Excerpt from On the Decay of Municipal Representative Government: A Chapter of Personal ExperienceNow the question of rates is not at first sightan attractive one, particularly to a person who has unusually little talent for arith metic. But in the present day they take the place of ancient beneficence, and are administered by Town Councils instead of Church organisations. I therefore determined to attend a meeting which was being called to meet the Local Government official, in order to obtain sanction for a new loan. This was my first appearance at a Statutory meeting. To my surprise, when I took a seat at the Council Board, I found that I was the only non ofiicial ratepayer present, although the sum to be borrowed was a large one. It was stated this debt had been incurred with the unanimous assent of the ratepayers. To this statement I was com palled to make a short protest, as I had learned from inquiries that many ratepayers knew nothing about the proposed loan. I was informed that the time for objections had not arrived and the London official proceeded to inquire into various details of the way in which the six thousand guineas was to be spent, extent of grad ing, kind of concrete, 850.

When all was completely settled, I was then requested to state any objection I had to make. I spoke of the burdens of taxation on the poor, and I begged to know what was the present debt of the town. I found thatwith this new loan our municipal debt would be nearly a quarter of a million. This seemed a very large debt for a small town, where the people found a difficulty in paying their rates, and as a prudent housekeeper I objected to go into debt for our municipal house keeping. I was informed by the Local Government Board Inspector that That was a. Question to be settled at the polls. So of course my single protest was of no practical use. This occurred in August.

I then thought that, as the November elections were approaching, it might be useful to try and get municipal questions discussed, with the candidates who were to be elected for three years to the Town Council.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.