Page:Local taxation and poor law administration in great cities.djvu/22

18 intimate and more cordial relations with the Boards of Guardians throughout the country, and thus make the system of management more uniform, because inspectors' reports would be far more carefully and minutely made when they had to certify as to the efficiency upon which these grants depended. Their reports would be far more carefully read, and their suggestions would be far more likely to be listened to, when these grants depended upon their being followed.

I wish to add,—and I trust to make this clear, because it is the gist of the whole proposal,—that I do not suggest that these grants should be made in any way that would relieve the local ratepayers from the consequences of waste or extravagance on the part of Boards of Guardians. If the proposal is tried at all, its scope will no doubt be confined, in the first instance, to the scope of the proposal made by the Guardians of Birmingham, Liverpool, Warrington, and Stafford. That proposal was to relieve the ratepayers from the exclusive cost of sickness, lunacy, and imbecility. And the way the plan I suggest would work would be this: The Poor Law Board would first ascertain by inspection, and by taking the population and other circumstances into account, what would be the fair amount of sickness? for instance, which ought to be provided for in each district in the country, and, having ascertained and fixed that with regard to each district, they would be authorised to grant the district a