160 REPORT— 1877. 



"I would suggest as the primary and absolutely indispensable step of all attempts 

 to reform local administration, that a more uniform form of accounts, a thorough 

 official audit, and a consistent series of returns for a single period be annually re- 

 quired from every local body, as an absolute condition of its right to levy local taxes. 

 But, further, I have tried to trace the heads of local expenditure which have most 

 developed since 1808, and I have endeavoured to give in some sort a rough and, I 

 fear in many points, a rather crude sketch of the distribution of certain important 

 heads of local outlay at the present time, a sketch which tended to impress me 

 with the value of keeping distinct the twofold functions of local authorities — that 

 of the agents of the State carrying out in local limits national duties affecting the 

 common weal, and that of undertaking the regulation and execution of purely local 

 enterprises of special benefit to particular communities. 



" Lastly, I have glanced very briefly at the medley of governing bodies, areas, 

 and officers which go to make up our system of local administration. And here I 

 would ask the most earnest consideration for the possibility of reducing the cost of 

 local government by greatly simplifying its machinery, by devolving on district and 

 on county authorities, as circumstances prescribe, the several local functions which 

 have to be carried on. Adopting as the unit some such area as the union, and 

 bringing that area into harmony with county boundaries, it would present a district 

 within which it would be perfectly competent to transact all highway, sanitary, and 

 poor-kw work, embracing such special local needs as are now discharged in lesser 

 areas by minor bodies, such as lighting and burial boards. 



" These districts, apart fronvthe separate organization of the larger municipalities, 

 might then be drawn together for common action, within their coimty limits, by a 

 strong representative provincial authority, charged, as it might most economically 

 be, with all work not necessarily magisterial, and therefore retained in the hands of 

 officers of the Crown." 



After thus briefly quoting his tersely expressed conclusions, I will proceed to 

 enforce with some observations of my own his last, relating to the chaotic state of 

 local administration in England, to which for years I have frequently endeavoured 

 to call public attention in Parliament and elsewhere. 



The confusion of administrative areas, and, till quite lately, in several cases of 

 duties also, of the different administrative bodies for different purposes is quite 

 marvellous, with the natural consequence of much needless waste of time, trouble, 

 and money. The boundaries cross each other in all directions — the boundaries of 

 counties and unions, the boundaries of unions and highway districts, the boundaries 

 of unions and magisterial divisions. Neither the municipal boundaries nor those of 

 local boards under the Public Health Act are always conterminous with those of 

 parishes ; nor even without exception are the boundaries of counties and parishes, 

 much less those of the drainage-areas for rating in the Pen districts under private 

 Acts. Lastly, school districts have introduced (I think needlessly) afresh set of 

 administrative authorities and areas and of rates ; while the ecclesiastical arch- 

 deaconries and rural deaneries are independent of all civil divisions except parishes. 

 For example, one third of my deer-park with its lodge and many of my cottages 

 and some of my largest coverts, being within a municipal borough, are in a 

 different administrative area for roads and police and magisterial jurisdiction and 

 for education, and were two years ago in a different rural deaneiy, from the 

 rest of my deer-park and my house, though in the same area for poor relief . 



Captain Craigie shows in a Table that the number of separate local authorities 

 whose accounts are abstracted in the returns, to which he has referred in his 

 paper, are more than 12,000, and that the number of persons returned in the 

 census of 1871 as officers in the employ of the Local Government of the country 

 was alone 50,000, with salaries which, after careful inquiry, he puts at nearly two 

 millions and a half. As I had contrasted, in 1852, in my published letter to the 

 electors of Plymouth, so Captain Craigie now contrasts the high salaries of some 

 of the municipal officials with the comparatively small ones paid to officers of the 

 Imperial Government. The Town Clerks of Manchester and Liverpool, for 

 instance, he says, now receive much larger salaries than the President of the 

 Council or the Local Government Board, or the Secretaries of the Treasury or the 

 Admiralty. He shows that the debt of local authorities in 1875 was already over 



