Page:Local taxation and poor law administration in great cities.djvu/14

10 abuses which flourish under the existing system. One guardian has sent me instances of almost incredible carelessness in the collection of the rates, and the loss which has resulted has of course inflicted great and undeserved injury upon those who have honestly paid their rates. Another guardian writes to tell me of serious and numerous instances of defalcations on the part of officers employed by the guardians—defalcations which would have been impossible under a proper system of audit. From another quarter I have received a paper showing the existence of enormous discrepancies in adjacent parishes in the amounts given in the relief of the poor. In one parish, for instance, the amount given in out-door relief was 1s. 7¼d. per head per week, while in another parish close by the amount given per head per week in out-door relief was 3s. 10¾d. It must be perfectly evident that either one parish is making paupers wholesale by administering insufficient relief, or that the other parish by giving relief in an extravagant and a wasteful manner is securing the same result. Indeed, I believe that both systems of making paupers are practised in almost every parish in the kingdom. I believe that great numbers are continually added to the class of habitual paupers by not granting relief with sufficient discrimination, and above all with sufficient promptitude in times of great and exceptional distress. I believe also that great numbers are continually being made paupers by the granting of relief which ought never to have been granted at all.

And how are the rates sought to be kept down in the poorer parishes? Not merely by under-relieving the poor, but by the short-sighted policy of paying the officials so badly that it is rarely possible to obtain men of education and capacity sufficient to qualify them for the performance of the duties with which they are entrusted. Not only are half-educated and badly-trained men placed in these responsible offices, but even the governorships of work-