138 LOCAL TAXATION 



of local taxation. They might apply it to the cost of lunatics. 

 Why should not the State take over the entire management and 

 expenditure of the lunatic asylums, placing them, if necessary, 

 under local inspection by the magistrates, just as the prisons 

 were now placed ? Why should not the State take over the whole 

 cost of the management, through Commissioners, of course, of 

 the workhouses, paying the whole cost of indoor relief and leaving 

 nothing but outdoor relief minus, he hoped, the amount which 

 might be saved by any proper scheme of old-age pensions to 

 the local ratepayers ? Why should not the State take over the 

 whole cost of the police ? He did not think there was very much 

 local control over the police now. Why should not the State 

 take over the whole cost of idiot asylums, sick asylums, Poor 

 Law, industrial and reformatory schools ? He believed that 

 in that way and through a system of that kind would be both 

 the best and safest relief found to the ratepayers. 



" Probably some of his hearers who had taken an admirable 

 part in local administration would say at once that that would 

 be a great and an unfortunate interference with local govern- 

 ment. No one was more sensible than he was of the admirable 

 work done by the members of County and Town Councils through- 

 out the country men. often with plenty of business of their own,, 

 who devoted an enormous proportion of their time, with no 

 gratuity or reward whatever, to the service of their neighbours. 

 But he wished them to consider precisely what was going on with 

 reference to local government at the present time. Every year 

 for many years Parliament had occupied itself in imposing 

 more and more duties on those engaged in local government, 

 till it had almost come to the point that a man who had any 

 business of his own to attend to could hardly find time by any 

 possibility to attend to all the duties that devolved upon him as 

 a member of a County or a City Council. He thought it would 

 be a very good thing for local government in the future, on that 

 ground, if the members of such bodies could be relieved of some 

 of the duties they now had to do, because if those duties were* 

 to increase, as they were increasing, he believed the result must 

 be one of two things either the administration would pass from 

 the hands of the representatives of the people to a few paid 

 officials, or else capable business men enjoying the confidence of 

 their neighbours would find it necessary to give up the work of 

 local government, which would then fall into the hands of men less 

 trusted by their neighbours, less fit to be trusted by their neigh- 

 bours, who might turn the power in their hands as representatives 

 of the ratepayers to their own corrupt purposes." 



The King's Speech contained a reference to a Valuation 

 Bill, so the Chamber communicated with the President of 

 the Local Government Board (Mr. John Burns) recalling their 

 statement on Valuation sent to him last year. At the end of 



