GENERAL ADMINISTRATION. 195 



expenses defrayed from those funds. They are, however, charged 

 separately for constables, paupers, medicines, and other sundries, 

 to the amount of about £5,220, as appears by the estimates for 

 1880. The principal sources of revenue are : Land tax, £14,500; 

 house tax, £10,230; spirit and wine licences, £8,860. Total 

 local revenues, £35,000. 



The duties of the wardens have also been contracted into 

 narrower limits. On this subject Sir Henry Irving remarks, in 

 his message of 22nd January, 1878 : " In 1854 it was found 

 necessary to employ salaried officers as wardens ... a salaried 

 warden being appointed to each union. A radical change was 

 thus introduced into the scheme of Lord Harris ; but no corres- 

 ponding adequate change made in its administration. With the 

 exception of their being paid instead of unpaid, the position and 

 the duties of the wardens remained unchanged. They were still 

 regarded as local officers. . . . The appointments were left to be 

 filled up locally by gentlemen who were left without guidance 

 or control by superior authority, to perform, in respect of large 

 populous districts, the multifarious duties which, under the 

 original scheme, were to be performed on a comparatively trifling 

 scale and within a limited area. . . . The interior administra- 

 tion of the country became dependent on the ability of fourteen 

 gentlemen to discharge successfully the whole range of executive 

 duties — from supervising excise, for example, to civil engineer- 

 ing. It is not surprising that a system, dependent for its success 

 on impossible conditions, should have proved a comparative 

 failure."" The duties of the wardens are now limited to those 

 which properly attach to a revenue officer, their duties of road 

 officers having been transferred to the public works depart- 

 ment. 



The Governor, in his message of 3rd November, 1879, com- 

 mented thus on the changes which he had effected : ' ( The system 

 of assessment has acted as a discouragement to cultivation. It 

 has been a fruitful source of error, inequality, evasion, and 

 fraud. By the conversion of the assessment into a uniform 

 acreage rate, a system of taxation will be substituted which will 

 encourage the acquisition of land and stimulate its cultivation, 

 ; which will minimise error and inequality, and render evasion and 

 fraud impossible. This reform of system would, however, be 

 incomplete were it not to be accompanied by a change also in 



