THE MUNICIPAL DEBT OF ENGLAND
ADEBT of £100,000,000—one seventh of the National Debt, an annual expenditure of £26,000,000—one third of the national expenditure—liabilities increasing at the rate of £5,000,000 yearly, involving an additional yearly charge to the ratepayer of £300,000, and all these sums raised for purposes as to which few of us have any knowledge, and spent in ways upon which few of us attempt to exercise any check,—this is the de- scription of the local taxation of England. Seemingly, it is a de- scription which disturbs nobody, and irritates nobody. English- men rave about the inequalities of the Income-tax,and a Govern- ment which added a penny to the present charge would have to make out a thoroughly good case for doing so, or incur a dangerous unpopularity. But in local matters fresh rates are put on, and no one cares anything about it. Rates are somehow ranked with rent in the mind of the householder, and to object to either would be regarded by a good number of people as committing the objector to a modified kind of Socialism. Every landlord has a right to ask what he likes for his house, and the tenant seems to have no notion that he has any more right to resist a rise in the rates than he has to resist a rise in his rent. If he does not like the rent or the rates, if, that is to say, he thinks that his house costs him too much, he is at liberty to leave it, or if he has a lease, to dispose of it. That the rates are in the nature of taxation levied by his re- presentatives, or by those who are supposed to consult his in- terests without representing him, seldom occurs to him. He knows something probably about his Member—about the man, that is, who is to help to determine what taxes he shall pay. But he knows nothing at all about his local Member, about the maxi, that is, who is to help to determine what rates he shall pay. In many cases, indeed, he does not so much as know whether he has a local Member. He hears that the Justices have done this and the Guardians that, and the Overseers or the Vestry something else. But he is not very clear as to his relations with any one of them. He knows that at certain times of the year certain voting-papers are left in the hall, with precise instructions as to the manner in which they are to be filled up. But he is not accustomed to elections conducted in this dull and bloodless fashion, and in many cases the voting- paper is never filled up, or is filled up at random, or at the bidding of some association into the character and object of which the voter has never made any inquiry. Occasionally he allows himself to grumble at the figure to which the rates have grown, or he is even persuaded to go to a public meeting called to pass abstract resolutions in favour of economy, and to promote the interests of some particular candidate or candidates at the next local election. But before the meeting is over he has grown weary of the purposeless talk, and very often of the positive misstatements contained in the speeches, and he goes home with a fresh resolution not to waste any more time in thinking about parish matters, but to pay whatever is demanded of him, and to be thankful that it is not more.
Now what is the real mischief of this state of things ? It is the evil that attends all waste of money,—the inability to command money for things that are really necessary or useful. The ratepayer is fleeced without complaint, or at all events 'without resistance, and if either his patience or his money were absolutely inexhaustible, this might not so very much matter- But there is a limit to both, and the consequence is that as the rates are never very much beneath this level, as the load which is being heaped on the ratepayers' back usually includes the last straw but one, it is not possible to spend money and have nothing to show for it, without using up money which is wanted for expenditure which would leave some fruit behind it. We eat our cake in a form in which it produces nothing but indigestion, and then we find that we cannot have it in a form which would yield some solid nourishment. Compared with the property on which the rates are levied, £26,000,000 may seem a mere drop in the ocean ; but at all events, there is no second drop to be got. It is not so much the loans at present outstanding that excite this feeling, as those that are almost certainly in the air. The large towns whose disposition to borrow supplied Mr. Sclater Booth with some telling figures OD Monday, do know to some extent what they are about. There is a real municipal life existing in them, and though the prudence of their enterprises may be sometimes questionable, it is only questionable in the sense in which the word may be used of any other business undertaking. But it is not only the towns that will soon need money for public works. Sanitary expenditure and educational expenditure know no distinction between town and country. Every Poor- law Union has its sanitary authority, and has or will soon have its educational committee ; and no matter how sluggish and how indisposed to action these authorities may be, they will be forced to borrow money by-and-by. When the rural districts first taste the pleasure of running into debt, who shall say how long it will be before their thirst is slaked ? When once the example has been set, it will be followed fast enough by every authority that has apy power of raising money by loan. If the urban ratepayer knows little enough about the administration under which he lives, the rural ratepayer knows still less. The conflict of authorities and the over- lapping of jurisdictions is still greater than in the towns, and the principle of election is applied much less universally.
There are two reforms which are urgently needed, if this reckless expenditure is to be converted into a calculated expenditure. The first and most essential is the crea-
tion of really powerful local Legislatures. The weak- ness of local legislatures usually is that they fail to attract good men to them, and the reason of this failure is to be sought in their excessive multiplication. Local business is broken up into too many fragments. A man does not care to stand for this or that Board because the work which it would give him is too limited to be of much interest. Throw all the Boards into one, and this carelessness would in a great measure disappear. A seat on a Board charged with the administration in the last resort of the finances of a whole county, might to many men be an object of little less desire than a seat in the House of Commons itself. If, under the direction of such a Board as this, money had to be borrowed, we might have good hope that money's-worth would be got for it. If it has to be raised by guardians, or vestries, or highway boards, without consultation with or reference to each other, and with no knowledge of the wants even of the districts immediately bordering on their own, there will be no room for any such confidence. The second reform is, that while the local authorities remain as numerous and local administration as chaotic as they now are, the Local Government Board should insist on rendering to them some at least of the services which, under a better system, they would naturally render to themselves. The Department is already in possession of a large number of returns relating both to local loans and local revenues. It would not be a very difficult matter to make those returns complete, and to set out for the information of Parliament such a statement of county and borough expenditure for the year as should at all events make ratepayers thoroughly acquainted with the objects on which their money is laid out. This would be but a slight step towards the establishment of that conscious control on the part of the ratepayers which we hope to see created at some future day. But it would, at any rate, be a move in the direction of better things ; and where the evil is so great and of such long-standing, even this much is not to be despised.
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