take a step or lift a finger without permission. Their duties are defined with irritating minuteness. They are reprimanded if some official espies an infraction of a petty rule, or if he thinks they are too generous in granting out-relief. It is far more difficult to grant an extra sixpence a week to some poor old woman than it is to lavish hundreds of pounds on new structures or new machinery. The dietary scale in the workhouse is fixed and absolute, and must not be deviated from. The ingredients of a suet-pudding or of a basin of soup or gruel, and the quantities of bread, cheese, tea, etc., are rigidly prescribed. Other Boards of Guardians must have had experiences similar to that in one large Union a few months ago. The old and infirm men asked to have their allowance of four ounces of potatoes increased, because of the difficulty in masticating solid food. The doctor recommended eight ounces, which was approved by the House Committee and by the Board. Sanction

Was sought from Whitehall, and an inspector held a solemn enquiry. After an interval of several months, leave was granted to increase the quantity to six ounces. Appointments of officers are made subject to approval, which must also be obtained for any change in salaries or pensions. No dismissal can be made without leave; and officers are encouraged to regard themselves as subject to the Local Government Board, instead of to the Guardians who appoint and pay them. In these and other similar matters the central officials show generous consideration towards local subordinates. 'A fellowfeeling makes one wondrous kind.' There occurred recently a flagrant case of dismissal for gross insubordination, neglect of duty, and defiance of reasonable orders. Pressure was brought to bear, and the Guardians had to pay a large sum as compensation for loss of office. The offender had no difficulty in obtaining another post, through influence. When an officer, however humble, resigns, even though it be to marry or to go into trade, information is requested as to character and the manner in which duties were discharged. What object is thereby attained no one can say, but it furnishes employment to a number of clerks, and helps to swell the congested archives.

This shadowy Board was designed to be a controlling Vol. 221.-No. 440.

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or restraining authority, instead of which it stimulates, and often enforces, expenditure. It is impossible to traverse the country without noticing the spacious and costly buildings that have been erected for pauper uses, and containing all the appliances of what is called 'sanitary science'-which is in perpetual flux-and the latest and most expensive machinery and fittings. No one desires that the poor, and especially the sick poor, should be neglected, but, in fact, they are treated in a manner to which they are unaccustomed, and which they do not appreciate. Speaking generally, it costs seventeen pence to disburse each shilling of indoor and outdoor relief. The officers' dietary is often on a lavish scale, and their salaries and emoluments are out of proportion to what they could earn in trade or in private employment. In addition, there are generous pensions looming in the distance, to which their own contributions are microscopic. Public attention needs to be called to the facts above recited, and especially to the extravagant outlay forced upon localities in the erection and maintenance of model workhouses and infirmaries, model schools and dwellings, model lunatic asylums and sewage works, and baths and washhouses.

Permission is also freely granted for rearing stately town halls and municipal buildings, and for large expenditure on sewers, water supply, roads and kerbings, and on other works. Formal public enquiries by Whitehall inspectors, when local authorities are seeking powers to borrow money, furnish no adequate safeguards. The result is usually a foregone conclusion, and the permission sought is rarely refused. Many districts are burdened by enormous debts, contracted for these purposes, in opposition to public sentiment, and when no necessity existed. There are fatal facilities for borrowing, but the repayment of loans, with accrued interest, during the usual term of thirty years-the lifetime of one generation-is a serious demand upon ratepayers. Archdeacon Paley used to say that cash payments for purchases were a salutary check upon the feminine imagination. Forty years ago, local debts amounted to 92,000,000l. They are now 500,000,000l., or over two-thirds of the National Debt, which, according to the latest Return, is 711,288,4217. Corporation stocks no longer command a ready sale and

high prices; and there is increasing difficulty in placing new loans, except on more onerous terms. Bankers and financiers view with concern the increase in local indebtedness. What Lord Bacon calls a solution of continuity' is never reached, because fresh obligations are perpetually incurred. No business and no household could be carried on under similar conditions without speedy insolvency.

For a lengthened period the Whitehall authorities presented the customary official non possumus to the boarding-out of pauper children. Huge barrack schools had to be erected and maintained at enormous cost at Anerley, Hanwell, Sutton, Southall, Forest Gate, Brentwood, and many other places. Some of them were closed long after their failure had been demonstrated, and were sold for other purposes, but at a heavy loss. Not until after repeated outbreaks of ophthalmia and other diseases, and not until it could no longer be denied that a pauper taint was being perpetuated, and that the expense of maintenance was excessive and indefensible, was a change of method grudgingly conceded. Even now, boarding-out is permitted only in the case of orphan and deserted children, the number being not more than 11,397 out of a total of 70,676 in workhouses and other institutions, besides 178,815 receiving out-relief, according to the last return. With regard to others chargeable to the rates, the system of cottage homes or scattered homes has been introduced to a certain extent; but another plan, far more costly, is being adopted-that of creating village communities within a ring fence, thus isolating the children, as in the older district schools. Poplar Union, in the East End of London, noted for its crushing poverty and its heavy rates, has spent 162,000l. on one of these villages at Hutton, in Essex, for 470 children. The Greenwich Union has one at Sidcup, which cost 172,000l., or 290l. per bed. The Shirley Village Home of the Bermondsey Union involved an outlay for buildings of 189,000l., for 560 children, or 3201. per head; and the weekly cost at first was 20s. 1d. per head. The Local Government Board did nothing to check the reckless extravagance shown in these instances, and in others that might be cited. In the least expensive places of the kind 13s. 1 d. per week is the cost for each

child-a sum far in excess of what thousands of struggling ratepayers are able to spend on the board, clothing, and education of their children. Apart from the intellectual, moral, and social conditions that are lacking where masses of children are congregated, whether in town schools or in country colonies, the outlay on building and maintenance cannot be justified. The average cost for boarding-out is from 147. to 167. per annum; in scattered homes it is from 25l. to 30l., in barrack schools 30l. to 401., and in village communities from 351. to 521.

The large Poor Law Unions of Croydon, Kingston and Richmond have had an experience of what Charles Dickens described in his scathing satire of the Circumlocution Office. On December 27, 1904, after two or three years of preliminary negotiations, an Order was issued constituting those Unions as a Joint Committee for dealing with epileptic and feeble-minded pauper cases within their respective areas. It was hoped that speedy and suitable provision would be made for the treatment of several hundreds of this unfortunate class in a farm colony, under scientific and kindly supervision. Enquiries were at once instituted, and, after the inspection of various sites, one was selected near Dorking, as being in every way eligible, at a moderate price. The buildings proposed to be erected were simple and inexpensive, yet adequate for the purpose. A provisional contract was entered into, and was submitted to the Local Government Board for approval, in February 1906. A long and tedious correspondence ensued. Frivolous objections and difficulties were raised, which explanations and interviews failed to remove. One pretext for delay was that a Royal Commission was then enquiring into the whole question of the care and control of the Feeble-minded, and that it would be well to wait for its Report. That document did not appear until July 1908, or more than two years after the selection and submission of the proposed site. All this time nothing could be done, beyond futile attempts to move the officials by inducing Members of Parliament to interrogate Mr Burns. The issue of the Report of the Royal Commission made no change in the attitude of stolid resistance. The next advice was to await the results of an enquiry into the whole subject of the Poor Laws, then being conducted

by another Royal Commission. Its Report appeared in February 1909; but leave continued to be withheld from the Joint Committee to carry into effect the Order of 1904, which they were anxious and prepared to do. At length, the original Order was rescinded and the Joint Board dissolved, on the pretext that the duty assigned had not been performed, thus adding insult to injury.

The narrative seems to be childish and absurd to the last degree, but it is grimly true, as the three Unions know to their cost. A change has come over the official mind since the introduction by the Home Secretary of the Mental Deficiency Bill, which follows substantially the lines laid down in the Report of the Royal Commission. For some months past the Local Government Board has been authorising and encouraging the combination of Unions to provide for the care of the numerous pauper cases of feeble-minded and defective persons of whom there are 31,824, according to a parliamentary return of July last-under the powers long possessed by Guardians, but which, for some inscrutable reasons, they were not until lately permitted to exercise. Is this sudden change of front attributable to the apprehensions of one set of officials that those of another department may win the honours of success?

Here is another typical case in which enormous expense was involved and local control repudiated. County Councils and County Borough Councils have been required of late to provide for pauper lunatics, with power to take charge of others for payment. Palatial buildings have been erected in different parts of the country, and they are wholly managed by Committees of the Councils. One of these structures, at Warlingham in Surrey, was built ten years ago and is managed by the Croydon Borough Council. The original estimate for land and buildings was 80,000l., but the actual disbursements amounted to 230,000l., or 500l. a bed. The accommodation was for 450 inmates; and additions have since been made. The responsibility for the extravagant outlay rests with the Local Government Board and the Lunacy Commissioners, but principally with the latter, for they insisted on alterations and additions, and on the place being fitted up and adorned at an expense wholly needless. The Local Government Board issued an edict