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body of purposes which were called " sanitary purposes " were 

 at present and were likely for a long time to continue to be the 

 dominant purposes of local government ; and if those purposes 

 could be best administered in areas of certain dimensions, it 

 would probably be necessary to adopt such areas so far as might 

 be for other purposes of local government. Bearing these con- 

 siderations in mind, the question to be answered first was, what 

 primary area or unit should be adopted. As regarded the larger 

 boroughs, and the larger local board districts no radical change 

 of areas was to be thought of. As regarded rural places, the 

 choice appeared to be between the parish, .the union, or the 

 rural sanitary district. Considerations in favour of the parish 

 were (1) that it was in most cases an ancient institution invested 

 with a considerable amount of valuable local sentiment, and (2) 

 that the parish comparatively seldom overlapped the county 

 boundary, and had already been generally used as the foundation 

 of Unions and Petty Sessional divisions. On the other hand, 

 there were several considerations against accumulating upon the 

 parish all the weight of primary local administration. The great 

 inequality in population would necessitate an amount of grouping 

 in the case of smaller parishes and of sub-division in the case of 

 larger ones, which would go lar to destroy the value of the first 

 of the considerations in its favour ; and a further disturbance of 

 the existing parish would have to be made in those numerous 

 cases where the parish was cat by the boundary of a borough 

 or other urban district. The vestries must be generally re-organ- 

 ised, and new officers appointed. The existing organisations 

 of unions and highway boards would have to be dissolved. 

 And there were some purposes for which experience had con- 

 clusively shown a much larger area than the ordinary parish area 

 to be necessary. Nor would it be generally possible to obtain 

 from a population limited as that of the ordinary parish, a 

 sufficient number of persons qualified and willing to administer 

 the local affairs. The other alternative seemed to be the Union 

 or such part of it as not being included in any urban area formed 

 the existing Eural Sanitary district. As regarded the Unions, 

 the chief disadvantages were that more than a quarter of them 

 cut the county boundaries, that they seldom coincided with 

 boroughs or Local Board distiicts, or with highway districts. 

 On the other hand, the Unions started with this not incon- 

 siderable presumption in their favour, that they had been formed 

 within the last forty years, deliberately for the purpose of local 

 administration. They had the advantages of an existing repre- 

 sentative constitution, which could be easily modified so far as 

 might be necessary ; and they were accustomed to central control 

 and audit. Lastly, Parliament had, to a certain extent, commit- 

 ted itself to tlieir adoption by adding to their original functions 



