Such rates, being small in amount, they are levied at long intervals, for the collection at once of a sum sufficient to defray the expense of collection; and because they are collected at long intervals, the irritation and resistance and trouble is great, and an additional sum is paid by the public for the collector’s share of the trouble of the collection. For the collection of the assessed taxes 3d. in the pound is paid; for the collection of the sewers’ rates from 6d. to 1s. in the pound is usually paid. I venture to state, that by a consolidation of the collection of such charges, enough may be saved of money (independently of the saving of oppression and irritation) from the collection of the one local tax, the sewers’ rate, to pay the expense of the services of scientific officers throughout the country. At present the high constable collects the county rate from every parish, and carries it to the county treasurer, in the county town, and charges for the expense of a journey. By an easy alteration, by payment by cheques from the union treasurer to the county treasurer, in one county (Kent) 1000l. per annum might be saved, or enough to defray the immediate expense of constructing permanent drains for upwards of 500 tenements. What might be gained on this head for immediate expenditure, in most towns, will be shown in the following extract, from the evidence of Mr. Simkiss, the auditor of the Wolverhampton union:—
What are the amounts of the chief local rates collected, in round numbers?—The poor’s rates are about 4000l., the highway rates about 2000l., and there are rates levied by commissioners under a local Act for lighting, watching, and improving the town, amounting to about 3000l. in round numbers.
On his admission of the practicability of combining with advantage the superintendence of all this expenditure by one Board in such a town, a combination of which there are several examples, he observes:—
The greatest public advantage in having those duties united would be the collection of the whole of the rates in one sum by the same individual, and payment afterwards to the several purposes.
What are the present disadvantages of a separate collection of these rates?—First, that there are three collectors to pay instead of one. 1s. in the pound is paid to the collector of the highway rates, which is supposed to produce 100l. per annum. The collector of the poor’s rates is paid by a fixed salary of 150l. per annum. The collector of the commissioners’ rates is paid 8d. in the pound, and he gets upwards of 100l. per annum. If the collection of the rates were consolidated, they might be collected for 200l. per annum, and upwards of 150l. per annum might be saved in salaries alone; but a much larger sum might be saved by a more efficient collection of the smaller rates. The surveyor’s rates and the commissioners’ rates not being sufficient to occupy the whole time of separate individuals, they attend to other things, and consequently much money is lost by the delay in the operation. Parties remove, or die, or leave the town. Three times the amount has been lost in Wolverhampton on the collection of the highway rate as compared with the poor’s rates. The highway rate and the commissioners’ rates, each being made for twelve months, the collectors usually collect from the large rate payers first; considerable time elapses before the smaller payers are called upon, consequently much is lost by the delay. I have known it that the highway rate has not been demanded in some parts of the town for seven or eight months after it has been granted. The surveyors of highways, and the commissioners of improvements, not taking so much care in obtaining securities for the smaller rates, run greater risks of defalcation. I do not advert to the collectors of the smaller rates in our town, but the collectors of the smaller rates, being tradesmen, usually use the public money in their trades, and there is frequently much peculation. The accounts of the collection and expenditure of the smaller rates are generally badly kept.
What I have already submitted will, I hope, suffice to sustain the recommendation, that at the least nothing should be done to aggravate the existing state of complication and waste, by new divisions of service and the unnecessary additions of new and unqualified officers, and that everything should be done to guard against the continued reproduction of the evils in question in districts where there is clear ground. It would, I apprehend, be practicable in the old districts to superadd the appointments of officers, with proper qualifications, without any diminution of the emoluments of the existing paid officers or any material disturbance of them.
When the great importance of the general land drainage to the health of those who labour upon it and to their most productive employment is fully considered, it will, I conceive, be found entitled to all collateral aid, to which an additional title would be conferred by equal contribution of the owners and occupiers to the expenses of public drainage. If officers of proper qualifications and responsibilities were appointed, the works for sewerage branching from the towns, and the road drainage, could not fail to aid, as indeed I conceive it should be directed to aid, the private land drainage. The same surface levels and sewerage, if made on the scale proposed by the Poor Law and Tithe Commissioners (namely, of three chains to an inch) would serve for all civil purposes, whether of towns or general land drainage, or road drainage, for determining the descent of streams, for the application of the water of which it is desirable to rid the upland wastes, and would frequently be most beneficially applied for the use of the towns, and for the use of the poorer districts.
The appointment of persons having the scientific qualifications and position of civil engineers might serve to supply a want which is generally found to be the chief impediment to the drainage of land subdivided amongst numerous small holders, namely, the means of reference or appeal to some authority deriving confidence from skill and impartiality to determine on the need of works, and the mode of executing them, or to arbitrate; and on the compensation due from damage arising from them. Given such an authority, and in those small, but, from their great number, most important cases, where the expense of an application to Parliament is out of the question, it might, be safe to say, by a general provision, that the inhabitants of a town may procure springs of water, and make, deepen, and scour drains through the circumjacent district; that regulations may be made for arching over or covering the sewers to proper distances from the towns; for the purchase of ground, and for the erection of works for rendering the refuse of the towns available for agricultural purposes: power might also be given to lay pipes in the highways, to put plugs for the supplies of water against fires, and for watering the roads.
On referring to the experience of the efforts made in Ireland for the drainage and reclaiming of bog lands, by which large tracts would be obtained, it appears that the working of legislative measures for those purposes have extensively failed, because the landowners had not sufficient security that the work would be properly planned and executed.[[46]]
I would here beg leave to guard myself from an apparent inconsistency. In 1838, I was examined before a committee of the House of Commons on their resolution, “That it is expedient that the parishes, townships, and extra-parochial places should be united in districts for the repair of the highways throughout England and Wales.” On that occasion I adverted to the evil of the unnecessary multiplication of new establishments as well as new officers, to their inevitable inefficiency and to the expense and obstruction to improvement which they created; and I submitted these, amongst other grounds, for proposing that the new duties should devolve on the boards of guardians of the new unions, as such duties had been in various instances combined under local Acts. The committee recommended the proposal for adoption. On the premises then placed before me, as to the expediency of establishing a new administrative body with new clerks and officers for the collection and management of the fund for repairs of the highways alone, and in small districts for which even the areas of unions were thought large, I should still adhere to the same conclusion.[[47]]