tions, no new duties were confided to them by Parliament for more than a century prior to the reform of 1835, such public works as were imperatively needed being entrusted to private persons or specially created commissions. Thus in 1684 an enterprising speculator, named Hemming, obtained exclusive authority to light the metropolis at night with lamps; and the Watching and Lighting Act of 1833 created special authorities for the performance of these elementary municipal duties within the boundaries of the boroughs and elsewhere.2 The county police rate, imposed in 1841, is still nominally a distinct rate; but as it is, like the county rate proper, collected as part of the poor rate, no machinery for its assessment or collection is required.

The progress of the rates referred to in the foregoing historical survey, so far as the figures are known to exist for the years selected, is exhibited in Table II of the appendix.3 That table does not, however, cover the whole field of local finance. About the middle of the eighteenth century the badness of the main roads of England and Wales led to the creation of turnpike trusts, under which the trustees were empowered to levy tolls for the repair, improvement and maintenance of the roads placed in their charge. The system spread rapidly, the turnpike roads were greatly improved and large sums were levied in the form of tolls. In 1840 the sum so raised was £1,659,154,1 and in 1843, £1,348,084;5 but by 1868 the tolls had fallen to £914,492, and in 1890-91, to £2,353.6 The introduction of railways so diminished the traffic on many of the roads that rates were required to supplement the tolls; and the latter have been practically abolished by the expiry and non-renewal of the trusts.

Prior to 1835 municipal corporations levied their revenues under the authority of charters and local acts, but no record

1 Brodrick, Local Government (Cobden Club Essay, 1875), p. 25.

2 Report of Select Committee on Local Taxation, 1870, p. 295.

8 Infra, p. 109.

4 Report on Local Taxation, 1843, p. 17.

5 Lord Monteagle's Report on Burdens on Land, p. 20.

Report on Local Taxation, 1893, pp. 94, 108.

of the amounts so raised was kept for the whole country. There was, indeed, no comprehensive statute requiring the production of annual returns until 1860. Mr. Goschen stated that

previously to 1841, neither receipts nor expenditure are chronicled in respect of any of the following branches of local administration : police; general sanitary improvement of towns; lighting, watching and paving; government of towns; sewage; drainage; and even in the more complete investigations undertaken in 1846, London rates are only entered to the extent of £82,000.1

He roughly estimated the rates of which no records were kept at £400,000 in 1817, and £600,000 in 1840.2

Table III of the appendix exhibits the extent, or rather the very narrow limits, of the information obtainable by the Poor Law Board in 1843, exclusive of poor, county, highway and church rates. Table IV shows the progress made in 1870. The latter furnishes the earliest view obtainable of the heavy modern taxation for sanitary and improvement purposes, which has so seriously augmented the burdens and indebtedness of urban localities, notwithstanding the relative saving effected under some of the older headings. Items 6, 7 and 8, amounting to over £3,000,000, are almost wholly of this character. The first of a series of acts relating to the public health and cognate matters, involving the levy of rates and the borrowing of money, was passed in 1848, and has been supplemented at short intervals down to the present time. The country has been mapped out into urban and rural sanitary districts, the authorities of which are invested with a multitude of powers and charged with a multiplicity of duties. Their expenditure has rapidly attained very large proportions (as will be seen later), and has, in urban districts, been met by the levy of rates, based upon the poor rate valuation but separately collected. In rural districts the sanitary authority is practically the board of guardians under another name, and the general expenses are met by a simple enlargement of the poor

rate.

The expenses incurred for the benefit of sectional areas are met by special sectional rates. In corporate boroughs the sanitary authority is usually the town council or a committee thereof; but as the greater part of London has no such council, various metropolitan authorities are either temporarily created or invested with temporary powers and duties. Since the creation of the London county council in 1889, a portion of the work has been taken up by that body. Within the small central area known as the City of London, the ancient unreformed corporation still exercises its authority in municipal matters, except as to main drainage, which is in the charge of the London county council. Outside of London and the corporate boroughs, the government of urban areas is entrusted to local boards or improvement commissioners; except that the police arrangements are left in the hands of the county authorities.

To the foregoing catalogue it is only necessary to add that the provision of cemeteries has, since 1854, been made a matter of civic concern, with the usual result of an additional rate; and that the creation of school boards under the Elementary Education Act of 1870 has led to the imposition of a local tax of considerable weight in the metropolis and many other places. The rates for both of these purposes are, however, usually collected as additions to other local taxes. Many less important developments of local and municipal activity have been provided for by similar methods or by the simple enlargement of previously existing rates, and need not be enumerated here. The recent growth of the local burdens and the development of the local finances will be further exhibited in the succeeding chapters and in the appendix.

CHAPTER II. The Existing System.

We are now in a position to take a survey of the principal features of the system of local finance which exists in England and Wales at the present time. Table V shows that of a total receipt (exclusive of loans) amounting to £51,437,425

1 Report of Select Committee on Local Taxation, 1870, p. 295.

in the year 1890-91, £27,818,642 represented the yield of the rates, that is, of direct taxes levied in respect of the occupation of real property. Of the remainder £8,627,027 consisted of the revenues from gasworks, waterworks, markets and other undertakings, mostly of a remunerative, or partly remunerative, character; £4,724,340, of tolls, dues, fees, fines, etc.; £1,741,217, of rents and other receipts from property (including sales); and £7,181,010, of treasury subventions and allocated taxes paid out of or diverted from the imperial exchequer. Table VI shows the various classes of local authority to whom the expenditure of these sums is entrusted, and the amount expended by each class; and in Table VII we see the same expenditure classified according to the objects to which it is devoted. Finally, the amounts of the loans outstanding on the 25th of March, 1891, and the purposes to which they have been applied, are set out in Table X and complete the edifice. The total local debt on that date was £201,215,458.

Taking these sections in the same order, and reverting to the revenue from rates, an analysis of the total for 1890-91 will be found in Table VIII. It is, however, a matter for regret that neither Mr. Fowler's report nor the annual localtaxation returns furnish an analysis in the form adopted in Table IV, or a modification thereof. Many of the rates set out in Table VIII are "precept" rates; that is, rates levied by one authority in obedience to a periodical demand or precept from another authority. In those rural parishes which are embraced within highway districts the whole of the public rates may be, and often are, collected together under the general head of poor rates. In rural parishes not comprised in highway districts separate highway rates. are made and levied by parochial surveyors of highways. In boroughs and other extra-metropolitan urban districts the rates are usually levied under the two main heads of poor rates and general district rates; but the lines of division are not uniform. Expenses which in some places are defrayed out of the proceeds of the poor rates are in other places met

from the general district rates, and in yet other places are the occasion of special rates. In London the division roughly corresponds to that of the boroughs, but there are considerable differences of detail. The vestries and district boards raise the rates needed for most of the sanitary and improvement purposes, and also for the London school board. But the London county council also performs certain sanitary duties and undertakes improvement works, the expenses of which are defrayed out of the moneys raised as poor rates. The county rate, the borough rate, the school-board rate, the burial-board rate, the rural sanitary rate and the rural highway rate in highway districts are usually levied as precept rates.1 In some cases the precepts are sent direct to the collecting authority, and in others through an intermediate body. Those which ultimately fall to be collected by the parochial overseers are either paid out of or collected with the poor rate,2 and are included under that general title in both popular and official terminology. An analysis of the expenditure of the sum raised by the overseers in 1890-91 is given in Table I and shows that of the total of £15,563,794 more than one half was applied to purposes other than the relief of the poor.

By far the most important of the rates collected independ ently of the poor rate is the general district rate levied by the urban sanitary authorities,3 with which may be included the rates of the metropolitan vestries and district boards and the commissioners of sewers in the City of London. This rate yielded in 1890-91 a revenue of about nine and one-half millions, exclusive of the £1,360,000 levied therewith in London for the London school board. No analysis of the expenditure of this large sum is published in a concise form, but the purposes to which it is applied include (1) street improvements, repair of urban highways, and street watering and cleansing; (2) sewerage and sewage disposal works; (3) public lighting; (4) dust and refuse removal; and (5) mis

1 Report of Select Committee on Local Taxation, 1870, pp. 291–300.

2 Ibid., p. 297, note to part 2.

8 See ante, p. 87.