Mr. Goachen on Friday se'nnight moved for a Select Committee
to inquire into the incidence of rating in a speech full of facts and ideas, but, of course, wanting in the " broad policy " for which some members wished, and which must follow, not precede, the full inquiry. The leading notion in his mind apparently is that all rates now paid by the occupier should be divided between occupier and owner, and the latter, therefore, be specially repre- sented in the spending Boards. He stated that the total amount of rates colleetei in the United Kingdom probably approached thirty millions, an astounding sum, equal to nearly half the whole Imperial taxation, and to the entire cost of the Imperial Government, apart from the dead-weight. Our own im- pression is, that the Committee will find it expedient to go much further than the official proposal, and the whole matter is mixed up with a much bigger one. Why have we so many spending committees, boards of guardians, school boards, vestries, and what not, instead of a communal council of two Houses, one elected by ratepayers and one by proprietors, the Union area to be the communal district ? We are always chattering about our municipal institutions, and we have not a single municipality out- side the towns, and inside them we bind them down with endless laws, instead of simply providing that they may do anything not forbidden by the law of the land or vetoed by the Secretary of State.
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