supported by a blend of subscriptions, fees and, in some cases, endowments. Like schools, they are becoming unable, in consequence of rise in costs and advance of medical science and popular requirements, to stand without support from taxes, and recently, in the grant of £500,000 for distribution among necessitous hospitals, we have seen the beginning of the end. In the long run aid from taxes kills voluntary support and the taxpayer is left to bear the whole burden, while the bureaucracy is swelled. If this aid cannot be avoided it is to be hoped that the dual system, at least, will not be adopted in the case of hospitals. They should be financed, if they have to be, exclusively by local authorities.

In former days, when functions and finance were clearly divided, and hardly any central control was exercised over local authorities within the sphere of their own affairs, there was certainly more reason for such control, since the constitution of the local authorities left almost everything to be desired. But now every local authority with rating powers rests upon election by the same men and women who elect members of Parliament. In the case of all the larger authorities their officials are no longer part-time solicitors or men of small education and standing, but of quite as good quality as civil servants in the national service, and as well paid. Among the members of the Council of a great city or a county who give unpaid service, and often a great deal of it, to the local administration, you will usually find, as chairmen of the council and the committees, men not less capable and intelligent than our highly-paid national ministers. Without the reward of salary or much remuneration in the form of vain-glory, this country obtains the most admirable services from men who are actuated by nothing but a sense of duty and local patriotism. There is, however, for economic reasons, some difficulty now in keeping up the succession of these, especially in rural counties where land-owners of the old breed have been forced by taxation to sell, or let, or close their houses, or to spend their time in trying to earn income upon which to live, at home or abroad. If the centralising process is pursued much further the local government will lose in attraction for men who like to do responsible work for nothing but its own sake. If final control and responsibility in every department is made to rest in Whitehall, it will seem hardly worth while to be on county or city councils at much expense of time, and some of one's private money.

This is a view now increasing, especially among members of rural county councils, who do not attend without some inconvenience and expense. They feel that more and more the Minister in London is the deity who disposes of all thingswhatever they may propose. Just as Henry VIII carried out his despotic will while maintaining the outward semblance of action by Parliament, just as Augustus Cæsar, while maintaining old forms, transferred to himself the substance of power; so, by its financial hold the modern central government carries out its will while maintaining the outward appearance of self-government in the cities and counties. The appearance remains and deludes the public while it is being subtly emptied of its real contents. The same process goes on in the relations of the executive and Parliament. Practical legislation in all its details is gradually transferred to the offices, working through codes and regulations made under Acts which they themselves scheme and draft.

As yet, however, the composition of the councils and official staffs in the greater cities and the rural counties is still sound and good, and there seems to be no reason why they should not be entrusted with far larger final responsibilities. London—that is administrative London, which is much smaller than real Londonhas a county council resting upon the foundation of election by virtually universal suffrage of men and women of a population of nearly five millions. The members of the council are mostly sensible and business-like persons, well knowing London and its affairs. Why, in the name of all that is rational, should this London government, to take the instance already quoted, have to ask leave from officials in Whitehall to build a baker's shop on a housing estate, or to build a new wing to a school? Why can they not subvention a theatre, or lay down a tramway, or buy suburban land to meet future undefined needs, without the expense of obtaining special power from Parliament ? Why should a host of national officials be maintained to check or sanction the decisions of councils chosen by, and responsible to, their local electorates? The check or sanction should rest with those electorates. They can, and do turn out their representatives and replace them by new ones if they disapprove either of their parsimony or their extravagance, of their moving too slowly or moving too fast.

We are, then, in this position. In former days the local

authorities were weak in personnel and machinery, and altogether or mainly unrepresentative, and yet managed their own affairs almost entirely without control or interference from the centre. Now the local authorities are subject to triennial elections and are fully representative of their populations, and, in the case of all the larger ones, are well manned and expensively staffed, and yet on many sides are increasingly subject to central interference and control. According to reason one would have expected the opposite result. In early days the British Colonies were a good deal controlled and interfered with by Downing Street officials. But as the colonies expanded in population and production of native statesmen and officials they were given self-government, complete in some cases, and sufficient in others. One result of this is that the Colonial Office in London, the central bureau of the whole British Empire, except India, is run at less cost than the English Board of Education, or the Labour Ministry, or the Ministry of Health.

This is not, of course, a comparison which could be pushed far, but it is an analogy which serves to show that as local authorities advance in representative character and intelligence they should be entrusted with more, and not with less, final and undivided control over their own affairs. Counties and cities must carry out the laws enacted by Parliament, e.g., in education, that children must attend school up to a certain age, and must not before that age be employed in money-making occupations. In a law-abiding country like England, with the fear of constituents before their eyes, local authorities can be trusted to see to the execution of all laws except those which are contrary to common sense and general or permanent feeling, and had better die a natural death. All details should be left to the local authorities, for final decision, and they should be given power by a general constitution to do anything which is limited to their own areas without obtaining special power from Parliament, or being surcharged,' as now, for going beyond existing powers.

The German cities, little republics in their own sphere of action, have always had this general power, and have used it for admirable purposes. They also have very free powers to raise largely varied taxation. Their system is infinitely less centralised than ours, contrary to the complacent opinions which we have always entertained as to German centralised autocracy

and English local liberty. In Germany the city can do anything which it is not expressly forbidden to do. In England and America it can only do what it is expressly authorised to do. In England, owing to the financial system, it can in many cases only do even that which it has power to do after obtaining the consent of the State officials in almost every detail. In Germany government is decentralised; in France it is highly centralised under Ministers and Prefects, aided by advisory councils; in England it is a confused and expensive blend of the two systems, having the merits of neither. But the German system is more akin than the French to the original character and to the history of the English race.

If to return to the leading instance of education-a decentralising process were carried out, the staff and cost of the Board of Education might be reduced to small dimensions. Its functions would then be those of compiling statistics, collecting and distributing information, holding conferences, arbitrating in questions between different local authorities and advising Government as to legislation. It would have nothing to do with distributing money or inspecting schools. And so with other departments. The National Government would attend to its proper business, defence, foreign and imperial policy, interests of trade, and maintenance of order and law. Its proper business is all that, and only that, which cannot be carried out by local authorities.

If work is to be decentralised and final responsibility in all cases within their allotted sphere of action is to be restored to provincial or local authorities, it will be necessary also to decentralise finance, and to give to them an adequate share in the proceeds of national taxation, not, as now, by way of grants through the mediation of controlling central departments, but drawn from the source. The tax called' the rates' which almost alone, in this kind, the local authorities possess, is quite unequal to present expenditure, is often unjust in its incidence as between rate-payers, and ought in most places to be reduced, not increased. It is not quite, though very nearly, their only immediate revenue. In 1888 Mr. Goschen, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, had the idea of giving additional sources of revenue to the local authorities, and, as a beginning, endowed them with a share in whiskey 'money' and 'probate duties.' This beginning was also the

end of that experiment, except for some local licence duties, guns, dogs, arms, etc., which cost almost as much to collect as they produce, and were therefore gladly left by the Treasury to the local authorities.

If administrative and financial decentralisation were carried out on the large scale, and the grant-in-aid system altogether abolished, there are two ways in which the revenue of the local authorities could be adjusted to their expenditure. One is by the clean transfer of certain functions from the local authorities to the national government. The most obvious of these is the construction and maintenance of the great trunk roads, les routes nationales, as the French say. This is clearly the just thing, in any case, since the revolution in transport has made these roads cease to be the almost purely local utilities that they were between the completion of the railway system and the beginning of the Motor Age. Instead of the mixed system of national and local control and cost which is beginning to grow up, these roads should be made entirely national affairs, the minor roads being left to county authorities. The other way of adjustment of revenue to expenditure is to give to the local authorities the revenue directly arising, so to speak, from the property in each locality. Under this head fall Schedules A and B of the Income Tax, House Duty, Land Tax, Trade Licences, Entertainment Taxes. The rest of the Income Tax, Death Duties, Customs and Excise would belong to the national revenue, which would no longer have to meet grants to local authorities. The local authorities might also receive power to levy some other local revenue, as, e.g., from fixed advertisements. The transfer of Schedules A and B Income Tax would bring this incidental advantage, that the assessment of the same property for these taxes and for rates, and the collection, would be in the same hands, so that the whole process, now so complicated and maddening, would be simplified, while the process would be cheapened, two sets of officials being no longer employed over the same work. These present central and local taxes upon owners or occupiers of the soil and buildings as such, these Land Taxes, House Taxes, Schedules A and B, and Rates, should form the main local revenue. They would still be fixed and levied by Parliament, except Rates which would be fixed and levied by the local authorities, so as to give the necessary flexibility to their income.