Page:Local taxation and poor law administration in great cities.djvu/21

17 local authorities, cannot coerce, and the managers of schools are quite as jealous, if possible even more jealous, of the interference of a central authority than are our Boards of Guardians. Religious and personal feelings enter more into Educational than into Poor Law matters, and the funds of school managers are their own or their own raising. Yet the Inspector is voluntarily invited and readily listened to as a counsellor and friend. I believe that a similar power should be entrusted to the Poor Law Board. Let the Board be made the medium of grants, conditional on efficiency, the grants to be made from national sources, and relieve the local ratepayer from some of the taxation we are heaping on his devoted head. It is just such grants should be given, first, because in that way income other than that derived from or expended on rental would bear its share; secondly, because the grants being conditional on efficiency, well-managed parishes would receive from other than local sources compensation for expenditure entailed by other than local pauperism. It would place the Poor Law Board in more