less size, but the larger part of which is occupied by rural parishes consisting of small groups of houses and a population scattered over fields, heaths, and commons. Each of the parishes is a unity having a common interest, an ancient government, a capacity and a habit of providing for its own necessities. In some cases the parish is too small to be left to itself, and requires to be grouped with or annexed to other parishes. The towns are also made up of parishes or parts of parishes; but there the unity is the town, the parochial is merged in the town interest, and it might be well to merge the parishes for secular purposes in the town.

The problem is this: A county council has to be formed supreme over towns and country; the towns must be represented on the county council, as it will exercise superintending county powers, especially the central powers; as they might be called, over them. On the other hand, the towns will, to a great degree, stand aloof from the rest of the county under their own government.

The first step in whatever plan is adopted is to vest in the county council all county powers; the next, to vest in the parish all the parochial powers.

Is an intermediate area necessary, or may the intermediate powers be parcelled out between the county and the parish? Now, without deciding this question, it may be stated at once that an absolute necessity arises for an intermediate area from the impossibility of electing a county council without providing electoral divisions. A list of from fifty to two hundred members to be chosen en masse by a county would amount to little more than a commission to a caucus on one side or the other to select a body of members to be blindly returned by dependent voters. What, then, should be the area? Can any existing division be adopted? The rural sanitary districts are, as has been said above, mere groups of disjointed parishes extending frequently beyond the boundaries of the county; petty-sessional divisions are of too unequal a size to qualify them for adoption. Highway districts might perhaps have successfully competed for the honour, but they have been so partially adopted as to afford little aid to a general plan for the division of counties. The conclusion then seems inevitable that the intermediate district must be groups of parishes and towns framed in the first instance by the Local Government Board, or a commission, or the justices in quarter sessions, or some other delegated authority, with power for the county council to alter such groups with the approbation of the Local Government Board or some other central authority. No doubt some parliamentary instruction must be given for the guidance of the authority to whom the powers of division are given; for example, towns of 20,000 population and upwards must form separate electoral urban areas, and towns under that population must be grouped with the county villages into rural electoral A further question is important in relation to the demarca

areas.

tion of electoral areas-namely, should they be mere electoral areas, as is the case with parliamentary divisions, or should they also be administrative areas; and, if administrative areas, should such areas be governed by subordinate councils or by committees of the county council? With respect to the town of 20,000 inhabitants and upwards, the question is answered at once. They are necessarily, by their very constitution, administrative areas: if boroughs, governed by the town council; if Improvement Act districts, by improvement commissioners; if local board districts, by the local boards. The authorities of such areas should of course retain their existing powers, with the exception of quarter session boroughs invested with what have been called special administrative county powers, which would be surrendered to the county. The case, however, of a rural electoral district differs widely from that of an urban; it may consist of a number of small towns, being parishes or local government districts, and of country villages. The towns must be left to their urban organisation. There remain only the villages to be governed by a district council.

Now, if it were possible to transfer at once the poor-law powers to the district, a council would at once be required, as the poor-law administration would in itself be of sufficient consequence to give employment to a district council. No doubt such a transfer would be for the best, and the whole system of local government would thus be totus teres atque rotundus, as symmetrical as the AngloSaxon divisions of county, borough, hundred, tithing, or parish. Such a plan, however, involves the readjustment to a great extent of the poor-law unions, and consequently the disturbance of the existing incidence of poor-law rating.

No changes in the union are or can be made at once; but the electoral divisions should be so formed as to admit of their being substituted as soon as practicable, say within three or four years, for the present unions. When this is done, a district council will be required for each electoral district; but until then the intermediate powers might be delegated to a committee of the county council, consisting of the members representing the electoral area, with the addition, if necessary, of other members to be added by the county council.

Throughout the above observations relating to counties it is assumed that towns of 100,000 inhabitants and upwards should, as in the Bill, be made separate urban counties, retaining their municipal organisations and invested with county and all other powers of local government. Proceeding thus far, we have, as primary areas, counties and counties of towns; as primary authorities, county councils and the municipal councils of counties of towns. We have,

as secondary areas, electoral divisions framed by some local authority, with the obligation to make every town of 20,000 inhabitants or upwards into a separate urban electoral district. Let the towns of 20,000 inhabitants be called district boroughs, the rural electoral

divisions hundreds. The superintending authorities of these districts will in the case of the district boroughs be their municipal councils, in the case of the hundreds be a hundred committee of the county council. There remain to be considered the constituent elements of the hundreds. These elements are :

1. Parishes and parts of parishes.

2. Towns of less than 20,000 inhabitants. a. Boroughs; b. Improvement Act districts; c. Local government districts, which may be called corporate towns.

Begin at the bottom of the scale. Parishes under a population of 500 are too small to exercise any power of government, and should be grouped into tithings of 1000 and upwards. Both parishes and tithings should be incorporated after the model of Mr. Goschen's Bill of 1871, and should be governed by a parochial committee of not less than three nor more than twenty persons. This committee should have at its head a chairman elected annually, who should in all matters concerning the parish represent the parish in its intercourse with other bodies. The parochial committee should have vested in them all the parochial powers, but they should be subject to the control of the district committee and of the county council.

Boroughs should retain their existing powers, and in addition should be invested with all the secular powers of their component parishes. A similar form should be adopted with Improvement Act districts and local government districts, with this exception-that where a local government district has a population of less than 1000 it should cease to be incorporated, and should be resolved into its component parishes. Each of these bodies-parishes, tithings, corporate towns should be a separate unit of rating, forming the area for the levy of a consolidated rate out of which the expenses of the area itself and contributions to other rates would be paid.

The result of the foregoing observations may be gathered into a few sentences. England, as in the Government Bill, should be divided into counties and counties of towns; the counties of towns to consist of the eighteen towns having a population of more than 100,000 and upwards. These towns would be governed by their municipal councils, who should have concentrated in them all the local powers of government. The county would be divided into onemembered electoral districts, containing as nearly as possible the same unit of population, to be determined by dividing the population by the number of members allotted to the county by the Local Government Board.

The electoral divisions would be named hundreds and district towns; the district towns to consist of towns containing a population of 20,000 and upwards. The district towns would be governed by their existing councils, improvement commissioners, or local govern

ment boards. They would be deprived, where they possess them, of their county special statutory powers, but should possess all other powers of local government except the county powers. The hundreds would consist of the smaller towns and villages. Until the unions are readjusted and poor-law powers given them, they would be governed by a committee of the county council, which should be clothed with the intermediate powers, especially the licensing powers of petty sessions. Villages should be incorporated and governed by parochial committees, as was proposed in Mr. Goschen's Bill of 1871, and when containing a population of less than 500 should be grouped together. The smaller towns would be left to their existing government, with the addition of parochial powers. The villages and groups of villages to be called tithings would exercise parochial powers. There should be an appeal from the local authorities of the smaller towns and villages to the hundred committee of the county council, and from them to the county council itself. When the unions have been readjusted, it would be advisable, probably, to have hundred councils elected by the inhabitants of the hundred.

One word with respect to the metropolis. By the Bill the whole affair is despatched in about two clauses. The metropolis is to be a county called the county of London, with the City of London degraded to the position of a quarter-sessions borough in that county Gog and Magog to be deposed from the Guildhall, and to adorn a quarter-sessions court. The most powerful, the richest city in the world is to be classed with Bedford and Buckingham, and one hundred other small quarter-sessions boroughs. The Lord Mayor— the envy of foreigners, the theme of song, the successor of Whittington-to be reduced to a level with the mayor of a quarter-sessions borough! And for what reason? Divide et impera would seem to be the maxim of the present Government. A county council outside the City, an antagonistic municipal council inside the City-two kings, not in Brentford, but in the metropolis, are safer than one. Why this distrust of friends? Surely the obvious course is to make one united London; to expand the City, with its ancient traditions, its world-wide renown, its mythical wealth, into the metropolis, and subject all to a reformed City government. Far better retain matters as they stand than continue under another name the present absurd division of jurisdiction between the metropolis and the City.

The last but most important portion of the Bill which requires to be noticed is the financial scheme. Here is to be found the motive power-the Bill moves on wheels of gold.

Two million has hitherto been the amount of Imperial subventions for local purposes; 5,000,000l. will henceforth go into the pockets of the ratepayers, giving 3,000,000l. as the solatium' to the justices for disestablishment. The 5,000,000l. is provided as

follows: The duties on publicans' licences and retail licences for the sale of intoxicating liquors, and licences to deal in game, are to be collected by the county council for local purposes. The amount of these duties is calculated to be 1,378,143l. The Imperial officers will continue to receive the duties in relation to the following licences: Beer-dealers, spirit-dealers, sweets-dealers, wine-dealers, refreshmenthouse-keepers, tobacco-dealers, carriages or other vehicles, horses, armorial bearings, male servants, dogs, killing game, guns, appraisers, auctioneers, house-agents, pawnbrokers, plate-dealers, but will hand over the proceeds derived from each county to the county council. Besides this a contribution is to be made from personalty or probate duty for local purposes. Here at once a question arises as to how the amount is to be distributed among the several counties. The reply is somewhat startling to those unversed in the learning of political economy. It is this: according to the indoor pauperism— that is to say, the number of paupers in the workhouses of the county. At first sight this would seem an excellent mode for multiplying paupers, somewhat in the same manner as, if an imperial contribution for the punishment of crime in a county were to be distributed in proportion to the number of summary convictions in that county, people would think that it would not be improbable that fines for small crimes would diminish and imprisonment increase. It is justified, however, on the plea of the necessity that exists of keeping in check the mischievous tendency of false humanitarianism to grant outdoor relief indiscriminately. It must be admitted, however, that it is a plan calculated to grind the faces of the poor, and it may be doubted whether a milder remedy might not have been applied to the cure of an admitted evil.

The total of the above-mentioned contributions for local purposes will amount, we are told, to 5,000,000l. The expenditure will be, shortly, as follows: The subventions now paid from the imperial exchequer to teachers in poor-law schools, poor-law medical officers, medical officers of health and inspectors of nuisances, registrars of births and deaths, pauper lunatics, criminal prosecutions, police, grants to poor school-boards, awards to public vaccinators, will cease, and will henceforth be paid by the county council out of the moneys granted to them. Next, the county council is required to pay 4d. per head per day towards the maintenance of the indoor poor; further, they must provide for the expenses of keeping up the main roads and general county purposes. Lastly, if any surplus remains, it will be divided between the quarter-sessions boroughs not contributing to special county purposes, and the rest of the county according to rateable value. The result being, as was stated above, a bribe to the ratepayers of 3,000,000l.

The car of the local Juggernaut with such a golden impetus may well crush alike Gog and Magog, the City of London, and every rural