Page:On an annual census.djvu/8

6 as may be ascertained as to the causes of death by a competent health officer, as proposed in my Report on Interments, of 1843, it is seriously defective as to the registration of causes, and, as was proved, let pass frequent cases of murder. A stocktaking of the population on the conditions of the separate classes, and of their approximate treatment, would present a subject of great interest to the ratepayers, as well as serve as a guidance to local administrators. Each locality would totalise its own report of the annual stock-taking, and send it to the Central Department, by which the whole of the local totals would be totalised; and the general result would be presented to the Government and the public in a few days.

Giving due precedence to our chief subject, the economy of the public life and force, there would follow next another chapter on the pressure of destitution and of the means taken for its relief—a Report by the Chief Poor-law District Inspector. I might state the fact that the cost of the service of some ten thousand paid officers, with all their defaults of organization, is at least three millions less now than the expenditure under the unpaid parochial officers, and that, on a full return to the principles we first laid down, a reduction of the present expenditure by one-half obtained. Our first principles of amendment set forth were, that the functions left to the unpaid the irresponsible, and the partially informed, should be supervisory only, like those of Visiting Justices to prisons, and that the real responsibility should be left to highly qualified and skilled paid officers, as has been done voluntarily in the districts of Whitechapel and St. George's-in-the-East, in the Metropolis, Manchester, Cambridge, and St. Neots, which should effect a saving of half the present outlay, and improve the quality of the administrations in. humanity and efficiency. In the most pauperised districts of the South, wages have been advanced by one-third, and by the improved labour, an equivalent advance was soon effected in the value of landed property. Another chapter would follow in a report by the chief local officer, whether of an imperial or local police force, showing the state of crime and the means of its repression. In this it might be shown, as respects the rural districts, that the cost of the police