370 
Isle of Wight. 
36 acting- guardians, making a board of 60 pergons, and a union 
workhouse (" house of industry ") built. The system has two 
serious defects, incidental to a first attemjit, but admitting of 
easy remedies. The board is practically self-elected, and the 
assessment has never been altered since the year 1771. This 
last grievance gives rise to loud and just complaint. Parishes 
pay in the same proportion now as they did ninety years since ; 
but meanwhile the changes in the value of property in different 
parishes have been enormous. The parish of Newchurch, for 
instance, running from sea to sea, has the new town of Ryde at 
one end of it and the new town of Ventnor at the other. The 
proportion of its payments to the common fund is the same as 
before this vast accession of rateable property. No wonder if 
agricultural parishes, whose rateable property has very slightly, if 
at all increased, call for a new assessment, with a view to a more 
equal distribution of the burden. As yet they call in vain. 
Though we, in England and Wales, have followed the Isle of 
Wight example in the relief of their poor, we have not yet (though 
the legislature has made many attempts) succeeded in bringing, 
as they have done, our highways under some system of united 
management. The local Act (53 Geo. III., c. 92,) states, in its 
preamble, that " the public roads in the Isle of Wight are in many 
parts in a very bad condition, narrow and incommodious, and in 
some places dangerous to travellers ; and that they cannot be 
widened and repaired by the laws then in being," i. e. by the old 
Highway Act of 13 of Geo. III., c. 78, and by parochial surveyors 
acting under it. The new Act consolidated the parishes and 
lodged the management in the hands of Commissioners, who are 
self elected. The island is divided into two districts — the East 
Medine and the West Medine — a general surveyor being appointed 
to each, with parochial surveyors to collect the rates, and pay the 
labourers. 
Under the chairmanship of the Hon. Dudley Pelham, the Com- 
missioners themselves repaired the roads at an annual cost of 
3500/. This system continued up to 1851, and the roads were 
in excellent order : then, however, the repairs were let by tender, 
and the contract prices for both districts were 2530/., or nearly 
1000/. less than the Commissioners had expended. In 1858 the 
contract system broke down in the West Medine district, and the 
Commissioners have been obliged again to take those roads in 
hand, and to incur heavy expenses, amounting to no less than 
2000/. in one year. Meanwhile, in the eastern district the con- 
tract system still prevails, though there are doubts whether the 
roads can be thoroughly repaired at the contract prices, after 
tlie materials of 1851 are exhausted. A uniform rate of Qd. in the 
pound realizes rather more than 3000/. : the tolls, v.'hicli are 
