108 LOCAL TAXATION 



The duty of those officials is to guard the National Exchequer, 

 and in their official capacity it matters nothing to them if 

 local authorities are made bankrupt. On the other hand, 

 there is no one in Parliament, or in any Government Depart- 

 ment, whose special duty it is to look after the ratepayers' 

 interests, or to safeguard the finances of local authorities. 

 The Local Government Board, whose duty it should be, is 

 too much occupied in devising orders and legislation compelling 

 a continuous increase in their expenditure. 



A further subvention had been suggested by the Excise 

 Duties (Local Purposes) Bill, which proposed a new duty on 

 horses, heavy carts, and vans, and this would have provided 

 some 800,000 towards the cost of maintaining the roads ; 

 but the traders affected by this proposal proved to be too well 

 organised, and their resistance to it caused its ultimate with- 

 drawal, greatly to the regret of the Committee. Had agri- 

 culturists supported them as weU and as energetically as the 

 traders supported their leaders, ratepayers would have been 

 this much to the good every year since that time ; but as 

 frequently still happens, agriculturists would not be stirred 

 into activity until it was too late to take effective action. 



Naturally, some of the provisions of the Local Government 

 Act were not exactly what the Committee had asked for, but 

 on the whole they were prepared to be well satisfied with 

 this result of twenty years' agitation ; although, in their 

 annual report for this year, they remind their supporters 

 that " a further and more complete remedy for the incidence 

 of local rates has yet to be sought." 



1890. 



The year 1889 was quite uneventful, but 1890 was another 

 red-letter year. Early in the session the Committee approached 

 Mr. Goschen (Chancellor of the Exchequer) with regard to a 

 grant in substitution for the proposed Van and Wheel Tax 

 which failed to pass in 1888. Mr. Goschen, in his Budget 

 statement on 17th April, met their views in a substantial way 

 by imposing a surtax for local purposes of sixpence per gallon 

 on spirits, and by the transfer to local requirements of part 



