immense. Reform appears to be required in two directions-first, the simplification of areas; and second, the consolidation of authorities. Some area should be chosen as the Local Government unit, and the larger areas should be multiples of that unit. Further, a separate authority should not be created or kept up for every function that has to be discharged. Within certain limits the same authority can very well deal with different subject-matters through separate departments. The Central Government of the country is carried on by a small Cabinet working through different departments, and the extension of this principle to local affairs has frequently been recommended. Take for instance the case of a munícipal borough. As it is, the town council is, in most cases, the sanitary authority for the place. Why should it not also discharge the functions of the guardians, of the burial board, and perhaps also of the school board? The different departments could be superintended by different committees of the Council. In rural districts the Board of Guardians is the sanitary authority. Why should not the guardians be invested with the powers of the highway board, the burial board, and the lighting committee, where there is one? The present system involves a very needless multiplication of officers and elections. The elections of the different local authorities are held at different times. qualifications of electors and candidates differ in each case, as do also the mode of election, the returningofficer and his staff, and the period for which office is held. The table inserted at the end of this chapter, which is taken from a recent parliamentary paper, summarizes the conditions under which local elections are

The

at present conducted. 1 A glance at this table brings home to the mind more forcibly than adjectives what a waste of power must necessarily result from the present multiplicity of boards and elections. The system is extravagant in time, in men, and in money. A further and more serious evil consequent on the dispersion of functions is this: the number of capable men able and willing to take part in local government is limited. The numerous boards therefore have to be filled up with very indifferent material. A locality which might well furnish a single board of competent men is quite unequal to provide four or five such boards. Besides, the very limited sphere of usefulness which is open to a man who serves in any one of the existing petty boards effectually deters many good men from coming forward. The opponents of reform urge that there is a healthy vitality about English local institutions which more than compensates for all their eccentricities and shortcomings. To this its advocates reply that judicious reform would increase rather than impair that vigour. There was once a golden age of local government in England, when it was both simple and strong. That golden age, say sanguine men, may yet return in some shape. In Saxon times the pressure of the Central Government was but slightly felt. The duties of a freeman to the State were all comprehended in the trinoda necessitas. As regards administrative government, the counties were almost independent. The counties were subdivided into hundreds, and

Each

these again were subdivided into townships. division had its appropriate assembly or court, which made bye-laws, and administered local affairs and justice within its competence. Police was provided for by the system of frankpledge or mutual guarantee. Every freeholder-and freeholder then was practically synonymous with freeman-was entitled to take part in the township assembly. Every township was represented in the court of the hundred and the county. No distinction was drawn between legislative, judicial, and administrative functions. ̓Αρχεῖν καὶ δικάζειν was then the right and duty of every freeman. The machinery of local government in Saxon times would of course be as unfitted to the present day as Saxon clothes or Saxon arms; but a return in rural districts to something like the old threefold division into county, hundred, and township seems highly desirable. Nothing probably would be gained by trying to include the larger towns in the tripartite rural system. They should have their own municipal system. The conditions of town and country in respect

1 The fatal mistake was made in 1834, when unions were created without any regard to the historic division of the country into counties. Nearly a third of the total number of unions cut county boundaries. Ce n'est que le premier pas qui coûte. Since 1834 both population and wealth have advanced by leaps and bounds. To provide for the growing requirements of the nation new local authorities have been created wholesale. Each special need has been met by calling into existence a new special authority to deal with it. Following the evil precedent of the unions, these new authorities have been created without any regard to previously existing divisions or authorities. The burial board knows not the highway board, and neither of them takes cognisance of the vestry, the guardians, or the country. It will be no easy task to make these heterogeneous elements coalesce, and there are of course limits beyond which it would not be desirable to attempt to do so. to local government are very different. In districts classed as urban by the census authorities the average population is 4061 persons to the square mile, while throughout the rest of the country the average is 158 to the square mile. Towns require much more government than the country, especially in sanitary matters. Masses of human beings, when collected together in a limited space, necessarily create nuisances which individuals are helpless to abate. Towns therefore require a more elaborate machinery than rural districts. The principle is recognised in England, but its application is fitful and irregular in the extreme. The Public Health Acts assign much larger powers to urban than to rural sanitary authorities, and the Municipal Corporation Acts provide a special system for the administration of the favoured towns to which they are extended. In France, as we have seen, where there is often a tendency to prefer symmetry to practical utility, no distinction is recognised between town and country. The largest city and the smallest village are administered on the same lines.

The subject of local taxation and burdens is dealt with in another volume of this series;1 but for the sake of completeness a few words must be said here on the general aspect of those questions.

Very few people probably realise the extent of the sums annually disbursed by the various local authorities in England, or the alarming rate at which local expenditure and indebtedness is increasing. The ratepayer who grasps the situation regards the feats of elective local bodies in spending money and piling up debts with feelings akin to those with which Frankenstein beheld the pranks of the monster of his own creation. But he takes no action in the matter. No one works harder than an Englishman to make money, yet no one submits more passively to having his money taken from him. The scandalous failure of our bankruptcy laws is mainly due to the apathy of creditors in enforcing their rights. This curious national characteristic comes out strongly as regards local affairs. The ordinary ratepayer looks on a rise in his rates in the same way that he looks on an increase in the rainfall. Both are matters to be grumbled at; but in neither case does he inquire into causes, and he considers the one as irremediable as the other. In spite of the prevalent apathy on the subject, the statistics of local finance are well worth a little attention.

In 1870 the sum total of the outlay for the year for local purposes was £29,000,000.1 In 1880, although prisons had in the meantime been transferred to the Central Government, the expenditure for the year had risen to £50,000,000. In order to meet this outlay £31,000,000 were raised by local taxation, the Treasury contributed rather more than £2,000,000, tolls and dues brought in £6,000,000, and the rest was defrayed out of loans. The expenditure is shown in the Local Government Board Returns under two heads, namely, non-remunerative expenditure and remunerative expenditure. Under the first head appear the sums ex