As a remedy for this evil, Sir S. Northeote proposed
that for the future the State should ask 3i per cent., if the loan was for a short period of not exceeding 20 years,-8 per cent, for a loan which was not to be repaid under 30 years,-4 per cent. for any period. between 30 and 40 years, and 4i per cent. for any loan lent for a period of over 40 years. He also proposed that no one body should receive from the State in any one year more than 400,000. To illustrate how rapidly these loans tended to grow, he stated that it was computed that the whole building of the country under the School Board system would not need a greater advance than 24,000,000; whereas London alone had exceeded. the sum of 24,000,000 in its borrowings for this purpose. Birmingham had asked for a sum of a million and a half in one application alone ; and other towns had been ex- cited. by the example of Birmingham to compete with it in this respect. He had intended to propose a prohibition against repaying loans running for more than twenty years by means of annuities, but this proposal he dropped for the present. The Irish Land Act was to be exempted from the operation of the Bill. Mr. Chamberlain objeoted to the Bill that it was brought in when it was impossible for Members to discuss it properly, though the number of Acts whose future operation would be affected. by it was eighteen in England and forty-nine in Ireland, many of them being Consolidation Acts, so that the interests interfered with were much more numerous than the mere numbers seemed to imply. In the end, and after a very long discussion, the Chancellor of the Ex- chequer agreed. to give the Treasury a discretion as to the rates that should be charged, the object being to lend on easier terms to bodies which could be trusted not to falsify expectations. A clause was also added empowering the Commissioners to lend on easier terms to the Peabody trustees and societies established for improving the dwellings of the working-class,—and so, at last, the Bill passed through Committee, at five minutes past six on Tuesday morning, after a sitting of fourteen hours.
Previous page
