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39
This increase would have been greater hut for the Council
receiving £200,000 a year more from the Probate Duty
and Licences than was formerly paid by way of Exchequer
contributions, and the rate would have shown a decrease,
but for the pauper-grant fund.
In some parishes, owing to the operation of the paupergrant
fund, the County Council rate shows a decrease
compared with the rates which it has replaced.
INCREASE IN RATES.
On the 10th July, a deputation of ratepayers waited upon
the Vestry with reference to the continuous increase in the
rates. The causes of this increase have on many occasions
occupied the attention of the Vestry, for it is most discouraging
to find that all the efforts which are made to
economically administer local funds are more than counterbalanced
by the growing expenditure of central bodies for
whom the Vestry are required to provide funds without
possessing any control over the expenditure thereof.
The deputation referred to the difference in the amount
of the rates in the year 1861 jus compared with the year
1890. This comparison between the present and a time
before the establishment of the School Board, the Metropolitan
Asylums Board, the formation of the Common Poor
Fund, and other legislative enactments which have proved
so costly to West-end parishes, evinced so strange a misconception
of the facts of the case as to lead the Vestry to
issue an explanatory statement, not in their own justification,
but for the information of the ratepayers. A copy
of this was sent to each ratepayer, but a reference here to
its more salient features may not be inappropriate.