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8
And being more than one-third of the whole of the expenditure of
the Board.

The precept for the year 1876-7 amounts to £6,417 3s. 6d.,
nearly a fifth part of the annual expenditure of this Board.
The amounts paid by this District to the London School Board
since it was constituted are as follow:—
Year. Amount.
£ s. d.
1871 719 11 9
1872 1,208 8 10
1873 939 15 11
1874 2,348 5 1
1875 3,953 0 2
The precept for the present year amounts to £5,744 7s. ad., being
a rate exceeding 4d. in the £.
Notwithstanding the many remonstrances against the lavish expenditure
of the School Board since the year 1873, and the extreme
dissatisfaction expressed by the Ratepayers in all parts of the Metropolis,
and the Deputations to the Council on Education, the London
School Board continued not only to pursue a like course of extravagance,
but to increase it, and by the Report of its Statistical
Committee, it appears that at the end of its financial year, it had
• not only spent the enormous sum of £263,713 lis. 5d., for which
precepts had been issued in the past year, but there was an excess
expenditure of no less a sum than £69,245 15s. 5d., and without
any hesitation precepts were issued to the several Vestries and
District Boards of the Metropolis for payment, not only of the last
mentioned sum, but of further sums required, amounting in the
whole to £398,867. A great outcry in the Metropolis followed, and
amongst other authorities that of the Westminster District Board
of Works immediately proceeded to pass strong resolutions condemning
these proceedings, and to convene a Meeting of all the
Metropolitan Vestries and District Boards, of which twenty-five of