" THE DEVELOPMENT OF LOCAL GOVERNMENT " [To the Editor
of the SPECTATOR.] Sin,--I write to protest against the outrageous unfairness of the review of my book The Development of Local Government appearing in your last week's issue. _" Mr. Robson is afervent admirer of our present system of local government," your reviewer declares. Actually my book is a devastating criticism of the English municipal system as it exists at present. Your reviewer clearly knows nothing about the subject ; but if he had taken the trouble merely to open the list of contents in my book, he would have seen that the first one hundred and twenty-four pages of Part I are devoted entirely to a critical survey of the structure of Local Govern- ment ; and in the subsequent parts at least half the discussion is critical. The remaining portions of the book are occupied with a large number of elaborate proposals for reform : the reform of the structure and the functions, of the municipal civil service, of public health administration, and many other things. Your reviewer observes, " It may be questioned whether the new industrial revolution which is certainly upon us is not raising problems so complex as to put a tax on our present local government system so severe that it cannot meet it without- drastic reform. Probably Mr. Robson would agree to this himself." !! (My italics and exclamation remarks.) I am left speechless by this incredible misrepresentation of what you call my "authoritative book " and regret that it should ever have disgraced the pages of the Spectator.—I [Our reviewer writes :—" I undoubtedly called him an admirer of our system of Local Government ; but what I quite clearly meant was that he is in favour of the principle of elected local government as against a centralized system, in which the central authority appoints local author. ities under it. I never for a moment suggested that he was opposed to reforms of local government within the present system. Indeed, as he says, I suggested that this was so. His book appears to me a good one. It could hardly be anything else considering Mr. Robson's knowledge of the subject. As one, however, who has seen British local govern. ment at work in practice, I cannot regard the question of whether the whole system will stand the tests which are going to be placed upon it in the coming years, as a closed one." —En. Spectator.]
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