THE RADICAL PLAN FOR PARISH COUNCILS.
" THE Parish Councils Bill" is a moderate one, in spite of the fact that the names of Mr. Cobb and Mr. Halley Stewart appear upon the back. Whether this is due to the fact that Mr. Arthur Acland, who not only knows the country, but knows, what is quite as important, the historical process by which English social institutions have been evolved, was among those who prepared and brought in the measure, we cannot discuss on the present occasion. All we desire to point out is the fact that the new Bill is by no means so wildly impossible as some of the measures which, inspired from similar sources, have been introduced into the present Parliament. No doubt the framers of the Bill have entirely failed to meet the most im- portant of the difficulties of the case with which they have to deal ; and no doubt their measure shows evident signs of being the product of a sort of " common tub " to which every village Sieyes was encouraged to bring his special fad, in order that it might be fitted with a clause or a sub-section. No doubt, too, there is visible that fine reck- lessness which often characterises the Gladstonian private Member's attempts at legislation, and not infrequently shows itself in an inferential repeal of the essential parts of Magna Charta, or the Bill of Rights. Still, in spite of all these drawbacks, the measure exhibits in parts a certain rough reasonableness not usually to be met with in the work of those whose main principle in rural legislation seems to be that the ownership of land in blocks of over a hundred acres is prima. facieevidence of bloodguiltiness and immorality in the past, and of a desire in the present to grind the faces of the poor' and to ' spend the fruits of their toil in luxury.'
Before noticing in detail the clauses of the new Bill, we must be careful to state that, in our opinion, the endow- ment of the country parishes with a conscious social existence is in the abstract to be very strongly desired. English rural life suffers much from having nothing resembling the Gemeinde of Switzerland or the Town Meeting of New England. Were it possible to introduce among us, or rather to reintroduce, the American system in its entirety, we should be the first to urge that course. Unfortunately, however, the organisation of the American township or civil parish, is based upon a system of land-tenure which does not now exist in England. It is one thing to confer large powers of rating upon a body which, if it taxes, taxes itself. It is quite another to give them to one which, when it levies contributions, levies them not on itself, but on somebody else. This is the fundamental difficulty encountered in all attempts to re- organise the English Vestry, and to endow it with adequate powers. If it is to be worth anything, it must consist of all the householders of the parish, irrespective of whether they pay or do not pay their own rates, and must be armed with full rating ability. But as things are at present constituted, the establishment of such a Parochial constitution would mean that those who spend the rates shall not be those who pay them. Let us illus- trate the unfairness of this arrangement by a specific case such as might easily arise if the Bill we are describing were to become law. Under this measure the Vestry is to elect a Council which is to become a Corpora- tion able to hold lands, to sue and be sued, and to levy rates for all manner of purposes. Among other duties conferred upon this body is the prevention of " the closure or obstruction of any public, or reputed public, footpaths within the parish." No doubt, at first sight, this sounds a most excellent provision ; but we must remember that to make its powers effectual, the parish will have to levy a rate. Now, suppose that in one of the parishes, of which there are hundreds in England, that are owned entirely, or practically entirely, by one man, the inhabitants, as often happens, get it into their heads that some footpath which has never been really dedicated to the public, but along which they have been allowed to walk, is a right-of-way. To acknowledge the claim may cause a serious loss to the landlord who wants to build or sell a particular piece of land, and accordingly he must dispute the contention of the parish. Expensive litigation follows—there is none more costly than that connected with footpaths—and with this strange result : whatever happens, the landlord must lose. The majority of the inhabitants of the parish would be sure not to be ratepayers, and they would, therefore, have the satisfaction of knowing that even if they were beaten in the Courts, the whole of the expenses would come out of the landlord's land. The plaintiff, in fact, would be able to go to law at the defendant's expense. No doubt a portion —perhaps the greater part—of the rates would be nominally paid by the occupiers ; but this will not prevent the real loss falling on the owner. Farmers in these days have the whip-hand of the landlord, and we may be pretty sure that a footpath-rate would be made a claim for a pro tanto reduction of rent which could not possibly be gain- said by any landlord who did not want to run the risk of having his farms on his hands. In the same way, every other financial indiscretion of the Parish Council must ultimately fall, not on those responsible for voting unsound allotment schemes or permitting wholesale jobbery, but upon the unfortunate owner. How to protect the land- lord is, then, the crux of the whole question, and unless and until we can discover some form of local taxation other than rating, or can get the land into a greater number of hands, it will be most unfair not to recognise the defencelessness of the owner's position. To state this is no doubt to give only one more illustration of the social dangers and inconveniences which arise •from the concen- tration of landed property ; but this fact cannot alter the difficulty of dealing with the parishes in the manner pro- posed by Mr. Cobb and his friends. The best way of diffusing the ownership of land is not to make its possession an almost intolerable burden.
Shortly, what the Bill we are discussing desires to do is to make the present Vestries meetings of all the house- holders in the parish (villages of less than two hundred inhabitants being thrown into those adjacent to them), and to empower these " motes" to elect Councils of between five and nine persons who shall retire every three years. Both the Vestries and the Councils are to be corporations empowered to hold land, and to sue and be sued. Further, the Parish Council, the body which is to wield the chief powers of the Act, is to elect a chairman who is to be called the Mayor, and to remain in office during three years. So far there is doubtless little to object to. The incorporation of the village is a distinct advantage, for it will enable the community to receive donations in a manner far easier than now. At present, if any one desires to present, say, a reading-room, a library, or a recreation-ground to the parish, he must create a set of trustees to administer the gift, and go through a number of tiresome forms in order to defeat the Mort-main Acts. The proposed pro- vision, however, would get over this difficulty, and would ensure that the inhabitants of the parish should have the management of the benefaction in perpetuity. Again, the three years' term and the arrangement for the appoint- ment of a village head-man are good, though we rather dislike the name Mayor. Mayor is too suggestive of the foreign municipal institutions which, though they were doubtless copied in England in early times, have nothing to do with our rural society. If Town-Reeve, or simply Reeve would be considered too archaic, Warden might be a possible alternative. But though we have no objection to the general construction of the Parish Council, there is one provision as to its election which appears to us exceedingly unfair. The Bill provides that " any rate- payer or elector of more than one parish shall vote in one parish only, to be selected by himself." Surely this is absurd. A landlord owning property and paying rates in several parishes, or an occupier also paying rates in more than one parish, ought not on that ground to have the right of choosing the people who are to tax him taken away from him. It may be right that no man should have more than one vote for each Council, but considering that they are bodies with entirely separate spheres of action, the restriction in the present case is un- fair and unnecessary. Another objectionable clause of the new Bill is that which proposes to enact that the Parish Mayor shall during his tenure of office be a Justice of the Peace. Doubtless we shall be told that this provision obtains in boroughs, and that therefore it cannot be challenged. We deny, however, that there is any analogy between towns and villages of three or four hundred in- habitants. But even though the system could be shown to work well in very small boroughs, we should not feel convinced. If anything is certain in political science, it is that nomination, not election, is the better plan for choosing judicial officers. By all means let worthy working men be appointed to the Bench, but do not let us entrust the power of trying offenders to the man who can manage to " control " a village election. In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, the plan would work well, but in the hundredth there would be a gross scandal. Imagine the local publican installed as Mayor, and the views he would be likely to take in regard to the carrying out of the Licensing Acts. The powers as to the working of the Allotment Acts pro- posed to be conferred upon the Parish Councils we shall not stop to consider, as they are really part of quite✓ another question. Subject, however, to one or two important modifications, they are not, in our opinion, objectionable. Some of the miscellaneous powers to be conferred on the Parish Councils are as follows. The Parish Council will have power to close public- houses on Sundays, Christmas Day, Good Friday, and election days. Every member of a Parish Council will become en officio a trustee of every purely parish charity, and a manager of every school in the parish which takes a Government grant. Again, the Council will have power to force the Guardians to give outdoor relief in certain cases,—dangerous when four or five farmers may be the only ratepayers,—to inspect dwelling-houses when called upon to do so by an occupier, and if it finds their condition to be insanitary, or that there is overcrowding, to report to the County Council, in order that the law may be put in motion. No doubt some of these provisions sound reasonable enough ; but as to them, and indeed, as to every clause of the Bill, we should like to hear the other side. The fixed notion that to help the rural poor you must injure the landlord, which is held by so many of the sentimentalists, makes it necessary to canvass all their schemes very closely. We desire as much as any one to see the villagers made self-governing, and to see them freed from anything approaching servile dependence on the Squire ; but we do not see that in order to accomplish this it is necessary to select the least prosperous class of the well-to-do, and to speak of them as if they were out of the pale of humanity. Even a landowner has a right to justice.
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