The County Government Bill may be considered doomed. The Liberals
scorned it, Mr. Whitbread ridiculed it, and now Mr. C. S. Read, speaking at Norwich, says the more he has looked at it, the less he likes it. "It would unsettle everything and settle nothing, and disappoint every section of the com- munity." He would rather, if no better Bill could be had, allow all Bills to drop, and popularise Quarter-Sessions by the admis- sion of a certain number of ratepayers' representatives. The present Bill would create two sets of authorities in the county, with double expenses, which was just what they did not want. The new County Board would have little more to do than raise money for Quarter-Sessions to expend, their only remaining duties being to work the unworkable Highway Act, control pauper lunatics, and appear to revise valuations, all real power in that respect belonging to the surveyor of taxes. With the politicians and the practical men both against him, poor Mr. Sclater-Booth, who might draw a working Bill if he were let alone, must be in a melancholy mood. It is hard work to bring forward Bills neither adapted nor intended to pass.
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