soon as may be afterwards, the returning-officer declares the result of the poll. In some respects this system of voting is more convenient than the ballot; it is also cheaper. Certainly, too, more persons will vote if the election comes to them instead of their being obliged to go to the election. The objection urged against the system is the ease with which voting papers can be tampered with. The Select Committee of 18781 reported that "it was shown that the abuses and inconvenience of the voting paper system, as at present carried on, were very grave; that under it intimidation, abstraction, tampering with and forgery of voting papers, were practised; that frequently voters did not receive their papers at all, and that in other cases they were invalidated for trifling technical reasons." The chief cause of the malpractices appears to be that the men are away from home when the papers are left, and that their wives are induced to fill them up in their husbands' names, without their authority. When any dispute arises as to the election of a guardian, it is the province of the Local Government Board to decide the matter. Sometimes this is done by correspondence, but when the nature of the case requires it, a local inquiry may be ordered. In towns it is said the elections are chiefly contested on political grounds, while in the country districts they turn on personal considerations.

The primary function of the guardians is the administration of poor relief. Subject to confirmation by the Local Government Board, they appoint the relieving and medical officers for the union, and the workhouse masters, chaplains, and schoolmasters. They control 1 Poor Law Guardians, 1878, House of Commons.

the administration of relief, and supervise the management of the workhouses and pauper schools. On two questions the guardians have to exercise an important discretion. First, they have to decide in any particular case whether outdoor relief should be given or the workhouse test applied. As regards this question the poor law is very unequally administered in different unions. In some the policy of the Act of 1834 is rigorously carried out-perhaps too rigorously. In others the Local Government Board complains, "The old abuse of relief in aid of wages must largely prevail in some form or other." 1 Secondly, when outdoor relief has to be given, the guardians must decide whether it shall be given in money or in kind. The latter mode of relief has many advantages. "It has been a frequent source of complaint," say the Local Government Board,2 "that of relief in money only a small portion reached the wives and other members of the family for whose sustenance it was given; and that in the rural districts the greater portion was spent in the beer shops, and in the towns was expended in the gin shops. Relief in kind we found less liable to misapplication. If, instead of giving to a pauper a weekly allowance in money, an allowance be given in food or other necessaries of the same value, he can only obtain a reduced amount of his wonted description of indulgence by the misappropriation of the relief in kind. In the year 1881 the relief to out-paupers in money was £2,297,000, but in kind it only amounted to £325,000; that is to say, for £7 given in the objectionable shape of money, only £1 is now administered 2. Report of 1882, p. xiii.

..

in kind." The total cost of poor relief in 1881 was £8,102,106.

In connection with poor relief, an important function lately thrown upon guardians is that of paying the school fees for children whose parents are too poor to pay them unassisted. In 1881 £33,000 were expended in this manner.

The parish valuation-lists are made out by the overseers, but they are subject to revision by a committee of the guardians, called the Assessment Committee, who hear and determine objections. An appeal lies from the guardians to the Quarter Sessions. Though the guardians are primarily the poor law authority, several matters unconnected with poor relief have lately been entrusted to their management. In rural districts, where there is no school board, a committee of the guardians constitutes the school-attendance committee. The guardians, too, are now the rural sanitary authority,"1 and under an Act of 1878, when the area of a union is coincident with the area of a highway district, they may also become the highway authority, with all the powers of a district highway board. It is the duty of the guardians to appoint and pay the registrars of births and deaths, and to see that they are provided with suitable offices. The enforcement of the Vaccination Acts and the Bakehouse Regulation Acts is also entrusted to them. In populous places it is easy to imagine that their position is no sinecure. "They are often obliged," says a recent Lords' Committee," " to attend for six hours or more to get through their present, which constitutes a heavy tax

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on men of business, who have usually private affairs on which their livelihood depends." If rural areas are to be simplified, the end can hardly be attained by piling up functions on the already-overburdened guardians. If small parishes could be consolidated perhaps the township or parish might be galvanised into life again, and some of its old functions restored to the vestry. If the guardians were still overburdened, some of their functions might be transferred to the county. But the county, the union, and the parish ought, one would think, to be the only rural authorities, and the whole of the functions of rural local government ought to be parcelled out among them.

CHAPTER V.

THE MUNICIPAL BOROUGH.

English Towns-Creation of New Boroughs-History of Municipal Boroughs-The Municipal Corporations Act-Constitution of the Borough or City - Borough Officers-Functions of the Council-Borough Finance-Central Control.

IN England there is no system of town government as such. A certain number of favoured towns are incorporated and have a legal existence under the Municipal Corporations Act. For purposes of local government these only need be considered. A few more have Improvement Commissioners, who, under special Acts, are charged with the duty of carrying out certain specified works of public utility, such as lighting, paving, sewering, and the like. Certain ancient towns have charters of incorporation, which enable them to hold and administer property for the benefit of those who have the freedom of the borough. For the most part, too, these ancient boroughs have mayors, aldermen, town councillors, and all the paraphernalia of urban government; but the functions of these officials, as regards local administration, are either purely nominal, or, like those of the human spleen, undiscoverable.1