limit they had placed was that of two years' rateable value of the counties, and when that was reached the Local Government Board was not to sanction any further loans. But the aggregate rateable value of the counties was upwards of £130,000,000, while the County Debt at present was only £3,500,000, the heaviest debt of any single county amounting to only one-thirteenth of its rateable value. Most of the gaols and lunatic asylums, for which in the main these debts had been incurred, had now been built; yet the limit of two years' rateable value would not be reached until the counties had borrowed to the extent of £260,000,000 collectively, assuming that the counties had all borrowed in equal proportions, or till the county which had borrowed most had borrowed 26 times the amount of its present indebtedness. But, on the other hand, the right hon. Gentleman had placed no absolute limit on the borrowing powers of the District Councils, to whom he was about to entrust the whole of the sanitary administration and expenditure. It was this department of Local Administration which had been the source of the greater part of the enormous expenditure of the urban districts. No doubt the reason why they had not applied that limit to the borrowing powers of the Local Councils and Municipal Bodies was because in the Bill, as it now stood, it was extremely difficult to see how it could be applied while they had so many overlapping and confused Local Authorities and areas.

THE PRESIDENT OF THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD (Mr. RITCHIE) (Tower Hamlets, St. George's)

To what chock does the hon. Member refer?

MR. RATHBONE

To the check of not allowing County Councils to borrow above a certain proportion of their rateable value.

MR. RITCHIE

The same check applies to District Councils. No District Council will be able, under any circumstances, to borrow more money than two years' rateable value, and then only with the sanction of the Local Government Board.

MR. RATHBONE

He was not in the habit of making assertions in that House, requiring legal knowledge, without taking the best advice he could get upon the subject, and he had not made the statement without obtaining the best legal advice as to whether he was correct in the matter; but, of course, he did not put his opinion against that of the right hon. Gentleman. The limit on debt in America was rightly placed upon debt, exclusive of that borrowed for water and gas, as those undertakings ought to be, if well-managed, profitable investments. He found there were only five boroughs here whose debts, exclusive of that for gas and water, exceeded the amount of two years' rateable value, none that had exceeded two and a-half years, and only one slightly over two and a-quarter. The great bulk of the borough debts, exclusive of gas and water, were between one and two years' rateable value, so that the limit of two years' rateable value placed by the Bill on the county borrowing, if placed upon local borrowing, would be about right. In the statements given him the sanitary and municipal debts were both included, and also the school board debts in boroughs which had separate school boards. But he had alluded to another most important point in which the Bill failed to carry out the provisions for the adjustment of taxation, which the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer had urged as just and necessary, and which were as important for their effects upon administration and economy as they were necessary in justice to the ratepayers—he meant the division of rates between owners and occupiers. The right hon. Gentleman stated, in 1871, that the Government had become more and more convinced that both justice and public policy required that the owner should pay a certain portion of the taxes. He asserted that it was inexpedient that landlords should be allowed to contract with their tenants that the Local Authority should impose no taxation upon them; that such a practice was not permitted with regard to Imperial taxation; and he proposed to enact that engagements by which owners contracted themselves out of the payment of local taxation should be void. He pointed out that that division of rates existed in Scotland and Ireland, and that in England alone were the tenants made exclusively liable for the payment of local taxation. The right hon. Gentleman further showed that it was most important, for the interests of the public and the good administration of affairs, that not only the occupiers, but the owners, should take a direct and practical interest in the expenditure of the rates, and that his own experience in Local Government led him most heartily to agree with. Two Committees, one of the Liberal Parliament of 1868, and the other of the Conservative Parliament of 1874, reported in favour of this division of rates.

THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER (Mr. GOSCHEN) (St. George's, Hanover Square)

asked if it was suggested that the owners should have separate representation if the rates were divided?

MR. RATHBONE

said, that if the right hon. Gentleman had offered to the ratepayers such an immense concession, as relieving the ratepaying occupiers of the payment of one-half the rates, and linked with that offer the condition that the owners should choose the selected members of the new Councils, the ratepayers would have accepted the one, on the condition of getting the other. [Mr. ILLINGWORTH (Bradford, W.): No, no!] His hon. Friend said "No, no;" but he thought he could hardly remember what was really one of the functions and duties of those Local Bodies. A large part of the administrative work of Local Government was the expenditure of money in the improvement of property, so as not only to improve it, but to make it most useful to the community—doing by the Local Body, as the representative of the owners of property (among others) that which could be better done by the community than by individuals. [Mr. ILLINGWORTH: Hear, hear!] If his hon. Friend agreed with him in that, did he not see how very important it was, if they were to combine the different talents and different powers of the different classes of the community for the public good, that they should have represented in the administration of those affairs those who were thus specially interested in them as the owners of property? He considered, therefore, it would be good in itself to force these men, the leisure classes and owners of property, who had of late been so neglectful of their duties, to take their fair share in the administration of local affairs. But, even if they did not give the owners direct representation, he contended that, even for their own sakes, it was of the utmost importance to bring home to them, before it was too late, by direct payment of rates, the immense danger, from their neglect of local administration, of finding numerous debts, for which their property would ultimately be responsible, tied round their necks for two generations and sometimes more. The widespread unpopularity of the system of ex officio members of Boards of Guardians, that very clumsy and offensive way of representing owners of property, arose, as a rule, from most of the magistrates taking no interest in the administration of Poor Law matters, and not lifting a finger to share the work of Boards of Guardians, but coming down when an appointment was to be made or a job to be done, and over-ruling those who had borne all the burden and heat of the day. Where two or three, or a few, ex officio Guardians attended regularly and worked shoulder to shoulder with the elected Guardians, not only were they not disliked, but the elected Guardians were very glad to have them, and often made one of them Chairman of the Board of Guardians—and those who had watched the administration of the Poor Law carefully knew that those parishes where this help and co-operation took place between ex officio and elected Guardians were just the parishes administered the most economically and best in every way. If the District Councils were left as at present with this small amount of work to interest them, it would be very difficult, if not impossible, to got those whose leisure, information, &c., would make them most valuable, to take part in the work. He (Mr. Rathbone) believed that the majority of the House would have accepted such a proposal, and he himself would have done so, because he believed there was nothing which would conduce so much to the good government of the country as that all classes should take an active part in it. The effect of the present system was, that in bad times, which was just when rates rose, the whole pressure and burden fell on the occupier, who was in general the less wealthy party of the two, and the one most affected by bad times as to his power of paying rates. But he thought this change was also as essential in the interest of the owners as of the occupiers. Their property was, after all, ultimately liable for local debt, and yet under the present system, as they did not feel the rise and fall of the rates directly, you could not get them to take any interest in local administration and expenditure until they would some day awake to find a heavy, perhaps ruinous, debt entailed on them and their posterity for a couple of generations. He was sure all practical men would agree with him in the results of his own observation—that it was only those classes that felt the direct, immediate impact of taxation who could be got, as a rule, to take interest in watching its expenditure and guarding against its excess. He believed he was also in accord with the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer in contending that it was most unfair and inexpedient that the owners of property in ground rents and royalties should be able to contract themselves out of the duty of bearing their fair share of the burdens of the country, whether local or Imperial. During the last 60 years enormous sums had been spent compulsorily in improving their property held on long leases under laws and for purposes which were never dreamt of when the contracts were entered into. The wonderful increase in the prosperity of the country had prevented that grievance being felt as severely as it otherwise would have been; but the advance in prosperity had slackened, and he was very much mistaken, unless the owners of such property were wise and just in time, if they did not find, within a very limited period, that they would receive scant consideration at the hands of the democracy when they first realized the power that had been placed in their hands.

The House must bear in mind the severe competition with which English industry had now to contend, and if they burdened that industry by excessive local taxation and debt, they would make it practically impossible to compete with other countries. It was said that if owners of property were so stupid as not to look after this danger, let them suffer. Yes; but while the owner had his income reduced, if their industries were crippled, the workman had his whole livelihood taken away. It was for the workman, not the owner, that he cared and pleaded. How were they to maintain their immense population if they went on with that accumulation of debt? Sixteen years ago he felt it his duty to bring under the notice of his native city (Liverpool) the total amount of their taxation and indebtedness, and to ask them to consider the danger of the rapid increase of taxation and debt of which they were thus made for the first time aware. He showed them that in 30 years local taxation had risen from 7s. 4d. per head to £1 5s. 3d. per head, and he asked their attention, as he asked the attention of the House now, to the lesson which Mr. M'Culloch drew, in his Principles of Political Economy, from the effect of neglecting such increase of taxation. Mr. M'Culloch says— But whenever taxes become so heavy that their influence cannot be defeated by increased economy and industry, it becomes most injurious. The oppressiveness of taxation was in truth the principal cause of the lowness of profits in the United Provinces of Holland, &c., during the last two centuries, and of the decline of their manufacturing and commercial prosperity. Well, they had not yet shared the fate of Holland, but many of the circumstances which preceded their decline were now paralleled with us; and the increased competition of other countries with us in manufactures and commerce had advanced much more rapidly than he then foresaw or ventured to predict, so that the danger of overburdening industries by excessive taxation had become imminent and most serious. If Mr. M'Culloch was right, which he firmly believed he was, in his estimate of the main cause of the decline of the commerce and manufactures of Holland, it was worthy of their serious consideration to observe how rapidly such a change could take place. But they need not go beyond the experience of their own country. There were some few Members in the House who, like himself, could remember a warning almost as significant as the fate of Holland, though, fortunately, from the courage and wisdom of the statesmen of that generation, the danger was vigorously grappled with and overcome. There were those among them who could remember how, previous to 1834, by a lax and wasteful administration of the Poor Law, this country was on the brink of ruin, material and moral, and in sonic instances the whole rental of parishes was absorbed by wasteful local expenditure, while their inhabitants were converted into paupers and prostitutes. The Report of the Poor Law Commissioners of that day showed that three-fourths of the inhabitants of a parish were paupers. At that point the pressure became intolerable. The landlords gave up their rents, the tenants their farms, the clergymen their glebe and tithes. As property had become worthless, no rate could be raised. Land in many places became unsaleable. He had attempted to show some of the points in which the Bill would require serious alteration if it was not to increase the defects of our Local Government, and promote—as he believed it would in its present state promote—expenditure, which would ultimately increase instead of relieving local taxation. There were other most important Amendments required, such, for instance, as in the Licensing Clauses and in the mode of selecting the selected members and other matters; but they would be dealt with by hon. Members who could speak on those subjects with special authority. It seemed to be admitted on all hands that the Bill was to be read a second time. There seemed to be no disposition in any part of the House to oppose the second reading. But he did appeal to the Government, on going into Committee, to propose or accept Amendments in the Bill to meet the dangers which he had pointed out. Among the precautions he desired to see taken were alterations in the Bill which would secure, first, the simplification of rates, areas, and Governing Authorities; secondly, a fair division of local burdens between owners and occupiers; and, thirdly, an effectual check upon local extravagance, and, above all, upon local indebtedness. It would be disgraceful, and show a want of patriotism and of principle if any Party spirit were introduced into the discussion of the Bill. All ought to be ready to bring their practical experience to the assistance of the Government in making the Bill as good as it could be made.

In conclusion, he might say that, although he might seem somewhat of a fanatic on that subject of local administration, yet his experience in it had led him to believe that mismanagement of local self-government and expenditure was perhaps one of the greatest present dangers to their material prosperity and character.

MR. FORREST FULTON (West Ham, N.)

said, that as a Representative of a great industrial community, he desired to express his hearty approval at this Bill being based upon the principle of popular representation on a widely extended franchise. He was satisfied that in 1888, to introduce a Bill on other lines would have been a tactical blunder of the first magnitude, and have led to certain failure. He was well aware that there were many persons, both in and out of the House, who ordinarily agreed with the Party to which he belonged, who felt genuine alarm at the wide extension of popular principles contained in the measure. But he would remind them, looking upon the question from a Party point of view, that the Tory Party had ever grown stronger and stronger as popular rights had become more and more extended. Between 1832 and 1867 the fortunes of the Tory Party were at a very low ebb indeed, for the first Reform Bill had swept away large classes of freemen, and was virtually a disfranchising Act, so far as the working classes in towns were concerned. But from 1867, when the household franchise was introduced, the fortunes of the Party had improved, and at the present moment were exceedingly satis- factory. Another point which had occupied the attention of a great many Members of his Party was the statement that one of the effects of the measure would be to destroy the influence of the squirearchy. He did not believe it would. He believed that the influence of the squirearchy would be quite as great under the new as under the old system. Their influence would, in his opinion, be largely increased by the fact that they would owe their position on the County Councils, not to the favour of the Lord Lieutenant, but to the suffrages of the people. He had sufficient confidence in the good sense and patriotism of country gentlemen to believe that they would not stand aside, and there was scarcely a county in which, if they came forward, they would not receive the hearty support of the rural voters. It was notorious that country people were well aware that the country gentlemen thoroughly understood the difficult and complex details of county government. Though the system of Quarter Session administration of county affairs might be to some extent behind what was called the spirit of the age, yet everyone would admit that the country gentlemen had, during a long period of years, conducted the affairs of the counties at Quarter Sessions with economy, efficiency, and a notable absence of anything like jobbery Therefore, he believed that the good service they had rendered in the past would serve them in good stead in the future, and there need be no fear that if the Bill were passed the influence of the country gentlemen would suffer to any appreciable extent. But whilst he was ready to give a hearty support to the second reading of the Bill, there were several important matters which it seemed to him called for discussion at the present stage of the bill. He looked with considerable disfavour upon that part of the Bill which dealt with the management of the police. He regarded the proposal as set out in the 7th section of the Bill as an unmitigated evil. The County Councils would not have to make laws, but to administer them. It was by means of the police that the Imperial laws were enforced. If a case arose in which the wishes of the majority of the ratepayers of a district were opposed to laws passed by that House, as in the case of compulsory vaccination or the payment of tithes, what would happen? The police would be ordered by the County Council not to enforce the law, and the law would become a dead letter. For his part, he thought it would be better either to leave the control of the police in the hands of the County Justices, or, which he would much prefer, take this opportunity of placing the entire police force under the Home Office. He had another and a still stronger objection to this part of the proposed scheme. He understood that the measure now before the House formed a part only of a general scheme. It was proposed this year to deal with the Local Government of England and Wales alone, because of the extreme difficulty and complexity of the question. It was intended next year to extend the operation of the measure to Scotland, and it was intended ultimately to deal with a still more complicated question—that of the Local Government of Ireland. He ventured to think that no Unionist Government would ever introduce a Bill into that House dealing with Local Government in Ireland which did not reserve complete control of the police force to the Executive Government. At some future time—possibly at the next General Election—the country would be asked to pronounce a final opinion with regard to the Home Rule proposals of the right hon. Member for Mid Lothian (Mr. W. E. Gladstone), and have presented as an alternative plan a Local Government measure of the Unionist Party which would involve an extension of the operation of the Local Government Acts for England and Wales and Scotland to Ireland. It appeared to him to be absolutely necessary that this measure for the Local Government of England and Wales should not contain any principle of first-class importance which the House would not be prepared to place in any Bill for the Local Government of Ireland. It, therefore, did seem to him that the proposal in this measure with regard to the control of the police was highly unsatisfactory. With regard to that part of the measure which dealt with the licensing question, he felt bound to say that the experience he had had on the subject led him to believe that the licensing powers of the Justices had always been honestly, fairly, and uprightly exercised. At the same time, however, he did not doubt that the County Coun- cils would deal with licences in an equally fair spirit. Under the provisions of the Bill power was to be given to the Councils to do away with unnecessary licences, and, in his opinion, this was a power which might be exercised with great public advantages; but, of course, compensation was the necessary corollary to the withdrawal of such licences. The right hon. Gentleman had been labouring under a misapprehension when he stated that it had been decided that under the existing law licences could not be taken away without good cause. There had been no such decision pronounced by the Queen's Bench Division, although it was only right that he should say there was a great difference of opinion among the most eminent lawyers as to the effect of the Act of 1872 with regard to the point. But, certainly, whatever might be the strict legal aspect of the case, it had undoubtedly been the uniform practice for a long series of years to renew licences, and, upon the faith of that practice, large sums of money had been invested in the trade; and it would be a great breach of faith on the part of that House if it were to introduce a clause into this measure giving the County Councils power to sweep away existing licences, merely because the licensed houses were not wanted, without giving any compensation. With regard to beerhouse licences, the proprietors of those houses which were licensed before 1869 had an absolute vested interest in their licences, which was specifically set out and recognized by the Act of 1872, under which the Justices could not refuse to renew these licences except on the four grounds of unfitness set out in the statute. In dealing with such licences, therefore, the House would have to recognize the fact that such a vested interest did exist, and it would be a breach of every principle which had ever regulated its action if it were to authorize the taking away of such licences without compensation being awarded. The Bill appeared to have been defectively drafted in respect of the amount of compensation to be awarded, inasmuch as it set forth that the measure of compensation to be awarded in the event of a renewal of a licence being refused was the value of the house with and without the licence immediately after the passing of the Act. In the event of the value of a licensed house falling from £5,000 immediately after the passing of the Act to £2,000 a few years after, the County Council would, on refusing to renew the licence, still have to pay the sum of £5,000 as compensation. He presumed that the £5,000 in such a case would be the maximum amount of compensation to be paid in any event, and that it was intended that where the value of the house had fallen only its real value should be taken into consideration in assessing the amount of compensation. He thought the Bill would require amendment in this respect. Licensed houses continually change hands, and in such cases the price paid for them would never be more than a mere nominal one above their value at the time of the passing of the Act, and brewers and distillers would take care to protect themselves by never advancing a shilling more upon them than their value at the time the Act came into operation. As to the proposal to establish a County Council for the Metropolis, he was not quite able to gather from the speech of the President of the Local Government Board whether it was proposed next year to introduce a further and supplementary measure dealing fully with the question of District Councils and county government. It was important before the House was asked to accede to the proposal contained in the Bill for the establishment of a representative body in the Metropolis, that it should have some means of judging whether or not the District Councils were to be established on something like the lines laid down for counties in other portions of the Kingdom. Then, in connection with the licensing clauses, there was the proposal to give over to the County Councils the power as to Sunday closing. He objected to this for three reasons. In the first place he objected to the proposal because he thought that the question of Sunday closing was essentially a National and not a local matter. Sunday closing was either a good or a bad thing. If it was a good thing, an Act ought to be introduced dealing with the whole Kingdom. The system ought to be a uniform one. He objected altogether to a chance majority on the County Council determining a question of that kind. He objected to the proposal, in the second place, because he believed that the inevitable result of giving such powers to the County Councils would be to cause the Councillors to be elected not because of their special knowledge, but simply because they held strong views for or against Local Option. In other words, Sunday closing would become the test question of every election. His third objection was this. It had been shown that where Sunday closing existed the immediate result was the springing up of bogus drinking clubs. This, surely, would be a great mischief. He was, therefore, strongly of opinion that it was extremely undesirable to introduce such a proposal as this in the Bill. With those exceptions, he might say that the Bill, as a whole, was a thoroughly excellent measure. He believed it would not only tend to establish on a sure foundation the reputation of the President of the Local Government Board for courage and for statesmanship, but also tend in no small degree to strengthen and consolidate the great Party of which the right hon. Gentleman was so distinguished a Member.

MR. BROADHURST (Nottingham, W.)

said, he had to congratulate the Government in having such a thick and thin supporter of the Bill as the hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for West Ham (Mr. Forrest Fulton). If the President of the Local Government Board had supplied hon. Members with an explanatory Memorandum dealing with the Bill, as had been suggested, the speeches and the debate would have been considerably shortened. He did not think the Bill was anything like so good a measure as the speech of the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Local Government Board (Mr. Ritchie), in introducing it, had led the House and the country at first to believe. Speaking to his constituents the night after the Bill had been introduced, while paying a tribute to the lucid exposition of the subject by the right hon. Gentleman, he (Mr. Broadhurst) warned his audience to wait until the Bill was printed before they came to any definite resolution one way or the other, as it was very unwise to judge of the merits of a measure by the descriptive account of its introducer. They had discovered that this caution was necessary. The superstructure of the Bill was no doubt captivating and showy; but it had been reared with little regard to the element necessary for success and stability—the foundation. The right hon. Gentleman seemed to think that he was creating a sort of secondary Parliament in the counties, but little regard was shown to the connection between the County Council and the residents in the county. His own idea of constituting a proper system of Local Government would be to start from the parish as the unit, or at least from groups of parishes, and thus build up at the doors of the people a solid, sound representative body, and then to raise a great Central Council from it. The object of county government was not only to relieve Parliament and to improve the condition of county affairs, but to educate the people in the county, to bring them into as close touch as possible with the local governing body, and to give them as great an authority as possible over their local affairs. This Bill would not do this. The labourer and the mechanic in the rural districts would, to a great extent, be lost sight of in constructing the County Council.

MR. RITCHIE

said, there was the District Council.

MR. BROADHURST

said, it was true that there was a District Council, but the Bill left the vestries untouched. That was a great and radical defect in the measure before the House, and hon. Members on his side would do their best to obtain a thorough reform of Local Government based on real democratic lines, and not partly on democratic lines and partly on privilege, as they would discover county government to be if that Bill passed as it stood and nothing further was done. They had been led to believe that the Bill would abolish all property qualification, but the principle was not thoroughly carried out while they retained a property qualification in the case of the chairman of a County Council.

MR. RITCHIE

said, that the chairman would be a Justice of the Peace as the Mayor of a borough was. A Justice of the Peace in a borough required no property qualification. In a county a Justice of the Peace did require such a qualification, and that was the reason for the provision referred to.

MR. BROADHURST

said, he thanked the right hon. Gentleman for his explanation, and thought that it only confirmed his (Mr. Broadhurst's) statement, and showed that the right hon. Gentleman had entirely misled them by his description of the freedom which was to pervade the constitution of those bodies. The County Council ought to have freedom in regard to the choice of its chairman. Again, they had been led to believe that the Council would be elected on the principle of one man one vote; but in Sub-section 4 of Clause 4 in the Local Government Electors Bill it was provided that nothing in that section should prevent a county elector from being enrolled in more than one division roll. That would enable an elector, by the acquisition of some small property subject to rating, to have a vote in every electoral division in the county in which he lived, and in all the other counties surrounding it if he thought proper.

MR. RITCHIE

said, that the section said an elector might be enrolled in various division rolls, but he could only vote once for the county.

MR. BROADHURST

said, that was a considerable improvement, and he was glad of it. But the clause might easily mislead one into the view which he had expressed. He had asked the right hon. Gentleman whether he proposed this Session to repeal the property qualifications, and to remove other anomalies attaching to the Poor Law system, and the right hon. Gentleman answered in the negative. The country would be exceedingly disappointed by that reply, and would not accept that as anything like a settlement of the question of Local Government until the Poor Law system was dealt with. The people had for many years been looking for the removal of the property qualification in regard to Poor Law Guardians; also for the doing away of ex officio members in those bodies and for the abolition of plural voting; and Ministers had led them to expect that when the question of Local Government was dealt with, those matters would no doubt come under review. But were they now to have what was to a great extent a sham representative system left standing side by side with the newly-created County Councils and District Councils? The right hon. Gentleman seemed to be desirous of linking the living with the dead. There was no branch of local self-government so pressing or so vital to the working classes as the administration of the Poor Law system, which mainly affected them; and yet now they had practically little or no voice in the election of the Boards of Guardians, and they could not by any means become members of those boards. Labour representatives had no chance of finding seats on those boards as now elected and constituted. That had been a long-standing outrage on the principle of popular representation; and if the Bill passed as it now stood, the Boards of Guardians would remain in all their naked deformity as the one institution in which the working people were excluded from taking their share. The Poor Law was administered by a class who bad never shared the privations or experienced the discomforts and trials of the poorer members of the working class, and who knew very little indeed about them. The continued division of local authority would not be an aid to good government and reasonable economy. There would, if the Bill passed in its present form, be three distinct sets of officials—one for the District Councils, another for the County Councils, and there would remain the officials under the Poor Law system. The counties and districts would thus be officially governed and the Councils would hardly be able to resist the influence of their officers. If, on the other hand, one authority only existed there would be greater economy and better government. With regard to the elections, he suggested that it would be more convenient to farm labourers who might have to go a distance to vote if they were fixed to take place in April instead of in January. He regretted that the small boroughs were to be wiped out of existence. If the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Local Government Board had had anything to do with municipal government, he would perhaps hesitate before he took the course he had with regard to those boroughs. The fact was the right hon. Gentleman would have made a better Bill if he had not had before his eyes the ghost of the county squires. The vestries, with all their evils, were to remain as they were, and the elections in connection with them would continue to take place in the morning when only the parson, the squire, and their friends could attend. ["Oh, oh!"] He feared that the right hon. Gentleman had not attended his church regularly of late.

MR. RITCHIE

I am a churchwarden.

MR. BROADHURST

said, that that might be so, but yet the right hon. Gentleman did not seem to know when or at what hour of the day he was called upon to take up his ecclesiastical duties. The Bill suffered in consequence of this proposal to retain certain powers in the hands of the Justices, who were not elected and who were not in sympathy with the people. The Chief Constable, for instance, who was the centre and motive power of the whole force, would still be elected by the Justices. They intended to protest against this proposal and to divide against it as often as they could. They would protest until they were met with the inevitable closure which generally followed debates which were objectionable to the Government. The Bill, no doubt, was a great measure in its outline, but its details were bad, deceptive, and misleading. It might be described as a great skeleton without either flesh or blood about it. If the frame of the Bill was filled up from the Opposition side of the House, the measure might become a decent and passable Local Government Bill, but it was evident that it had been prepared with a view to the feeling of Gentlemen whose conversion to Local Government reform had been very recent and hasty. The sooner the Government were made acquainted with the feelings of the labourers and artizans outside the borough boundaries upon the subject, the better it would be for all concerned.

MR. DUGDALE (Warwickshire, Nuneaton)

said, the hon. Member for West Nottingham (Mr. Broadhurst) had intimated to the Government his intention of dividing on the Bill in Committee as often as he could, and he (Mr. Dugdale), therefore, thought they had acted wisely in not adopting the course the hon. Member suggested they ought to have adopted, that of combining this already long Bill with the question of the reform of the Poor Laws. He (Mr. Dugdale) did not propose to follow the hon. Gentleman through the speech he had just delivered. He had listened to the debate as one who had been to some extent engaged in county government with the object of making a few remarks on the Bill from a Quarter Sessions point of view. It would be very satisfactory to the right hon. Gentleman who had in- troduced the Bill to find that the Quarter Sessions which had recently assembled throughout the country had expressed so favourable an opinion on it. Almost all had appointed committees in order to see what amendments were necessary to carry out the objects of the Bill. At the Quarter Sessions of which he (Mr. Dugdale) was a member, there was a large attendance. One or two gentlemen made speeches expressing their distaste at the prospect of losing the business of the county which they had for so many years efficiently transacted; but the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Local Government Board would be pleased to hear that the chief opponent of the Bill at the Warwickshire Quarter Sessions, after making his speech against the measure, voted for a resolution appointing a committee to endeavour to ascertain what amendments were necessary in order better to carry out the objects of the Bill. This showed that the County Justices did not look on this measure in any jealous spirit; and the hon. Gentleman the Member for Nottingham would find that they had determined not to frustrate its objects but to endeavour to improve it in every way they possibly could in order to make it efficient for the purpose of County Government. He thought they might take credit for having conducted their business with efficiency, integrity, and economy at Quarter Sessions, and when he heard the right hon. Gentleman the Member for East Wolverhampton (Mr. Henry H. Fowler) last night commenting in somewhat envious terms of the smallness of the county rates as compared with the excessive rates which were levied at Wolverhampton, he (Mr. Dugdale) had almost thought that the right hon. Gentleman was making those remarks as a prelude to a request to the House not to pass the Bill at all, but to leave the County Government in the hands of the Justices. Now, the present County Government was representative—it was not elective, but by the present Bill it would be both representative and elective. He said it was representative because it was well known that it was carried on by Justices from every Petty Sessional Division of the county. The Lord Lieutenant appointed Justices resident in the district to attend to the business of every Petty Sessional Division. He could speak from experience that it was the object of those who had the appointment of the Committees of Quarter Sessions to select gentlemen from every Petty Sessional Division in order that persons from every part of the county might help to carry on the work of the county. So that, although the Quarter Sessions was not elective, it was representative, as it embraced gentlemen from every part of the county who were able to make known the views, feelings, and wants of every district. He hoped that in making these new County Councils elective, care would be taken to make them truly representative. He did not think, however, that the Bill had been framed with sufficient care for that purpose. The right hon. Gentleman, in framing the Bill, had gone rather too much upon borough lines. He had not taken sufficiently into consideration the differences which existed, and would always exist, between boroughs and counties, because he had proposed by Clause 52 in the Bill that electoral divisions should be modelled as nearly as possible on population. That was all very well, and a very good test for a borough. By that plan they had all the area of the borough represented. They had persons in the Town Council who knew the wants and feelings of the inhabitants of the borough, but it was a different thing in a county. There were large areas in all counties where the population was very sparse, and if the representation of the county were modelled on population solely without regard to area, it would be found that when the County Council came together it would not have the representative character which the Quarter Sessions now possessed. And this was a very important matter; because, unless the different districts were represented by those who knew their circumstances and wants, a great deal of injustice would be done. What struck him very forcibly at this moment was the question of the main roads. That was one of the most important questions which would have to be dealt with by the County Councils. He, as representing the County of Warwick—and he thought other hon. Gentlemen acquainted with other counties would say the same thing—could assert that there was not nearly a sufficient number of roads treated as main roads. In point of fact, there were very few main roads beyond those roads which were originally turnpikes. Circumstances had brought about changes in the districts, so that some of the roads that were originally main roads were not, properly speaking, main roads now, whilst roads which were not formerly main roads were now used as such. In the County of Warwick this matter had been under consideration for nearly two years, and the County Authorities had been asked by local bodies and persons from different parts of the county to take charge of certain small roads and treat them as main roads. They had only complied in one instance. They had been on the point of choosing a general committee to inquire into the matter all over the county, but they had thought that as the County Government Bill would be soon brought in, this was a matter which ought to engage the attention of the Councils established under the Bill, and which ought not to be dealt with by the county magistrates just as they were going out of office. They had, therefore, postponed the question; but it was a matter that ought to come before the attention of the County Council on the earliest opportunity. He spoke of this now because the question of main roads was a question which required local knowledge; and, unless they had persons acquainted with the whole area of the county, who would be able to assist the County Council with their personal and local knowledge, they would be entirely dependent on the reports of paid agents and officials, and would not be able to give the same careful consideration to the subject as they would be able to do if they had the advantage of the presence on the Councils of gentlemen residing in the localities. This showed that there was a great distinction to be drawn between the county and the borough, and that what was a very good measure of representation for the borough, would not be at all suitable for the central management of affairs by County Councils. He hoped the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Local Government Board would consider this matter when they got into Committee on the Bill. He might suggest that perhaps the most convenient method of arriving at a thorough representation of the county would be by taking the Petty Sessional Divisions as electoral areas, or some modification of them, because there could be no doubt that the Petty Sessional Divisions had been chosen and had been formed by the Justices to suit the convenience of the inhabitants of the county. And this being so, it was very likely that these areas, or some modification of them, would be convenient districts for the election of members of the County Council. But, of course, that was a matter which must be dealt with in Committee; therefore, he would not enlarge on it at the present moment. Now, it had been said by the hon. Gentleman the Member for West Nottingham that the County Justices were altogether out of touch with the rural population, and that they had no sympathy with them. When the election for these County Councils came to be made, the hon. Member would find that he was very much mistaken in his view with regard to the County Justices, and he (Mr. Dugdale) hoped and believed that the County Justices would take their part in the government of the county under the new conditions and would not hesitate to offer themselves as candidates, though it might be a new sensation and be rather distasteful to some of them—especially the older men who had had the greatest experience. But he felt quite certain that no body of men in this country were more popular with the poor and labouring classes than were the County Justices, and he was confident that the hon. Member for West Nottingham would find this out if the County Justices would only stir themselves, as he believed they would, and continue to take their proper place in the government of the county. And now he should like to say a word or two about the franchise which was proposed for the new County Council. He agreed very much with what was said on this subject yesterday by the hon. Gentleman the Member for East Somerset (Mr. Hobhouse). The borough franchise was a very good franchise for a Town Council, but the county franchise would be much better for a County Council. He should be quite willing to accept that portion of the borough franchise which admitted ladies to the suffrage—indeed, he would go so far, when the time came, as to apply that principle to Parliamentary elections also. The qualification of councillors and the selection of councillors was a matter which ought to be dealt with in Committee; and he rather approved of the suggestion of the hon. Gentleman the Member for the Arfon Division of Carnarvon (Mr. Rathbone) that the selected councillors should be elected by the owners. But as a matter of principle it certainly was most necessary and desirable that there should be some means of insuring stability and continuity of work in the County Council. He, therefore, thought that something should be done to make certain that some members—at any rate, at the commencement of the institution—should be rendered capable of holding office for more than three years. At the end of three years they would be just getting thoroughly acquainted with the work that was to be done—just beginning to work as it were. It was not work that could be learnt all in a moment. They would have to go to the central town—they would have to meet there from time to time, and if they were new to the work it would take them some time to get into it. It was, therefore, very desirable that there should be some provision, as was proposed in the Bill, for ensuring continuity and stability. He was very glad to find that the work of the Central County Council was to be confined to central work. It was impossible that these Councils could do their work in the same way that Town Councils did theirs, because the area was so large that they could not possibly attend to it. The District Councils would do the work, and he hoped they would do it well; but he thought with regard to these Councils, and here he was, perhaps, in accord with the hon. Member for West Nottingham—that every parish, unless it was a very small one indeed, ought to be represented in order that the interests of that parish might be properly seen to on the District Council, much in the same way that parishes were now represented on Boards of Guardians. When small matters such as the drainage of a parish were brought before the Rural Sanitary Authority, it was very important that every parish should have its representative on the Council, in order, if necessary, to stop extravagance in carrying out the scheme. Frequently parishes suffered very considerably if they had not efficient representatives on the Rural Sanitary Authority, before whom proposals of this kind were made. As to counties of towns he was not at all sure that the Government would be well advised in enlarging the number of those towns beyond that contained in the Bill. Those in the Bill should be made counties in reality. He wished to speak now of Birmingham, with which town he was connected. If Birmingham was large enough to be made a county of itself, it should be independent, and its present payment to the county rate ought to be commuted and ought to cease. It would be a great advantage to every town large enough to be a county of a town to have its own high sheriff, and he was sure that the high sheriffs of counties in which such towns were situated would be only too glad that this arrangement should be made. Nottingham was a county of a town now, and the system he recommended was there adopted, and was found to work well. The same thing should be done in the case of the new counties of towns which might be instituted. They should be made self contained, independent counties, with all the attributes of counties. And now he should like to say a word with regard to the police. He was bound to say he did not altogether agree with some of his hon. Friends in this matter. He should, certainly, prefer to see the police wholly in the hands of the Justices, but he could riot agree that the plan adopted in the Bill would not work. He knew that most hon. Gentlemen around him thought that joint committees would not work at all, but he held a different opinion. He had seen a great deal of the working in the county of a joint executive committee of Quarter Sessions, consisting of a certain number of Justices and a large number of farmers, for the administration of the Contagious Diseases (Animals) Acts; and all he could say was that no joint committee could work more harmoniously than this in Warwickshire had done, and no men could be more thankful for assistance rendered to them than were the Justices who were members of the committee to the farmers. Therefore, he was not in accord with the opinions of many of his hon. Friends on this subject. He thought it would be found that joint committees with regard to the police would work as well as the joint committees in respect of the Contagious Diseases (Animals) Acts, had done. On the subject of main roads, on which he had already touched, he desired to point out that the matter was not a local one at all. These roads were great thoroughfares. They would have to be re-arranged, and ought, properly, to be dealt with by the counties. He had wished for some time to see the day when the main roads of a county would not be left in the hands of the parishes, but would be managed by a central authority. The Wheel Tax was a tax which should be handed over to the County Authority, as it was a fair tax to apply to the main roads; for he did not think any hon. Gentleman on the opposite side of the House would disagree with him in saying that those who used the roads should contribute—at any rate to some extent—to the expense of repairing them. No doubt the turnpikes were an inconvenient mode of collecting the money, still they had done rough and ready justice. He had been rather surprised to hear the right hon. Member for East Wolverhampton last night complain that the Wheel Tax of Wolverhampton would be spent outside the town, because it almost made him think that the wheels of Wolverhampton never went outside that borough. He thought that the right hon. Gentleman would, on reflection, be of opinion that it was quite fair that the Wheel Tax should be distributed over the county, and that it should not be simply devoted to the town where the wheels had to be put up for the night. It should go to pay the expenses of the roads over which they travelled during the day. He did not think there could be any difficulty in administering these main roads by a central body. No doubt, the county road surveyor would be responsible, and he could either repair the main roads through subordinates of his own or contract with the local authority in a district to do it for him. So much, then, with regard to main roads. He wished now to say a word or two with reference to parish roads—and here he must say he did not agree with the proposal of the Bill. The Bill proposed, practically, to divide the whole county into Highway Boards, because the District Council would be the Highway Board for the district. The central authority was the body to whom should be entrusted the administration of main roads; but the smaller roads were used principally by the parish or the neighbourhood, and did not require anything like the same amount of repair as the main roads, and it seemed to him that they would be much more cheaply and better attended to if the parish highway surveyor were not abolished. He knew that many hon. Members thought that the parish highway surveyor was a person who neglected his duty and left the roads in a very bad condition. That, however, had not been his experience. In his experience the parish road surveyor had done his work very well, And they must remember that he was an unpaid officer, and that they had much better avail themselves of unpaid labour, if they possibly could, than appoint a large number of paid officers and lead to jobbery. Then the parish surveyor was on the spot, and that should be considered. He could look to what was wanted, and could employ labourers at odds and ends of time when the men could not get work elsewhere—which was a very important thing in a district—and could use his own carts, and altogether do his work better than anyone else. Something was said yesterday about occupation roads, and a hope was expressed that some provision would be made for repairing them. He hoped nothing of the kind would be done. Occupation roads were private roads, and ought not to be repaired by the public. As to work transferred from the Government Department, by way of a practical suggestion he would say this. They all know a great deal about the services of the Inspectors of the Government Department, and he would suggest that a staff of these Inspectors should be kept up, and that their services should be available to the County Councils whenever those Councils had to undertake any of the work which was now performed by the Government Department, but which would now be thrown upon them. Surveyors were very eminent persons, but they were very expensive, and it would be found a great saving of expenditure if the Government surveyors were to consider it part of their duty to advise the County Councils. In this way the County Councils would not only be saved great expense, but would have the benefit of a wide experience which the Inspectors employed by the Government Offices possessed. He was afraid he had trespassed too long on the indulgence of the House, but he still wanted to say one word about the licensing clauses of the Bill. He was not one of those who could bring himself into such a state of mind as even to drop a silent tear at the county magistrates losing the power of licensing. He did not think the Justices' duty with regard to licensing was really much more than a ministerial duty. All were agreed that there were too many public-houses, but the Justices were not responsible for that. They knew, as was said by the hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for West Ham (Mr. Forrest Fulton) that they were saddled with all beer houses which sprang into existence before the Justices had any power over them, the licensing authority being then the Excise officers. The more beer houses there were the more money came into the Excise, and the result was—and it should be a warning for the future—that the number of these houses which sprung up all over the country was far beyond the necessities of the population. When the Act of 1865 passed, and the beer houses were transferred to the magistrates, the beer house keepers were protected against the forfeiture of their licences, as had been mentioned by the hon. and learned Member for West Ham. It was, therefore, almost impossible for the Justices to reduce the number of beer houses, and, in point of fact, they had not been able to do so. Now, with regard to the licensing of public-houses, he thought there was a very erroneous impression abroad that the Justices had really an almost unlimited, absolute discretion in refusing the renewal of these licenses. That was very far from being the case. By Section 42 of the Act of 1872 no licensed person need attend the annual licensing meeting for the renewal of his licence, unless he was required by the licensing Justices to do so. The Justices were not allowed to entertain any objection, unless written notice of opposition and the grounds of objection were served on the licensed person seven days before the licensing meeting; and they were bound to take evidence on oath as to the renewal. Subject to that, the section of the Act said licences should be renewed. The words were "subject as aforesaid," and they had always been treated by Justices and Courts of Law as referring to provisions preceding them, and as limiting the discretion of the Justices to a judicial discretion, thus excluding an absolute, arbitrary, or capricious exercise of discretion; and if any hon. Member wished to see to what an extent that had been carried recently, be would quote a case which had only lately occurred before a Court of Justice. The case, which arose in the neighbourhood of Nuneaton, was that of "The Queen v. the Justices of Market Bosworth." The case was heard in the Court of Queen's Bench Division, and anyone who was curious to see it would find it in The Times "Law Reports," 3, page 620—the date being the 11th May last. It seemed that there was a public-house in Market Bosworth, of which a man named Palmer was the licensed tenant. In September, 1885, his licence was refused, but no one had given him the proper notice required by the Act. He did not appeal against the refusal. His licence ran out. He remained in the house without selling beer, and in 1886 he transferred it to a man named Chatham, and at the annual Licensing Sessions in 1886, the licence having been dead a whole year, Chatham applied for a renewal of it. He applied under the Act 9 Geo. IV. c. 61. The Justices refused the application, but took no evidence of any specific objection, treating the application as if they had a right to refuse it. They said they had a right to refuse it, because it was not required; but the Court of Queen's Bench granted a mandamus, and the case was sent back to the Justices who then renewed the licence. Now, Justices acted on that view of the law, and the result was that there was a very small diminution in the number of licences, and would continue to be so long as the matter remained in the hands of the Justices with their present jurisdiction; but those gentlemen who thought that public-houses would be brought to an end sooner by a mere transfer to another licensing authority were, he believed, very much mistaken. He found that between 1873 and 1887 there had only been a diminution of 27 public-houses in Birmingham, whore the people were fully alive to the necessity of reducing the number of licences, and some of the old licensed houses had been pulled down; and with regard to the beer-houses, which did not come under the control of the Justices until 1881, there had only been a very small diminution in the number of them. With regard to new licences, it was well known that for the last few years these had to be confirmed by the licensing committee of the county, and the result was that few new licences had been granted. It was almost impossible to get a central independent authority to grant them, and he found that in Warwickshire during the last 13 years only 12 new licences had been granted. Under the circumstances, as the Justices had no absolute power to close public-houses if they were not required, it would be most unjust to take away licences without compensation; and, therefore, he thoroughly approved the principle of the Bill with regard to compensation. If power was to be given to any body of men to close public-houses and pay compensation, they must, of course, in these days be an elected body, and not a body like the Justices; but the compensation, should be reasonable, and he suggested that it should include only the ordinary publican's profit, and not that made by the brewers by what was called "tying," because it would not be right and fair to the ratepayers. The number of tied public-houses was increasing very largely, and the practice was neither good for the publicans nor the public, and it had recently extended to such a degree that not only was the beer tied to the brewers, but wines, spirits, tobacco, tea, and oven matches. Therefore, under the circumstances, it was absolutely in the interest of the ratepayers that the appraisement of a public-house for compensation should not include brewers' profits. He would suggest as an alternative to compensation in money, that there should be the option to extend licences for a certain definite period, at the end of which they should absolutely cease. He did not wish to go into the questions of Local Option and Sunday Closing further than to say that he did not approve of the former, unless it was applied to very large areas; and that he did not think it would be an advantage to the public that public-houses should be shut up on Sunday in one parish or county and in the next parish or county kept open. There were many men who went for long walks on Sunday mornings, and it would be extremely inconvenient to them when at a distance from home to find that there was no house where they could get a mouthful of food or drink; and it should be remembered that the publican was bound to supply food as well as drink, and he was therefore, in that respect, a servant of the public. He considered it was a very valuable provision in the Bill that Clerks of the Peace and other county officers should be at once transferred to the new Boards, because it was quite impossible for any body of men to transact county affairs satisfactorily unless they had efficient clerks. Finally, he was confident that when the proposed change took place, the Justices would be found to assist in every possible way, their only desire being that the business of the counties should be efficiently carried on.

MR. T. E. ELLIS (Merionethshire)

said, that this Bill was welcomed by the country, because it was a serious attempt to arrest and, if possible, to reverse the fatal tendency to concentrate power in Westminster and at Whitehall, and to check the interference of Government in local affairs, which depressed local life and annihilated local independence. It was an attempt to return under modern conditions to the popular representations of early English times; but, bulky as the measure was, its omissions and reservations seriously detracted from its value as a final measure. Its most serious omission was the absence of any reorganization or even recognition of the parish, which he thought might have expected better treatment from a Conservative Government. The parish had been the cradle and nursery of local self-government in England, and the unit and even the kernel of the English representative system. It was the reeve and the four best men of the parish with the lords of the land and the parish priests, that formed the hundred of the early English organization, and it was the reeve and the four best men of the township, with the wealthy barons and dignitaries of the Church, who formed the shiremoot or County Council which the Government were trying by this Bill to revive; it was the germ from which the Commons House of Parliament sprang, and it had been and was still the unit of government. No doubt in England it had lost much of its former vitality, owing largely to the destruction of the open-field system and the shameless enclosure of commons, which had robbed the peasants and labourers of the parish of their interest in the land, and had thereby taken from them their local responsibility and, to some extent, their self respect. The legislation of the last 40 or 50 years had emphasized the change. The decline of the parish had been furthered by the formation of Poor Law Unions, by the Union Chargeability Act, and by the institution of the county police instead of parish constables. He thought the Government might have given some recognition of the important fact that the Education Act of 1870 gave new life to the parish, and Radicals might have expected from them some historic sympathy with this time-honoured form of Local Government. The right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer should certainly have given greater consideration to this unit, for in his Radical days he made the parish the unit of his scheme of Local Government; but he now treated the most time-honoured of our institutions with contempt, and made no effort to give it vitality or new powers. This Bill really robbed it of many of the powers which it had hitherto possessed; at least, so far as Wales was concerned, it was to be merely an area for the election of the school board and the extraction of tithes. The Bill threw the bulk of power and responsibility not on the parish, which was accessible to most of the people, but on the local authority of the County Council, the body least accessible to the mass of the people; its whole framework tended to increase the power and duties of the County Council, the membership of which must be restricted to the leisured classes. That Council would draw to itself the power hitherto exercised by the Quarter Session boroughs of 100,000 inhabitants and other powers until now exercised by parishes, and would be further strengthened by the provision enabling the Privy Council to add to it. He appealed to the author of the Bill to mitigate this evil by not straining pedantically after equal electoral districts. He thought that definite instruction should be given to Quarter Sessions that they should pay the greatest respect to the area of the parish in dividing the county into electoral divisions, and that similar instructions should be given to the County Council in dividing District Council areas into wards. Even if the Government did not do that, he thought that the electoral divisions should not be a mere mechanism like a Chinese puzzle, but associations of inhabitants like parishes having common interests and living near one another. He pleaded for this particularly so far as Wales was concerned, because there the mountains cut up the counties into valleys and dales, having communities with a distinctive life of their own. He therefore hoped that the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Local Government Board would in Committee insert an Instruction to the apportioning body, if he might so designate it, to pay the greatest attention to the boundaries of the parishes, and especially of scattered parishes like those in Wales and in the North of England. In introducing the Bill the right hon. Gentleman said that, as there was but one door by which all who desired to take part in the Great Council of the nation should enter, so also there should be but one door by which all should enter who wished to take part in the County Councils. That was a most excellent principle to lay down, but he did not find in the Bill itself the application of that principle. This House of Commons is not made up of 500 Members elected by the constituencies and 170 Members selected by the elective Members. To state it is to condemn it. In 1836 this proposal of having selected members in local bodies was adopted, at the instance of a Tory Peer in the House of Lords; and he must say that, after 50 years of democratic rule, he should not have expected from the most reactionary Government any such proposal as the present, and he hoped before the second reading of the Bill took place the Government would be able to announce that they had given up this indefensible proposal. He thought that every member of the Council should be elected, even, in order to carry out the object of the Bill. In introducing the measure the right hon. Gentleman had said it was essential not to set up distinctions between member and member of the Local Councils, but that was exactly the principle which the Bill did set up. He would also suggest to the Government that instead of electing the whole of the County Council for three years, it should be elected for a period of four years, and that half of it should be renewed every two years, and that, instead of having annual elections with regard to District Councils, they should be biennial, so that elections for the County and District Councils would take place in alternate years. By those means the traditional spirit would be maintained in the County Councils; there would then be no serious interruption of their work, and the objection pointed out by the last speaker would be obviated. With regard to the police, they had heard that evening from the hon. and learned Member for West Ham (Mr. Forrest Fulton) a most monstrous doctrine—namely, that the counties, and even the boroughs, should be deprived of the control of the police, and that they should be handed over absolutely to the control of the Home Office. Surely police despotism in Ireland must not in an enfranchising measure be extended to England and Wales. He thought that the limitations placed by the Bill on the popular control of the police were, one and all, mischievous. In the first place, it was mischievous to have a Joint Committee of Quarter Sessions and the County Councils. Why should not the control of the police be given to the representative County Council, as it had been entrusted for over 50 years to the representative Town Councils? But it was a greater anomaly still that the Chief Constable, who is the pivot of the whole police force of a county, should not be appointed and controlled by the County Council, who paid the salary, but by Quarter Sessions. That, he thought, was a distinctly retrograde provision. Another objectionable provision of the Bill was that power was to be given to the Justices of Quarter Sessions to employ the police for other than ordinary services, which simply meant that they would be used, as in Wales, for the extraction of tithes, perhaps of rack-rents, the protection of game, and the safeguarding of Emergency men. No doubt the latter ought to be guarded, but he thought the county should have some voice in the employment of the police for these extraordinary duties. With regard to the District Councils, he thought the way these were to be dealt with constituted a distinct blot on the Bill. It seemed to him that this body, the smallest rocog- nized by the Bill, should correspond to the Communes which on the Continent formed the safeguard of popular freedom, because they had power to deal with all that concerned the social and neighbourly life of the people. M. de Tocqueville, a profound student of government, wrote— The strength of a free people resides in the Commune. Communal institutions are to freedom what primary schools are to science—they bring freedom within the reach of the people, they teach them the peaceful use of it, they habituate them to its practice. How did the Bill propose to make the District Councils in the rural parts of interest to the people? It was quite true that they were to have the administration of the Public Health Acts, and that certain powers now exercised by the parish were to be given to them. The villagers and peasants were closely and vitally interested in such matters as commons, allotments, plots for houses and gardens, pathways, and, in Wales, in extensive Crown lands which formed permanent pasture and sheep walks. Then there were the subjects of the education of their children, the disposal of local charities, the control of public-houses and of rivers, and the care of the poor; but every one of these things was precluded from the purview of the District Councils, and it seemed to him, therefore, that the proceedings of these Councils would, owing to these glaring deficiencies, be "flat, stale, and unprofitable." Greater simplicity would be secured, in his opinion, if these Councils were strengthened. The licensing question was, for instance, to be dealt with in a most cumbersome and unsatisfactory way, by means of new areas. But why not trust the people by giving the control of the liquor traffic to the District Councils, where they would really have some amount of power? It was by giving the control of these matters to them that the District Councils could alone be made of interest and value to the country people. He hoped that before the second reading took place the Government would distinctly announce that, if possible, next year the care of the poor would be placed in the hands of the popular Councils instead of Boards of Guardians; and at least, so far as Wales was concerned, there was the strongest desire that the control of all schools which received Government grants should be placed in the hands of the people. He ventured to suggest that power should be given to the County Council to re-arrange and occasionally subdivide the rural District Councils so that county towns should become centres of new districts. In many parts of Wales the Unions covered areas of 20 or 30 miles, and it was unreasonable to expect peasants to take a real interest in a body to attend which they would have to trudge the great distances he had alluded to. Instead of restricting the chairmanship of County Councils to those qualified to be magistrates, he thought it should be rather enacted that every chairman of District as well as County Councils should, by virtue of his office, be a magistrate. This would popularise the administration of justice, and add dignity to the fulfilment of responsible local duties. Then he wished to make some remarks on the financial proposals of the Bill, especially with regard to Merionethshire, the county which he represented. In the first place, he noticed that the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer had ingeniously transferred to the County Councils the unpopular, the vulnerable, and capricious sources of revenue. The right hon. Gentleman, in his Budget speech, repeatedly spoke of the liquor revenue as a declining revenue, and he proceeded to re-adjust the local and Imperial taxation by making the county budget largely depend on the maintenance of the liquor traffic, and thus, while he divested the Imperial Government of all moral responsibility for the traffic, he safeguarded the revenue which he derived by making it the interest of the County Councils to keep open as many public-houses as possible. Then how will counties with absentee landlords fare in the apportionment of the other licences? In the county of Merioneth, Lord Newborough owned the royalties and ground rents in the Northern part, and three great landlords drew rent from the Eastern part, and three others from the Western part of the county; but not one of them lived within the county, and they would not, therefore, contribute a single sixpence of the revenue drawn from armorial bearings, licences for servants, carriages, dogs, and game. Then Merionethshire happened to have fewer public-houses than any other county in Wales, and, as he believed, also in England; and, at the same time, the Home Office had power to compel it to keep up the police force to its present strength, and even increase it; so that, the grant in aid to the county being taken away, there would be very little drawn from the taxes to be transferred to it. Coming into the allocation of the Probate Duty according to indoor pauperism, he could not enter into the question whether it was wise or not relentlessly to apply the workhouse test; but he said they could not apply the test in the same way to large towns, where the poor were very helpless, and to the rural districts of Wales, where there had been from time immemorial a neighbourly courtesy among the peasants which made the administration of the Poor Law much easier than in the former. Let the House consider how the principle of the Bill would work. London, with 54 per cent of indoor paupers, would receive 18s. a-day for every 100 paupers, while Wales would receive 3s. 8d. a-day for the same number. He trusted the Government would revise this inequality, for if not, the Welsh Members—and many English Members also—would offer a most determined resistance to the 21st clause. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Halifax (Mr. Stansfeld) last night had expressed the hope that if the Bill passed it would diminish the work and expenditure of the Local Government Board. He was not quite sure whether the right hon. Gentleman was not using a little irony in making that reference, because if anything was clear, it was that the new arrangements would add immensely to the work and expenditure of the Department. For many years it would be, only in a limited sense, a decentralizing measure, and it did not touch the question of Private Bill legislation, with its scandalous expense and delay, nor did it give to Wales an elected Body which would have a superintending control over the vast and complex machinery which the Bill would set up. He said that such a Council as that, representative of and responsible to the Welsh nation, would not only control and superintend the local machinery, but would, by dealing with such questions as education, fisheries, Crown lands, and public works in Wales, lighten the ever-increasing burden of this House, and become a real, solid, and effective measure of decentralization.

MR. TAPLING (Leicestershire, Harborough)

said, that the country for many years had been looking for this measure, but it had fallen to the lot of a Conservative Government to bring in a Bill which would be something like a comprehensive settlement of this great question. The hon. Member for West Nottingham (Mr. Broadhurst) had said that he was disappointed with the Bill, although he approved some of its provisions. He could quite understand the disappointment of the hon. Member at seeing this measure brought in by a Conservative Government. The hon. Member went on to make an entirely unprovoked attack upon the county magistrates, who he asserted were not in sympathy with the people. He (Mr. Tapling) ventured to think that the result of the elections next January would show pretty clearly whether that was the case, and he was willing to leave the question to the electors who would have to be enfranchised under the Bill. Some hon. Gentlemen had said that they regarded with a certain amount of anxiety the results of the Bill, more particularly as it affected the magistrates by whom the county business had been so well performed. He did not, however, share that anxiety; on the contrary, he believed the people of England had quite enough common sense to elect the best men to do their business. They had trusted the people in the Election of 1886, and he, for one, was quite satisfied with the common sense then showed by them. He should not criticize the Bill at length, but there were one or two points on which he desired to make a few observations. It would perhaps have been more satisfactory if the numbers in the case of the new County Councils could be set out in the Bill, so that each county might know exactly how it stood in the matter of representation. Then, he had been rather struck with the opinion expressed the other day at a meeting of the Chamber of Agriculture in his own constituency, that some sort of qualification ought to appear in the Bill for the County Councillors. He was aware that this suggestion would not find favour on the Benches opposite; but the members of these Councils would have duties to perform of a very important cha- racter, and in future those duties would become even more important than those now assigned to them under the Bill. The hen. Member for West Nottingham (Mr. Broadhurst) had asked why the Poor Law administration was not entrusted to the new Bodies? Besides the Guardians, there were the school boards, harbour authorities, drainage, and conservancy boards, which were left untouched by the Bill; but he did not regard this as an absolutely final, but to a great extent a tentative measure, and if the Government found that it worked well, and that the present powers were exercised judiciously by the County Councils, he was perfectly certain that they would be loth to refuse an extension of powers to the Councils. The hon. Member for Merionethshire (Mr. T. E. Ellis) had referred to a subject of great importance—namely, that of Private Bill legislation; but he (Mr. Tapling) looked forward to the time when the congestion of Business in that House could be relieved by allowing to locally constituted bodies the same share in legislative as in administrative work, and when the expense incurred by the ratepayers in connection with Private Bills might be saved by allowing the Local Councils to carry out private legislation. His next point was that of the areas constituted under Clause 52. That had been referred to by the hon. Member for the Nuneaton Division of Warwickshire (Mr. Dugdale). The section provided that the divisions should be arranged with a view to the population of each division being as nearly as may be equal, regard being had to the last public census for the time being. He ventured to think that if carried out exactly as it stood the Bill would to some extent defeat its own object. The object was to confer on the counties the power of managing their own affairs at present possessed by the boroughs; but he thought he should show that unless other considerations besides population were taken into account, the county people would be absolutely swamped in their representation on the County Boards. He had in his hand some statistics relating to Leicestershire, which county he had the honour to represent. In that county the Billesdon Union had an area of 50,721 acres, a population of 12,000, and a rateable value of £107,428; but there were two small populous places called Humberstone and Evington with an acreage of 3,486 acres, a population of 5,000, and a rateable value of £16,584, and if the population of these boroughs was deducted, the population of the rest of the Union would be 7,000; and it would be found that while the rateable value of Humberston and Evington was £16,584, the rateable value of Billesdon Union was £107,428. Therefore, as the Bill stood, the rest of the Billesdon Union and the two places Humberstone and Evington would have about equal representation on the County Councils, although as far as valuation was concerned the rest of the Union really represented five times more property than was comprised in the two places he had mentioned. The result would be that the inhabitants of the country districts of the Union would be practically swamped on the County Board. Without wearying the House with other figures even more remarkable, he was perfectly certain that those he had given could be matched in other parts of the country, and unless some alteration were made he feared that gross injustice would be done by the rural districts being swamped in the manner he had described. He did not think he was asking anything unreasonable when he pointed out the necessity of rectifying this inequality. He urged simply that taxation and representation should go together; he was not asking that there should be anything in the nature of plural voting, but simply that those who paid the most money should be fairly represented on the County Councils and nothing more. Turning to the financial side of the Bill, he need not assure the Government how gratefully their relief proposals had been received by the county interest. The question had been before them for many years past; both sides of the House had agreed that some relief of local taxation was but fair and right, and he was glad to think that the time had come when the relief again and again promised was at length to be given to the greatest industry of all—agriculture. At the same time he had heard doubts expressed as to whether the relief was not more apparent than real, and it was feared that the new system of administration might prove to be more expensive than the former, Therefore, he thought, if the relief was to be real, it must be made certain that economy would be one of the results of the measure. His own constituents were grateful for this large addition to the local revenues which would result from the allocation of certain taxes, at the same time they were afraid that it might all be swallowed up in increased expenses, unless some method of securing economy were inserted in the Bill. One method, perhaps, of promoting economy was that of the consolidation of rates. There were now different rates to be collected and different accounts to be kept, which, of course, involved so many additional officers, and he should have liked to see but one taxing and one spending body in each district, with one valuation, one rate, one machinery of collection, and one set of accounts. He believed that this plan would, as much as any, lead to economy in local administration, and if Her Majesty's Government could see their way, he should be glad to see some clause inserted which would effect what he was advocating. Another point regarded with some doubt was the borrowing powers given to the new authorities under the Bill; they would be anxious, no doubt, to make use of their powers, and he rather feared that some extravagance might result, as had been the case, though rarely, in some of the boroughs. He thought that the term of 60 years was too long a period for Local Government Board loans, and he should be glad to see it reduced to 30 years. The only remaining subject to which he had to refer was that of the division of rates. The principle of the division of rates between the owner and occupier had often been assented to by both sides of the House in the course of previous debates. This would have the effect of relieving a good deal of friction and in some cases of injustice. He wanted to see the burden on land adjusted to advantage of the landed interest, just as the one would adjust the burden on a horse. It seemed to him that an injustice was done in the case of long tenancies, because since the commencement of the leases new rates, such as the Education rate, had become very high, and it was not fair that the tenants should bear the whole increase which had occurred during the last 10 years. He thought, however, that this case was one for compromise. He thanked the House very much for the kindness with which it had listened to him, and he had now only to add his congratulations to the Government, to those they had already received, and more especially to the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Local Government Board, on having introduced a measure of legislation which he ventured to say would be an enduring monument of constructive skill.

MR. PICKERSGILL (Bethnal Green, S.W.)

said, that in the observations he was about to make he should confine himself to the Metropolitan aspects of the Bill. The first and most important feature, from that standpoint, was that it recognized the unity of the Metropolis and contained the great principle of one Central Body directly elected by the ratepayers. That was a great principle, and when the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Local Government Board (Mr. Ritchie) announced it, they on the Opposition side of the House received it with cordial cheers. He (Mr. Pickersgill) could only regret that no sooner had the right hon. Gentleman put forward this principle than he proceeded to cut a "monstrous cantle" out of it by providing that one-fourth part of the Council should not consist of elected but of selected members. The right hon. Gentleman relied upon the precedent in the Municipal Acts for that provision. But surely the right hon. Gentleman must be aware that that provision was used as a sort of back door to admit in to the municipal bodies those whom the electors had rejected; and no doubt it would be, to a very large extent at all events, used for a similar purpose under this Bill. Then the Metropolitan Board of Works was to cease to exist. He (Mr. Pickersgill) was no admirer of the Metropolitan Board of Works; but there was another body existing side by side with it which certainly did not to any greater degree possess the confidence of the citizens of London, and which was, as he thought, a more extravagant Board than the Metropolitan Board of Works, and the operation of which had not been free from the suspicion of jobbery and corruption, and many hon. Members failed to understand why the Metropolitan Board of Works was to cease to exist, whilst this other Board—the Metropolitan Asylums Board—was left. The second point, perhaps, which would attract the attention of the Metropolitan critic was this, that whilst the Metropolitan ratepayers were to provide for the cost of the police they were to have no control over them. Now the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Local Government Board had said, as a defence of his plan of depriving them of the control of the police, that they constituted in themselves a great army. Well, great armies were or might be dangerous instruments, whether they were clad in red or in blue; and he respectfully ventured to suggest to the right hon. Gentleman a means by which he might subdivide this great army with advantage to everybody concerned—and perhaps by that means they might reduce the apprehensions which the right hon. Gentleman felt or would feel in handing it over to the ratepayers. Now the Metropolitan Police District was a vast area. It extended 15 miles all round from Charing Cross. It extended as far as Staines on one side, and Hatfield on the other; to Dartford on another side, and almost up to Reigate on the fourth, and it included districts the ratepayers of which had no common interest with the citizens of London. There was one particular illustration of the anomaly which was produced by the vast size of this area, to which he would invite the attention of the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Local Government Beard. It was this. He was informed, and he had reason to believe, that at Bexley, which was a small village just within the Metropolitan Police area, there were 25 policemen, whilst at Dartford, which was not a village but a town, and which happened to be just outside the Metropolitan Police area, there were only four policemen. Now it did seem to him a great hardship to these ratepayers at Bexley and the neighbourhood that they should be paying a police rate which was practically 5d. in the pound, whereas if they were thrown into the county their police rate, he supposed, would only be 2d. or 8d. at the most. He would suggest, therefore, that the area of the Metropolitan Police should be curtailed and made identical with the Metropolis as it was defined by this Bill. That would very materially reduce the numbers of that great army, of which the right hon. Gentleman appeared to be somewhat afraid. Then this Metropolitan Police, so reduced in numbers, ought certainly to be placed under the control of the new County Councils. The right hon. Gentleman, no doubt, would tell them that London stood in a different position from Manchester and Birmingham. He would probably say that there were reasons of State which would render it extremely inconvenient for the Home Secretary, in certain matters of police, to have to carry out his designs through what would, in fact, be a Watch Committee of the Metropolis. Well, if those who had held Office in previous Administrations agreed with the right hon. Gentleman in thinking that there was a great deal in that State argument, then he (Mr. Pickersgill) would suggest a compromise, and that would be this—that there should be a Metropolitan Police performing the same duties in London that the Manchester Police performed in Manchester, and that there should be also a State Police for State purposes, under the control of the Home Secretary. That would very materially, as he had said, reduce the numbers of the great army which the right hon. Gentleman feared. Now, he (Mr. Pickersgill) passed away to another aspect of this Bill. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Halifax (Mr. Stansfeld) said last night that the great blot in the Bill was that the Poor Law system was excluded from it. He (Mr. Pickersgill) entirely sympathized with the spirit of that criticism, but literally it was hardly correct to say that the Poor Law system was excluded from the Bill. The right hon. Gentleman the President of the Local Government Board had touched the Poor Law system, and he (Mr. Pickersgill) would point out that so far as he had touched it he had not done so advantageously, or, at all events, that whilst remedying one mischief he had opened the doors to others. In the first place, the right hon. Gentleman proposed to relieve the poor rate both in the country and in London. Now, what was the source from which the right hon. Gentleman proposed to relieve the poor rate? It was by a tax upon personalty. Now the poor rate, he supposed the right hon. Gentleman would agree, was an hereditary burden upon the land. He was quite aware, as the right hon. Gentle- man the Member for Mid Lothian (Mr. W. E. Gladstone) had reminded them the other night, that originally the idea was that stock in trade should be rated, but it was found impossible or inconvenient to rate stock in trade, and he believed that the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer himself described the poor rate as an hereditary burden on the land. Then, what was his (Mr. Pickersgill's) position? They were taxing personalty in order to relieve an hereditary burden on the land. That, he submitted, was bad in principle, but it might be commended by practical considerations of convenience. But he would submit to the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Local Government Board that, if by taxing personalty he relieved the hereditary burden upon land, he ought, at all events, to impose a corresponding burden upon land in some other form; and so far as he (Mr. Pickersgill) could see, taking this Bill and the Budget together, there was no such readjustment of taxation between personalty and realty. Now, the right hon. Gentleman the Member for East Wolverhampton (Mr. Henry H. Fowler) last night said that London would get the lion's share of this grant in aid of the poor rate. He (Mr. Pickersgill) ventured respectfully to differ from the right hon. Gentleman, if he meant that London would get more than the share to which it was entitled. He did not think that was so. He thought that the true test would be to see what the effect of this grant would be upon the rate in the pound in the districts which they were considering. Now he found that this contribution—and he should like to have the particular attention of the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Local Government Board on this matter, because if he was wrong he should like to be corrected. He thought this contribution would reduce the average rate in the Metropolis something under 3d. in the pound, and that in the country it would reduce it something under 2d. in the pound. Now the average poor rate proper in the country was 1s.1½d. and in the Metropolis 1s. 6½d. Thus, the ratio of the poor rate in London to the poor rate outside was as 3 to 2, which was precisely the ratio of the relief which the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Local Government Board pro- posed to give. Again, he thought he must allow that it was not unfair in another way. The ratepayers of London, when this contribution was made, would still be left with an average Metropolitan rate of 1s. 4d. as he calculated it, as against the average poor rate of 1s. in the country, so that it seemed to him that the county ratepayer would have no reason to be jealous of the Metropolitan ratepayer in this respect. He thought that, as between London and the country, the distribution was not unfair; but he had the strongest objection as to the proposed distribution as between the different Unions of the Metropolis. The County Council had out of this fund to pay to each Union 4d. a-day for each indoor pauper. Now that might be comparatively unobjectionable for the country, but there were special circumstances affecting London that required a different treatment, and he would briefly indicate what those circumstances were. Metropolitan pauperism was a common interest of London in a different sense from that in which, say the pauperism of Lancashire, was a common interest to the ratepayers of Lancashire. He need not labor that position, because it had been recognized by the establishment, more than 20 years ago, of the Metropolitan Common Poor Fund. Now, out of that Metropolitan Common Poor Fund considerably more than 40 per cent of the total cost of Metropolitan relief was defrayed. He (Mr. Pickersgill) had always contended that the whole cost of Metropolitan relief ought to come out of that Common Poor Fund, or, in other words, that the poor rate should be equal throughout London; but at the same time he had felt that the establishment of one Central Authority directly elected by the ratepayers, was a condition precedent to the establishment of that system. Now this Bill was going to bring such authority into existence. It was going to supply the one element which was wanting, and he was surprised that the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Local Government Board was apparently going to miss his opportunity. The right hon. Gentleman was not going to equalize the rate throughout London. Now, what was the plan which the right hon. Gentleman intended to adopt? It was a plan which seemed to him (Mr. Pickersgill) a very extraordinary one. The new County of London would be identical with the area now covered by the Metropolitan Common Poor Fund, and the produce of the Probate Duty would be applicable to the common purposes of this area. Well, now, out of this Fund 4d. a-day would be paid to each Union for the maintenance of every indoor pauper; but at present, out of the Metropolitan Common Poor Fund, 5d. a-day was paid to each Union for the same purpose, and therefore the Bill practically proposed to raise this allowance from 5d. to 9d. Now, if that proposal had been made from those (the Opposition) Benches, he was sure it would have been opposed by the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and he thought also it would have been opposed by the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Local Government Board. [Mr. RITCHIE: No, no.] Well, he (Mr. Pickersgill) would withdraw the remark as regarded the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Local Government Board, but, at all events, he would apply it to the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer, because he had opposed that proposition in 1870. The right hon. Gentleman might, it is true, have altered his mind now, but this was pressed upon him in 1870—that the allowance of 5d. a-day was not sufficient for the maintenance of paupers—and what did he reply? He said it was never intended to allow the full cost of the maintenance, but that it was necessary to leave a margin for economy. He asked the right hon. Gentleman what became now of the margin for economy argument? What was the actual rate for maintaining indoor paupers in London? He took the Whitechapel Union, which he thought was a fair sample, and there the cost of maintaining an indoor pauper was 5½d.a-day, and they knew that Whitechapel was a well-managed Union.

MR. RITCHIE

Does the hon. Gentleman include the cost of housing, or does he mean simply the cost of food?

MR. PICKERSGILL

said, he was coming to the cost of housing; but, as the right hon. Gentleman knew, "the cost of maintenance" was a well known expression in Poor Law statistics, and he (Mr. Pickersgill) was using the word as it was used in the Report of the Department over which the right hon. Gentle- man presided. He said that the cost of maintenance of an indoor pauper might be deemed, on an average, to be about 5½d. a-day. Well, the Guardians would receive 9d. per day per head, so that they would make a profit of 3½d. a day on every pauper maintained in their workhouse. He (Mr. Pickersgill) could see that the right hon. Gentleman thought he was wrong—and his reason was this, he imagined that he (Mr. Pickersgill) had not taken the establishment expenses into account. But why had he not taken establishment expenses into account? Simply for the reason that they were paid out of the Common Poor Fund, with the exception which the right hon. Gentleman had just alluded to—namely, the cost of erecting and maintaining buildings. He (Mr. Pickersgill) understood the right hon. Gentleman to contend that that invalidated his (Mr. Pickersgill's) argument. With great submission he maintained that it did nothing of the kind, because the buildings were there in any case whether the number of inmates was high or low. This Bill would enable the Guardians, as he had said, to make a profit, and they would do it by driving applicants for relief into the workhouse. Now it was possible that in some parts of the country, where the percentage of cost of outdoor relief was as high as 80, this inducement to offer the House might be regarded by some persons as beneficial; but in London they must remember that the percentage of cost of outdoor relief already scarcely exceeded 20, and, under these circumstances, he might say the inducement they gave to the Guardians to drive applicants for relief into the workhouse could only produce a mischievous effect. Now, the right hon. Gentleman pointed out to him the other night, when he spoke on this subject, that a great advantage would be derived by poor districts. Well, he (Mr. Pickersgill) was not likely to neglect the interests of poor districts. The right hon. Gentleman indicated that Bethnal Green, which he (Mr. Pickersgill) represented, would derive great advantage under this Bill. He (Mr. Pickersgill) quite admitted it. If he might say so, he was not likely to be indifferent to the interests of the ratepayers of Bethnal Green, and he knew exactly the benefit the ratepayers there would derive under this grant in aid; but his point was, that however much the right hon. Gentleman might benefit the ratepayers of Bethnal Green by this grant in aid, the ratepayers there would be much more benefited by an equalization of the poor rates, and an equalization of those rates seemed to him to be the solution which reason and justice demanded. The plan which the right hon. Gentleman embodied in his Bill would introduce new inequalities. He (Mr. Pickersgill), taking the figures for 1886, had worked out its effect in St. George's-in-the-East, which the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Local Government Board represented, and also in Bethnal Green, which he (Mr. Pickersgill) represented. The grant in aid of 4d. a-day would reduce the poor rate in St. George's within a fraction of 1s. in the pound, which was a very large reduction, but the reduction in the pound would not be nearly so large in Bethnal Green, in which he was interested. The reduction in Bethnal Green, making the same comparison, would be only 8d. in the pound. The poor rate proper, as he calculated it in St. George's, was, in 1886, 1s. 11d., and in Bethnal Green 2s.. 1d., and with the reduction it would be 11d. in St. George's, and 1s. 5d. in Bethnal Green. But if they allowed for this grant, the average rate over the whole Metropolis, as he worked it out, would be 1s. 4d., so that Bethnal Green would be paying 1d. more, and St. George's 5d. less, than in justice it ought to pay. Now, that was not equality; but he must admit that St. George's came very well out of the matter. Now, the reference of the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Local Government Board to the cost of buildings gave him (Mr. Pickersgill) a fitting introduction to another remark. He had lately obtained, through the courtesy of the right hon. Gentleman, a Return of the pauper establishments of the Metropolis; and, having carefully gone through it, it seemed to him that the present pauper establishments supplied ample accommodation for existing needs. What was wanted was a thoroughly efficient system of classification and distribution. The results which were anticipated in this respect from the Common Poor Act of 1867 had not been realized. The 50th section of that Act contemplated the provision of workhouses by the Guardians, and made provision for the maintenance in those workhouses of paupers belonging to other Unions; but very little if any use whatever had been made of that section. It seemed to him that classification and distribution could only be effected by means of a strong Central Authority, representative of the London ratepayer. Well, they hoped that they were going to see brought into existence such a strong Central Authority. What he should like to see, therefore, would be this—that the whole cost of the Metropolitan poor, less the grant out of the Probate Duty, should be defrayed by an equal rate levied over the whole of London. Then he should like to see the Metropolitan Asylums Board cease to exist, and its powers transferred to the new County Council of London. Then the power of control over the Guardians, which was now possessed by the Local Government Board, should be transferred to the new County Government; and with regard to the Guardians themselves, subject to this control, they might either continue to exist, or, what would be better still, their powers might be transferred to the new District Councils, which he hoped to see brought into existence. Whether they called the body Guardians, or whether they called it District Council, certain modifications were urgently required in the present constitution of Boards of Guardians. They wanted to be rid of the ex officio Guardians; they wanted to be rid of plural voting; and they wanted, even still more, perhaps, to abolish the present rating qualification for Guardians, because it seemed to him most essential that the working classes should be permitted to take their proper part in the administration of the Poor Law. Well, regarding this Bill as a whole, and regarding it purely from a Metropolitan point of view, if it was read a second time, it would be taken simply as an instalment; but, even taking it as an instalment, it contained many blots which they on that side of the House would do their best to remove if it should get into Committee.

SIR ROPER LETHBRIDGE (Kensington, N.)

said, he desired, in a few words, as a Metropolitan Member, to offer his sincere congratulations to Her Majesty's Government, and especially to the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Local Government Board (Mr. Ritchie), who was in charge of the Bill, on the general character of the great measure they were now asked to read a second time. He heartily welcomed the Bill as an admirable attempt to extend, not only to the counties, but also to this vast Metropolis of greater London, those representative institutions which had so long and so profitably been enjoyed by our municipal boroughs. To those who pointed to the fact that in the counties there was no great demand, and that, perhaps, there was no great necessity, for any transfer of those executive functions which had been so long and so efficiently and, above all, so economically performed by Quarter Sessions, he replied—"True; but there was a great demand and there was a great necessity for a full revision and relief of local taxation." That was admitted on all sides, and that revision could not possibly be effected without the creation of elective bodies to control the expenditure of such vast sums of public money. But within the Metropolitan area the case for the Bill was far stronger even than it was in the counties, for in the Metropolis there was undoubtedly a demand, and there was a necessity, for a more efficient and a more economical discharge of many administrative functions. He doubted whether there was a single Metropolitan Member in the House who had not pledged himself to some extent in the direction of reform, and he, therefore, thanked the Government for thus enabling the Metropolitan Members to go back to their constituencies with this instalment, this very real and substantial instalment, of reform. He entirely agreed with the hon. Member for South-West Bethnal Green (Mr. Pickersgill); that they should regard the measure as an instalment only. That was, he thought, admitted on all hands, and certainly it had been admitted perfectly frankly by the right hon. Gentleman the author of the Bill (Mr. Ritchie). It was clear that there were educational matters, that there were Poor Law matters, and that there were many other matters that would doubtless subsequently be dealt with; but, in opposition to the hon. Gentleman the Member for South-West Bethnal Green, he contended that the Government was obviously most perfectly right in refusing, if he might use a metaphor which was now perhaps obsolete, to attempt to drive four omnibuses abreast through Temple Bar.

The hon. Member for West Nottingham (Mr. Broadhurst) earlier in the debate called on the Government to extend the purview of this heavily-weighted Bill, and he somewhat imperiously demanded the inclusion of the Poor Law administration. But then the hon. Gentleman proceeded to justify the action of the Government by talking about dividing the House in Committee as often as he possibly could. He (Sir Roper Lethbridge) hoped the hon. Member would reconsider that decision before they got into Committee, for, he thought, and he put this respectfully to the hon. Member, that the whole country was anxious, nay, was determined, that the Committee stage of the Bill, when it was reached, should be utilized, not for unprofitable and obstructive Divisions, but for valuable Amendments that would make the Bill a better instrument for promoting the welfare and the happiness and the prosperity of the whole country. For his own part, he hoped that that stage would see, for instance, the dropping of those clauses which provided for the selection, or co-option of a portion of the County Councils, at any rate in respect to the Metropolis. In London, at least, that method was open to some serious objection. They already had, and it was universally admitted, much difficulty in obtaining, for local work in London, really good men to offer themselves, and he thought that if the co-option clauses were persevered with and retained in the Bill, the best men would not come forward as candidates, but would wait for co-option; and more than that, even if they did come forward as candidates, their claims would be rejected, because everyone would regard them as certain of co-option. One other little point hitherto unnoticed he desired to mention. He should hope to see all the numerous charitable endowments which were scattered throughout the country, and were now often treated like shuttle-cocks between the Local Authorities and the Charity Commissioners, brought under the full control of the Local District or County Councils. But he suggested to the hon. Member for South-West Bethnal Green and those who thought with him, that those were details that ought properly to be left for discussion in Committee on the Bill. He should give his most hearty support to the second reading.

SIR LYON PLAYFAIR (Leeds, S.)

asked the attention of the House to one important part of the Bill which had received little consideration. The Bill was so comprehensive that it dealt with many important subjects; but among all of them the health and well-being of the community was one of the most responsible duties of local administration. They were decentralizing many powers relating to Local Government; but they ought to be very sure, in such an important subject as the health of the communities, that the decentralization would be accompanied by guarantees that public health should not suffer now or in the future by the new forms of Local Government. Rather the House should be convinced that this new measure would create such an intelligent interest in regard to the health of communities, and impose such a sense of responsibility upon the Local Authorities that there was a certainty of a large improvement and no chance of any deterioration in public health by the working of decentralized Local Government in the future. Proceeding to remind the House of the present condition of the law, he pointed out that, under the Public Health Acts, vaccination, drainage and sewerage, the prevention of epidemic diseases, and other subjects relating to health, were performed by Local Sanitary Districts, urban or rural, under strict subordination to the Local Government Board, to which Parliament had confided very large powers of supervision and control. That Board had a remarkably good Medical Department, with Medical Inspectors of Health, to enable it to perform the powers imposed upon it by statute. Most of those powers were passed over by this Bill from the Local Government Board to the County Councils, who were to act in future by their own common sense and without that skilled intelligence and knowledge which enabled the Local Government Board, through its Medical Department, to exercise a wise and expert control. The decentralization of sanitary powers was generally thorough, though there were exceptions. Thus, in regard to vaccination, Clause 23 was logically absurd. The present practice of public vaccination imposed upon the Guardians the duty of paying 1s. 6d. per case; and the Government added 1s. if the Medical Department at White- hall were satisfied that the vaccination had been efficiently and carefully performed. That payment by results was made by the judges of the results—that is, by the Government Department. Vaccination in the future was not passed over to the management of the County Council, which he thought it should have been, because it was not wise to connect it with Poor Law, but it was to continue under the Guardians? Who was to pay for results? Clause 23 imposed this upon the County Council, but it did not impose upon that body the responsibility of seeing that the results were efficient. The Local Government Board reserved that central power for themselves, and the County Council were to pay upon their certificate. Could anything be more illogical? Vaccination was to be performed by the Guardians, but to be supported by subventions from the County Council, who had nothing to do with the work, upon a mandamus from the Local Government Board. There was no decentraliaztion of power here, only a decentralization of payment for work not performed by the Local Authority which did pay. That was the chief instance where centralized power was still preserved in the Bill. The other sanitary clauses produced a violent dislocation of the safeguards which legislation had imposed in case of local defaults, and removed responsibility for public health from a Central to a Local Authority. He did not object to the principle, if the local safeguards were sufficient; but, after a close examination of the clauses, he thought them quite insufficient, and to that he desired to draw the attention of the President of the Council, not in unfriendliness to the Bill, but with the hope that he might give fair consideration to his criticisms. The sanitary executive of Local Authorities depended on Inspectors of Nuisances and Medical Officers of Health. The Inspectors of Nuisances were officers of a purely local character, and he did not propose to discuss their functions. Hitherto, powers of control and sanction had been reserved to the Local Government Board in London, advised by their Medical Department, which was a great intelligence department of sanitary knowledge. These powers of control and sanction were chiefly passed over to the County Councils. In doing that the County Councils ought to have been made little Local Government Boards, with supervision of the work of the District Boards, and with professional advice at their command; so that they might be assured that the sanitary work was being done in an efficient way throughout all the urban and rural districts comprised in the country. All that had been lost sight of in the construction of clauses. The Medical Officers of Health were not the servants of the County Council, although it was to pay one-half their salary. The Health Officers were not to report their work or make returns to their paymasters, the County Council, but were to do so to the Central Board in London, to which was reserved the powers of stopping the salary if the returns were not made. In fact, the County Councils, which assumed the place of the Local Government Board as to powers, were left to exercise those powers without knowledge or efficient control. The County Councils were to exercise the powers of the 191st clause of the Public Health Act—that was, they were to determine the qualifications of medical officers and to control the tenure of their office. But, curiously, they were not to prescribe their duties, for that was reserved to the Local Government Board. The Central Board in London had to prescribe the duties of district Medical Officers, to receive reports, to mulct in pay when necessary; while the County Councils were to have the barren honour of fixing qualifications, of paying half salaries, but to have nothing to do with the performances of the duties of the Medical Officers to whose salaries they contributed. He at once admitted that the County Council, as the Bill constituted and limited it in powers, could not adequately see to the performance of the laws relating to public health, because it was not put into any intelligent touch with its component districts, and had no means of getting information from them. All the information worth having was to go to Whitehall direct from the District Councils. But even if that were changed in Committee, by enjoining the Medical Officers of Health to transmit their reports through the County Council, that Body had no expert knowledge to aid it, for it was not in direct communication with a single Medical Officer of Health. In fact, the whole organi- zation of the sanitary service in rural districts was, even now, though under the immediate control of the Local Government Board, desperately inefficient. What it would be in the future, when that expert control was dislocated from it, might be readily imagined. Let him give an example from one of the best counties—Cheshire—which had gone far to improve the organization of the sanitary service. That county had consolidated the duties of the Medical Officers of Health into large areas. One consolidated area had 280,000 acres, with a population of 135,000 persons. It had the entire services of an able Officer of Health, who had a salary of £800. Another consolidated area in the county had 139,000 acres, with a population of 84,000, and the Medical Officer of Health had a salary of £635. But the rest of the county had not shown this intelligence, and there remained 213,000 acres, with a population of 420,000 people, split up among 28 Medical Officers of Health, who, if he excluded Birkenhead, had salaries ranging from £10 to £75. He had selected one of the most intelligent counties to show how combination of areas and subdivision of areas act. By the first system of combination, they secured the services of a man of high qualification, educated in public health, which was only recently a separate subject of medical education; while, on the isolated plan, they had simply country surgeons knowing nothing of the science of public health, who gave some fragments of their time to sanitary duties and to the preparation of reports to the Local Government Board. The less these officers did the more were they pleasing to Local Boards. The people would rather have their dunghills and nuisances left alone, as in the time of their fathers, than have them stirred up by the stick of a parish doctor. They were paid to do nothing, and they did nothing. And what was the result? That while our towns had largely improved under sanitary legislation, as they generally possessed well qualified Medical Officers of Health, the rural districts, as a whole, had not shared in this rate of improvement, and their disease and death-rate remained much what it was. At the present time there were about 1,200 Medical Officers of Health, with salaries ranging from £10 to £900. He believed that there would be far more efficient sanitation in the country if their numbers were reduced to about 180, with larger areas, and with public health as their sole duty and not as an accidental adjunct to their private practice. If he excluded the scheduled towns and London, 180 Medical Officers would be well able to supply the best sanitary knowledge to the remaining 18,000,000 of people. That was one to 100,000 population, which was less than that contained in the combined sanitary areas of Cheshire and other places. This would give four or five to an average county. There was now about £130,000 annually spent upon these Medical Officers of Health. He believed that, without increasing the cost, an infinitely better result could be obtained by this consolidation of districts. Instead of this considerable sum being, to a large extent, wasted by the present system, a thoroughly effective method of sanitary administration would be obtained. To produce that very desirable result the simplest Amendment would be sufficient in the present Bill. The change which he would propose was that all Medical Officers of Health should be made officers of the County Councils and not of District Councils. There already existed abundant powers in the Bill for the consolidation of areas for the purpose of Medical Officers of Health. If all of those were made officers of the County Councils, there would be a speedy exercise of these powers; but that never would result where the District Councils had a motive in keeping stingily paid officials to do nothing. Let the House consider what benefits would ensue by such an arrangement. Every County Council would have, on an average, four or five skilled experts in public health to consult in all emergencies. Instead of the Local Government Board being left to correspond with every petty district, the reports would go to the County Council, be discussed by their experts, and be transmitted to the Local Government Board. According to the present provisions of the Bill, the County Council had no means whatever of knowing about the sanitary conditions of its component districts. Notwithstanding that fact, the right hon. Gentleman gave the County Council the strong powers of the Public Health Act, Sections 42 and 299, by which defaulting District Councils could be compelled to execute certain works in regard to which the County Council had no knowledge, and no organization by which it could attain knowledge. His right hon. Friend the President of the Local Government Board (Mr. Ritchie) might reply to his strictures and to his proposals, that he had not recognized that this was not a Bill to make new sanitary legislation, but only one for transferring existing administrative powers. That would be a good enough answer if it were not the fact that he was producing a profound dislocation of powers by transferring them from a central office possessing the highest expert knowledge to County Councils, which possessed none. That was the very essence of the success or failure of the new organizations in regard to public health. Of course he was quite prepared to submit his recommendations in the form of a simple Amendment. At the same time if he had succeeded in convincing his right hon. Friend the President of the Local Government Board of the advantages of the proposal to the health of the community, he was sure that it would be much better done if he undertook to make these changes in the Bill. He did not propose to make compulsory consolidation of districts, though he would convert all Medical Officers of Health into Officers of the County Council and make them report to that body, and through it to the Local Government Board. The consolidation of areas and the organization of public health would soon follow when the County Councils felt immediate responsibility for the health of the whole district. Let him say, in conclusion, that sanitary science was not an abstract science, but one which in its applications had produced enormous benefits to the community, not only in preventing unnecessary deaths, but in keeping in health and productive ability the living. Many diseases which formerly afflicted this country were now a matter of history. Ague was once a most formidable disease in England, and now it scarcely existed. It used to be very bad in London, and killed James I. and Cromwell. No physician now meets cases originating in London in our time. In his (Sir Lyon Playfair's) youth typhus was a common disease. It is practically extinct, though now and then it sprang up in some very foul conditions of a locality. There used to be two forms of disease peculiar to cities—bowel complaints, which carried off 3,000 to 4,000 persons annually in London. They were extinct, and had left to us neither a popular nor scientific name to distinguish them. Typhoid fever, which wholly arose from filth, still stayed with us as a scandal to our sanitary administration; but even in this case the mortality from it in England and Wales had decreased by fully one-third in the last 20 years. Remittent fever had left our shores, and rickets, once so frequent, existed no longer. He appealed to the Government to send down the Bill to the country in a condition which would improve and not deteriorate the health of our population. This Government was a successor to one which once appealed to the people in the words of Mr. Disraeli that its motto would be "Sanitas sanitatum omnia sanitas." He thanked the House for listening to him on this important subject, which had some chance of being lost sight of in the political aspects of the Bill.

THE SECRETARY TO THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD (Mr. LONG) (Wilts, Devizes)

said, he thought he need hardly assure the House that he did not intend to follow the right hon. Gentleman into the details of a speech of so much ability and interest. He might say this much, however, on behalf of the Department which he represented, that they valued, as they ought, any recommendations which came from so high an authority, and that the opinions expressed by the right hon. Gentleman in connection with the administration of the sanitary laws of this country would receive, at the hands of the President of the Local Government Board, that consideration which they were justly entitled to receive. But he hoped that the right hon. Gentleman would not think that he was venturing in any way to criticize his remarks if he said that, although undoubtedly from a sanitary point of view there was a great deal to commend in the views just expressed in connection with the measure, both to the Government and to a people anxious to see the condition of the country improved, they, at all events, were difficult to associate with a Local Government Bill of this form. He thought that the criticism which the right hon. Gentleman himself applied to his own remarks at the conclusion of his speech was one which might justly be used by the Government or by those anxious to see the measure carried through the House with as little impediment and delay as possible. The debate, so far, was one upon which he thought the Government, and he hoped the House and the country, had every reason to congratulate themselves. The great question of local government had been considered by right hon. Gentlemen opposite, and by the majority of hon. Members who had spoken from the Opposition Benches, in an eminently dignified way. It had been considered as a question not of Party politics, but one deserving the disinterested attention of all quarters of the House. He could not help congratulating the Government and the Conservative Party upon the fact that the debate on the second reading, so far, had been a most convincing and most complete refutation of the charge more than once uttered by hon. Members opposite. The Government had heard more than once the statement made that the Bill had been received by cheers from the opposite Benches and with silence from the Ministerial side. He was present when the Bill was introduced by his right hon. Friend, and he had listened to the subsequent debate as carefully as anyone. He was not aware, however, that the cheers from the Benches opposite were either so enthusiastic or so numerous as had been stated. But there was this comment to make. The speeches that evening had come equally from his own side of the House and from the other, and he challenged any one to say whether he was not right in stating that the criticism of a favourable character towards the measure had come more from the Conservative than from the other side of the House. The Government had, therefore, reason to congratulate themselves when they heard this view taken by hon. Gentlemen on the Conservative side who were and had been for many years honourably connected with the administration of county business through the medium of Quarter Sessions—gentlemen who had performed their work conscientiously and honestly; and who knew, however well these County Councils might perform their work, it would be impossible for them to administer county affairs with more single-mindedness, honesty, ordetermina- tion to save the public purse. It was not to be wondered at that hon. Gentlemen connected with Quarter Sessions felt some regret and soreness at the approaching dissolution of a body with which they had been connected, and which they knew by experience had done its duty well. It was not the fact, however, as had been stated, that hon. Gentlemen on the Ministerial side of the House had watched the introduction of this Bill with dismay. Those who had heard or read the debate on this Bill in the House, the discussions at Quarter Sessions, and the letters in the public papers, could not but admit that the reception of this Bill on the part of those connected with the Quarter Sessions had been extremely generous. The Government appreciated very highly the kindness with which this Bill had been received both inside and outside the House. The debate on the second reading of this Bill had been somewhat peculiar. Generally, in relation to a great measure such as this, there was some great principle which divided the two Parties in the House. But this Bill appeared to be an exception to that rule, and the debate which had taken place had been more like a discussion in Committee. There had been a variety of criticisms, but no real attack on the principle of the Bill. The debate was commenced by a speech of singular moderation and of great ability by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Halifax (Mr. Stansfeld), and that speech was followed by speeches from other quarters of the House, in some of which it was noticeable that though a few points were singled out for commendation, there was a strenuous effort to cast blame on various details, and a lurking appearance of a desire to divide against the second reading. It remained to be seen whether these hon. Gentleman would carry out their apparent desire, or abide by the advice of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Halifax. The right hon. Gentleman himself had made one important criticism on the Bill which was rather singular as emanating from him. He expressed regret that the Bill did not deal with the parish, but commenced at the top, as it were, instead of at the bottom. Several other hon. Gentlemen had expressed the same view, but only one of them, the hon. Member for Merionethshire (Mr. T. E. Ellis), had explained in what way he would reform the parish. This criticism was rather remarkable as coming from the right hon. Gentleman, for the right hon. Gentleman had himself been associated with legislation that had for its object the upsetting of the government of the parish; and he had been informed that in a speech publicly delivered not long ago, not 100 miles away, the right hon. Gentleman said this Bill was one of which he would not have been ashamed to claim the parentage. In the short interval that had since elapsed the right hon. Gentleman had apparently changed his opinion, not owing to any change in the features of the child, but, seemingly, owing to the influences brought to bear upon the right hon. Gentleman's own mind. He ventured to think that this was one of those cases in which second thoughts were not best. The Government were now told that they had proceeded in the wrong direction, and that the parish and not the county ought to have been first reformed—that they ought to have begun at the bottom and worked upwards. That sounded very well, and it they were establishing county government in a new country, and with power to divide it up as seemed most convenient, the parish, no doubt, would be the first point to which to address oneself. But there were nearly 15,000 parishes in England, of which considerably over 8,000 had a population not exceeding 500 people, and 6,398 with a population not exceeding 300. Did the right hon. Gentleman and hon. Members think that this scheme of Local Government ought to have dealt with all these parishes, a large proportion of which had so very small a population? The right hon. Gentleman said there would be great difficulty in getting in one and the same Union one body to act as guardians of the poor and another to act as a District Council; but if there would be such a difficulty in a Union, how much greater would it be to find persons willing and competent to form two such bodies in a small parish?

MR. STANSFELD (Halifax)

said, he never proposed that there should be two such bodies in a parish.

MR. LONG

said, that the right hon. Gentleman, while complaining that the parish was not reformed, made the very vaguest of suggestions as to how it ought to be reformed.

MR. STANSFELD

said, he had not blamed the Bill as a whole; he praised it. On a future occasion he would be quite prepared to state what ought, in his opinion, to be done.

MR. LONG

said, he was merely trying to show that this point as to the parish was the only one about which there appeared to be any consensus of opinion on the other side of the House. It must, however, be borne in mind that Her Majesty's Government had not merely dealt with a reform of Local Authorities, but also in a generous and comprehensive way with the question of finance. But if the suggestion of the right hon. Gentleman had been taken and the Government had commenced with the parish it would have been impossible to have carried out this important reform in local taxation. Something, nevertheless, had been done in the direction desired by the right hon. Gentleman. These County Councils were given large powers to deal with areas which required re-adjustment, and any future reform of the parish such as might, no doubt, become necessary would thereby be simplified and rendered the more easy to carry out in consequence of these County Councils being first established. He next came to the question of rating. Regret had been expressed that the Government had not included in the measure a valuation scheme. It seemed to him that there was a general impression that this Bill ought to have reformed every abuse that existed in England and Wales at the present moment, and that hon. Members were justified not only in criticizing the Bill so far as it went, but also in finding fault with it because it did not remedy every abuse. He admitted that there were many reforms needed that were not dealt with in the Bill; but he held that this question of valuation was one so important, so large, and so complex that it deserved and demanded a measure to itself and consideration by itself. That was the attitude in which the Government regarded the question, and in which the Government would deal with it when the time came. Many criticisms had been passed on the arrangements made for the control of the police. It had been suggested that the control of the police should be left in the hands of the Quarter Sessions. Another suggestion was that the police should be placed under the control of the Home Office, and another that they should be placed absolutely in the hands of the Council. He would address himself to that question not as a Member of the Government, or as a Member of the House, but as one who would like to be a member of a future County Council and as one who is now a member of Quarter Sessions; and he had no hesitation in saying that, as a magistrate, he should resent it much, and he thought with justice, if he found himself on his County Council in the position of having to receive a demand from his brother magistrates, who had not taken the same trouble as he had to get on the Council, to pay a certain sum of money for a certain purpose without having any control over it. He therefore thought it would be a great mistake to leave the police with Quarter Sessions alone. The proposal of the Government was, he admitted, a compromise; but they held that the magistrates in their capacity as keepers of law and order were brought directly into connection with the police, and therefore ought, at all events, to have a share in the control of the police, and that the elective body who were to pay for and provide the police ought also to have a share in their control. Therefore it was that they had proposed that the control of the police should be vested in a joint committee. He believed that proposal to be the best one under the circumstances, and if it became law he believed that not only would there be no friction between the different sections of that committee, but also that the police would be administered in a satisfactory manner. With regard to the delegation of certain powers to the County Council, which were now vested in Government Departments, he believed there need be no apprehension on that point. He thought it would be found that there was ample protection in the interest of the public, and if any attempt were made to transfer powers which ought not to be transferred, the attention of the House would, he was sure, be very promptly drawn to the matter. Perhaps the most serious objection to the measure was the exclusion of the Poor Law. It was said that the Government had gone a certain distance and were afraid to go further. He admitted at once that there was a great deal to be said on the part of those who contended that the Poor Law should be included; but he appealed to hon. Gentlemen who had studied this question of Local Government whether in their hearts they did not think the Government acted wisely in not overloading the measure? The Poor Law was the most important part of our administration. The House must remember that it was proposed by this Bill to bring about what the hon. and gallant Member for West Sussex (Sir Walter B. Barttelot) had rightly described as a revolution in the local government of this country. They were creating new authorities and a new form of government, and whatever might be the result of their plan, whether to bring into office men who had already occupied similar offices under a different condition of things, or to put new men into new posts, he thought that it must be admitted by all who had the good of their country and not any particular crochet at heart that the Government were wise in pausing before they put the heaviest and most responsible part of all upon these new Authorities. There was the great and complicated question of boundaries, and in connection with this he had been glad to hear the hon. Member for Huntingdon (Mr. Fellowes) say that he approved of the proposal which the Government had introduced into their Bill for dealing with this question. It was a very difficult one, and by no means the least thorny of those questions which were dealt with by this Bill, and he thought that it would be admitted that, before proposing to confer the powers of the Poor Law upon the new Authorities, it would be advisable to bring within the county boundaries all the areas necessary for Poor Law government, and to put right all the defects which would throw difficulties in the way. If there was a desire that the Poor Law should be added to the duties already conferred by this Bill on the new Authorities, it would be an inducement to them, by proceeding at once promptly to deal with the boundary question and re-arrange the boundaries in counties, so as to make it a comparatively simple thing for Poor Law reform to follow the other reforms. Speaking, not as a Member of the Government, but as an agricultural Member, he recognized not only the ability apparent in the speech of the preceding night of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for East Wolverhamp- ton (Mr. Henry Fowler), but also the fairness of the right hon. Gentleman's views towards those interests which he himself represented, and which the right hon. Gentleman did not pretend to represent. For his own part, he did not consider that speech as having been an attack upon the relief which the Government were giving to the agricultural interest, but rather as a speech directed towards securing an altered condition of things for the large municipal boroughs affected by this Bill. Reading the speech in that light, it was essentially one which could only be answered by the right hon. Gentleman at the head of the Department to which he had the honour to belong, and he had no doubt that before this debate came to an end the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Local Government Board would deal with the speech of the right hon. Gentleman, and for his own part he would be much surprised, and he thought many hon. Members would be surprised, if the right hon. Gentleman in charge of the Bill did not show the House and the country that, however able and fair might have been the speech of the right hon. Gentleman, the figures dealt with in it had been remarkable rather more for inaccuracy than for accuracy. That, however, he merely stated as his own opinion, and it would be for the House to decide. With regard to the speech of the hon. Member for Carnarvonshire (Mr. Rathbone), the hon. Member had been long and honourably distinguished for the interest he had taken in this question of Local Government Reform. The hon. Member had condemned the Bill for three points. In the first place, because it did not proceed to simplify the areas; secondly, that they had not proceeded to a division of rates between owner and occupier; and, thirdly, that there was not sufficient limitation of borrowing powers. With respect to the first point, he thought that the hon. Member hardly did justice to the Bill. He thought that the hon. Member would find that there was more in that direction in the Bill than he gave the Government credit for. With respect to the division of rates, it must be remembered that it would be an innovation in our municipal boroughs and a change not in the direction in which the Government, whether rightly or wrongly, were proceeding—namely, to extend the benefits of the Municipal Corporations Act to the counties of England. As far as borrowing powers were concerned, he assured the hon. Member that if the limitations now contained in the Bill were not sufficiently strong, then the Government would make them stronger. A remarkable speech had been made by the hon. Member for West Nottingham (Mr. Broadhurst), who said that while a democratic measure had been promised, the Bill upheld the privileges of a class, and that charge rested entirely upon the fact that the chairman of a County Council, as he was to be a Justice of the Peace, was to be qualified to be a Justice of the Peace. As in a borough a Mayor was qualified to act as a Justice of the borough, it was thought that the chairman of a County Council ought to exercise the same privilege, and therefore this Bill conferred upon him that position, but required that he should of necessity have the qualification. And it was this that was to condemn the measure as one lacking in democratic character, brought in solely in the interests of the privileged classes. The hon. Member also said that the author of the measure had the ghosts of the country squires before him. Well, he (Mr. Long) belonged to that much-abused class, but he did not suppose that his right hon. Friend had suffered from ghosts, either in the solid shape which he possessed or in any other shape; he was certain the country squires did not exercise any undue influence over him. The Bill was not drawn in the interests of the squires, or any other class in the community. No one class was favoured more than another. It was a democratic Bill, as any Bill dealing with the subject must be under this democratic Constitution and in this democratic country. The Government that attempted to bring in a measure of a different character would be laughed at for its pains. Whatever might be its fate, it was, he thought, the framework of a good practical measure; and all that was asked was that it might receive fair and impartial consideration, apart from Party politics, and be approached with a desire to confer real benefit on the ratepayers of the country. He was not afraid of any charges of class privilege brought against it in this House, because the facts would speak for themselves out of it.

VISCOUNT LYMINGTON (Devon, South Molton)

said, that as one who took an active part in the transaction of county business, he might be allowed to put before the House and his right hon. Friend the President of the Local Government Board (Mr. Ritchie) a few points in connection with the Bill. His hon. Friend the Under Secretary to the Local Government Board (Mr. Long) dealt, he thought, somewhat unfairly with the objection which was raised by his hon. Friend the Member for West Nottingham (Mr. Broadhurst) with regard to the qualification of the chairmen of the future County Councils. The Mayor of a borough was not necessarily a Justice of the Peace when he was Mayor; but, in fact, in his position as Mayor he was a borough magistrate.

MR. LONG

said, that was exactly what he stated. In boroughs the Mayor is a magistrate, but no qualification is necessary for a borough magistrate. In the counties, a man, in order to be a magistrate, must have the qualification prescribed for a Justice of the Peace. It was proposed in the Bill that it should be necessary for the chairman of the County Council, who is to be ex officio a Justice of the Peace, to hold the qualification of a Justice of the Peace in a county.

VISCOUNT LYMINGTON

said, he did not think the point was very important, one way or the other, and therefore he put it to the Government that they might give way upon it and agree that the chairman of the County Council should not necessarily have been made, previous to his appointment, a county magistrate, but should stand precisely in the same position as a mayor of a borough. Now, with the permission of the House, he would address a few words to them upon the question of police, and he thought in considering the Bill they were bound to bear in mind, not only the powers and privileges which the Bill conferred, but also the privileges which the Bill permitted to exist. He personally did not wish to raise any objection to or to quarrel in any way with the decision on the part of the Government not to interfere with the existing Poor Law system; but he could not help thinking that there might exist in the future some feeling of jealousy between the popularly elected representatives and the magistrates who were nominated representatives, and therefore he felt it would have been a very desirable thing, if it could have been done, for the Government to have brought in a Bill simultaneously with this Bill, for purging the character of the county magistracy. He did not say, for one moment, that the county magistrates had not done their duty honestly, fearlessly, effectually, and efficiently; but he thought that a Bill ought to be passed which would prevent magistrates being appointed who had not attained a reasonable age of discretion, so that the large powers which were still to be left in the hands of the magistrates should not be wielded in the future by very young men indeed; and he also thought that reasonable attendance should be insisted upon as a qualification for remaining on the Commission of the Peace. Having said this, he desired to turn to the various points which had been raised in connection with the police. The hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for West Ham (Mr. Forrest Fulton) suggested that this would be a good opportunity to make the police an Imperial force. He (Viscount Lymington) did not suppose that any Government, Liberal or Conservative, could ever listen to a suggestion of that kind. He could not imagine what the life of a Home Secretary would be, if he had to answer for the misconduct, or supposed misconduct, not only of the Metropolitan Police—and the Home Office did not find that a very easy or pleasant task—but of the police in all parts of the country. Having regard to considerable experience as member of the police committee in his own county, he was bound to confess he did not believe in the divided jurisdiction which the Bill proposed to set up. Great powers were still reserved to the magistrates. Their judicial functions were still retained, and the business of Petty Sessions must place them in constant communication with the police. The magistrates were to have the selection of the Chief Constable, the Chief Constable who had enormous powers of initiation—to whom the whole of the police force looked to as its chief, and who could give a colour and direction to the police force itself. What he was particularly anxious to know was whether the elected magistrates were to be allowed to servo upon the proposed Police Committee; because if they were, the result would be precisely the same as if the management of the police were confined exclusively to a committee of magistrates. He did not believe that any proposal would be satisfactory which did not leave the complete control of the police to the magistrates, whose conduct would not depend upon popular approval or popular excitement. The hon. Gentleman the Secretary to the Local Government Board (Mr. Long) had stated the hardship he, as a magistrate, and others might feel who were returned to a County Board as elected representatives, at finding a non-representative body dealing with a county rate. But that rate—the police rate—as compared with other rates, represented a very small sum; in the county with which he was connected, it represented only 2d. in the £ But he did not think that was a financial question; the question whether they were in favour of putting the administrative control of the police entirely in the hands of the magistrates or entirely in the hands of elected representatives, almost wholly depended on other arguments. He, himself, believed that questions might arise—questions upon which political and popular public feeling might be very high and very strong, upon which the question of the administration of the law might be attended with extreme difficulty, and where those who controlled the police should be persons absolutely free from any sort of what he might call unfair popular pressure. Administration would be less likely to be impartial when dependent upon popular approval and popular excitement. He knew that in most large towns there was this popular control; but large towns were exempt from the changes proposed by the Bill, and this did not affect his opinion, that if the county police force was to be efficiently administered, if it was to be guided with secrecy, determination, and effect, it must be governed entirely by one authority, and he believed you could only have that authority as it existed now under the magistrates. There was another point in connection with the subject. Under the Bill, a sum of £1,378,000 was to be collected for licences for the sale of intoxicating liquors, and for gamedealers licences; these licences would be collected by the County Authorities, and handed over to the County Treasurer, and it seemed to him, from his practical experience of county management, that one of the first things to which a County Board would look would be the curtailment, as best they could, of the expenses of a staff of officials, and one of the first things likely to suggest itself to them would be that the police should be made use of as collectors of those licences. [Mr. RITCHIE: They do not collect now.] No, but was it not likely, probable even, that a proposition would be made that the police should be used for that purpose? He was not speaking of taxes that were to be collected by Inland Revenue officers, and which after being collected by them, were to be handed over to the County Authorities; but he was speaking of gamedealers' licences, and licences for the sale of intoxicating liquors to be collected by the County Authorities themselves. It was extremely likely that the County Councils would wish that these licences should be collected by the police. If they did that for the sake of economy, and for saving a double set of officials, it was another reason why the police should be under one jurisdiction, instead of a divided jurisdiction. Another point upon which all would agree had reference to the borrowing powers of the new County Authorities. The hon. Member for Carnarvonshire (Mr. Rathbone) had laid great stress on the extravagance of democratic authorities in the United States, and the large amount of the municipal debt there. The municipal debt of the United States, he need hardly remind the House, had increased, from 1870 to 1880, over 60 per cent—from over £103,000,000 to over £164,000,000; and the pointed question suggested itself—were the proposals recommended, the precautions in the Bill adopted by the President of the Local Government Board, sufficient—were they adequate to meet the contingency of future extravagance? To what did his right hon. Friend's guarantee and security amount in that direction? He proposed that the total debt of the County Council should not exceed two years' annual value of the rateable property in the county, and that the Local Government Board should be obliged to institute an inquiry before sanctioning a loan which, with the already existing debt, would exceed the amount of a year's annual rateable value. That was to say, the Local Government Board would have the power of a direct prohibition, and was not to be allowed by Parliament, under any conditions, to agree to any fresh loan where the debt of the county would amount to two years' income from the rateable value of the property, and the Local Government Board had a locus standi to institute an inquiry where the loan amounted to one year's rateable value. The whole point rested upon the question, were those sums a fair and sufficient proportion? He maintained, from his experience, that the debt of a county bore no proportion to two years' or to one year's annual rateable value, and he, therefore, hoped that in Committee the President of the Local Government Board would cut down the amount, or impose some other check for meeting the difficulty. No doubt, the principle of the safeguard under the Bill was the discretion of the Local Government Board; but if, as he contended, one year's annual rateable value was a very large proportion, as it existed now, to the debt of the county, he did not think that County Authorities should have a sort of power or a claim conceded to them that they could create a debt even up to that amount. Another point which had already been dwelt upon was whether population should be the sole basis of electoral districts. He hoped that the Government would agree to the necessity of a discretion being allowed, in the determination of the boundaries of the electoral districts, to other considerations, such as acreage and rateable value. If the Government insisted upon population being the sole basis of electoral districts, then they must meet with a great deal of opposition from those gentlemen who represented purely agricultural constituencies. Happily, for many agricultural counties, large towns of over 100,000 inhabitants in the 1881 census were taken out of the operation of the Bill. As the Bill stood, large areas with considerable rateable value, which were thinly or sparsely populated, would be almost disfranchised under the proposals of the Bill. There might be some difficulty in meeting the point raised by the hon. Member for East Somerset (Mr. Hobhouse) by giving a vote to property; but that might be met, as well as the question of residence, by giving directions that in drawing out electoral districts, attention should be given to acreage as well as population. He thanked the House for their attention to these remarks, which he had not intended as anything in the nature of a speech, but to draw the attention of the Government to a few points upon which he felt strongly, and which had come within his experience of county business. He hoped the Government would consider them in the friendly spirit in which they were presented.

MR. S. HOARE (Norwich)

said, he would only ask the indulgence of the House for a few minutes. Even if he had more time at his disposal, he would not venture to address the House at length, nor was it necessary at that stage to go into details. In the first place, he wished to express entire concurrence with the remarks of the Secretary to the Local Government Board in reference to the dual control of the police. He believed that, under the circumstances, it was the only method of meeting the difficulties in the management of the police. Like his hon. Friend, he anticipated no friction in the arrangement by which Quarter Sessions would have part control. But the point to which he specially desired to call attention was that referred to by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for East Wolverhampton (Mr. Henry H. Fowler), as regarded the position of certain large boroughs with large populations, and which were not in the Schedule as separate counties by themselves. The right hon. Gentleman based his argument on financial grounds principally; but he (Mr. Hoare) would venture to speak for one of those great boroughs, not from that point of view, but rather from the point of view of securing the better working of the scheme. If the President of the Local Government Board would favourably consider the suggestion, the working of the Bill in the County of Norfolk and the Eastern districts would be much smoother. He alluded to his own constituency. The City of Norwich, the capital of East Anglia, had a population of not quite 100,000, but still so large that in a very few years, at the rate of present in- crease, that figure would be passed. The city had a larger number of electors than some of the boroughs of 100,000 inhabitants; its register showed 18,636 Municipal voters, it covered 7,500 acres of ground, and it had 75 miles of streets to look after. He could not help thinking that to associate a large city like that with the county would inevitably give rise to friction. When he said that at the Quarter Sessions of the County of Norfolk no voice was raised in support of the union of the city with the county for any purpose, and when he said that the Chamber of Agriculture had unanimously voted that the city should remain separate, then he felt sure that the position of this important borough would meet with the consideration of the Government. He might mention another point, as indicating a special reason why the union of city and county would be liable to give rise to friction. From time immemorial Norwich had been accepted as a county of its own; repeated charters had treated it as a county by itself. It had its own Assizes, its own Quarter Sessions, Court of Record, lunatic asylum, and Poor Law Union. All its organizations were entirely independent of the county, and he, therefore, expressed his earnest hope that when the matter was fully considered it would be thought that a great city like this, with a population of one-fourth of the whole county, would be allowed, in the future, the management of its own affairs. One old charter acknowledged that the City of Norwich had been a county from a time when the memory of man went not to the contrary. He hoped the Bill would not interfere with its independence, but would merely renew the words of the old charter and allow Norwich to remain a county independent of the County of Norfolk for ever.

Motion made, and Question, "That the Debate be now adjourned,"—(Mr. Courtney,)—put, and agreed to.

Debate further adjourned till Monday next.