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5.—Your Petitioners observe with satisfaction that their District is
included in the first schedule to the Bill as the area of one 01 the proposed
Borough Councils, and your Petitioners trust that your Honourable
House will retain the District in such schedule.
6.—Your Petitioners are of opinion that the proposed Boroughs
should be sufficiently large and important to induce men ot business
experience and of high standing in the locality to take part in the Local
Government of their District. The District over which your Petitioners
exercise jurisdiction is a suitable area for administrative purposes, and
it would be to the interest and advantage of the five parishes comprising
the District that the said parishes should be incorporated as a Borough
Council.
7.-—That although the area of your Petitioners' District is larger
than the District of any other local authority in the County of London,
the District includes many large commons and open spaces, and it
cannot therefore ever become so densely populated as the more central
Districts.
8.—That your Petitioners have carried on as one body the local
government of the District successfully since January, 1856, the documents
and accounts have been kept and the principal business transacted
at one central establishment, and any disruption of the system by
dividing the District would cause great inconvenience and confusion,
and would raise many difficulties without offering any compensating
advantage.
9.—That the area, population, and rateable value of the different
parishes in the District vary greatly. The area ranges from 566 acres to
2,914 acres, the population from 8,200 to 61,600, and the rateable value
from £38,513 to £458,911, and the geographical position of the
respective parishes is such that the District cannot conveniently be
divided. There are cases in which parts of a parish are more accessible
to other parts of the District than to the furthermost parts of the same
parish, owing to intervening open spaces and to railway and other means
of communication. In many cases parts of a parish have in popular
language and for postal and other purposes the same name as, and are
practically more closely connected and identified with parishes which
they adjoin than with the other part of the same parish, and a part of
one parish is situate within the boundary ot another. But the parishes,
when united as at present, form a District of suitable size and population
for administration by one body.
10.—Your Petitioners humbly suggest the following amendments
of certain provisions of the Bill, namely :—