DEFEAT OF THE GOVERNMENT 89 



The Committee also discovered that, notwithstanding the 

 provision by Parliament in 1847 for the cost of Criminal 

 Prosecutions, Treasury officials were disallowing some of 

 these costs, and so throwing them back on the rates. Lord 

 Chief Justice Cockburn, with the unanimous concurrence 

 of the Bench, declared the action of the Treasury to be unjusti- 

 fiable, and stigmatised it as monstrous, but intimated that 

 Parliament alone could afford a remedy. 



1872. 



Early this year, therefore, the Committee raised the matter 

 in Parliament, and their motion received cordial support 

 from all sides of the House ; after a good deal of fencing the 

 Treasury undertook to deal effectually and at once with the 

 .grievance, so the motion was not pressed to a division. 

 Nothing was done in the matter, however, this year ; in 1873 

 proposals were made in the Public Prosecutors Bill to remedy 

 the grievance, but the Bill did not pass ; the question was 

 raised every year in some form or other, until it was at last 

 .settled by the passing, in 1877, of the Prisons Act by the next 

 Administration . 



Sir Massey Lopes moved the following resolution, when, 

 in spite of being strongly opposed by the Government, he 

 earned it by a majority of 259 to 159 : 



" That it is expedient to remedy the injustice of imposing 

 taxation for National objects on one description of property 

 only, and therefore that no legislation with reference to Local 

 Taxation will be satisfactory which does not provide, either in 

 whole or in part, for the relief of occupiers and owners in counties 

 and boroughs from charges imposed on ratepayers for the adminis- 

 tration of justice, police, and lunatics, the expenditure for such 

 purposes being almost entirely independent of local control." 



Sir Thomas Dyke Acland led the opposition to Sir Massey, 

 and offered as his remedy of the injustice a redistribution of 

 rates between owners and occupiers. The Committee renewed 

 their opposition to the proposal for placing the cost of Election 

 Expenses on the rates, and on a division had a majority of 



