Page:Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham.djvu/147

Rh obtain help for that purpose from the "Dudley Trust."—See "Philanthropical Trusts."

Loans, Public.—England, with its National Debt of £776,000,000, is about the richest country in the. world, and if the amount of indebtedness is the sign of prosperity, Birmingham must be tolerably well off. Up to the end of 1882 our little loan account stood thus:—

Acts of Parliament passed in connection with this town to fill a law library of considerable size. Statutes, clauses, sections, and orders have followed in rapid succession for the last generation or two. Our forefathers were satisfied and gratified if they got a regal of parliamentary notice of this kind once in a century, but no sooner did the inhabitants find themselves under a "properly-constituted " body of "head men," than the lawyers' game began. First a law must be got to make a street, another to light it, a third to pave it, and then one to keep it clean. It is a narrow street, and an Act must be obtained to widen it; when widened some wiseacre thinks a market should be held in it, and a law is got for that, and for gathering tolls; after a bit, another is required to remove the market, and then the street must be "improved," and somebody receives more pounds per yard than he gave pence for the bit of ground wanted to round off the corners; and so the Birmingham world wagged on until the town became a big town, and could afford to have a big Town Hall when other big towns couldn't, and a covered Market Hall and a Smithfield of good size, while other places dwelt under bare skies. The Act by which the authority of the Street Commissioners and Highway Surveyors was transferred to the Corporation was passed in 1851; the expenses of obtaining it reaching nearly £9,000. It took effect on New Year's Day following, and the Commissioners were no longer "one of the powers that be," but some of the Commissioners' bonds are effective still. Since that date there have been twenty head statutes and orders relating to the borough of Birmingham, from the Birmingham Improvement Act, 1851, to the Provisional Order Confirmation Act, passed in 1882, the twenty containing a thousand or more sections. All this, however, has recently been altered, the powers that are now having (through the Town Clerk, Mr. Orford Smith) rolled all the old Acts into one,