deal with most matters affecting their common interests. It is true that London (including the City) and several large boroughs will be constituted as counties of themselves, but this is only reasonable when their extent, population, and revenue are taken into account. Although the Government in introducing the Bill did not profess to undertake more than to lay down the lines upon which a large structure might be raised, still some important clauses were either rejected or postponed for future consideration, such, for instance, as the division of the counties into urban or rural districts possessing local councils and performing the duties actually exercised by Improvement Boards, Boards of Health, &c., and the proposal to give to the County Councils the power of granting or withholding publicans' licences and of assessing the amount of licence fees, but with the proviso that where the council should deem it advisable to withdraw a licence now in force, compensation should be made to the holder. This proviso proved fatal to this portion of the Bill and the licensing clauses were abandoned for the time. However that the Act is of a very comprehensive nature, and may be expanded even without special legislation, may be gathered from Clause X., which provides :-'After the passing of this Act it shall be lawful for the Local Government Board to make from time to time a provisional order for transferring to County Councils-any such powers, duties, and liabilities of her Majesty's Privy Council, a Secretary of State, the Board of Trade, the Local Government Board, or the Education Department, or any other government department, as are conferred by or in pursuance of any statute, and appear to relate to matters arising within the county, and to be of an administrative character; also any such powers, duties, and liabilities arising within the county, of any commissioners of sewers, conservators, or other public body, corporate or unincorporate (not being the corporation of a municipal borough, or an urban or rural authority, or a school board and not being a board of guardians), as are conferred by or in pursuance of any statute. Every such provisional order shall be of no effect until it is confirmed by Parliament.

Constitution of County Council.--The council of a county and the members thereof shall be constituted and elected and conduct their proceedings in like manner, and be in the like position in all respects, as the council of a borough divided into wards, subject however to some special provisions. Thus clerks in holy orders and other ministers of religion shall be eligible as aldermen or councillors. Also a person who is a peer owning property in the county, or is registered as a parliamentary voter in respect of the ownership of property of whatsoever tenure situate in the county. The county councillors shall be elected for a term of three years, and shall then retire together, and their places shall be filled with a new

election. The divisions of the county for the purpose of the elec tion of county councillors shall be called electoral divisions, and one county councillor only shall be elected for each electoral division. The number of the county councillors and their apportionment between each of the boroughs which have sufficient population to return one councillor and the rest of the county, shall be such as the Local Government Board may determine. The persons entitled to vote at the elections of county councillors shall be, in a borough, the burgesses enrolled in pursuance of the Municipal Corporations Act, 1882, and the Acts amending the same, and elsewhere the persons registered as county electors under the County Electors Act, 1888. The aldermen shall be called county aldermen, and shall be elected by the county councillors. In the county of London the selected aldermen shall not number more than one-sixth of the council; in other counties they shall form one-fourth, and a county alderman shall not, as such, vote in the election of a county alderman. The chairman of the county council shall, by virtue of his office, be a justice of the peace for the county, but before acting as such justice he shall, if he has not already done so, take the oaths required by law to be taken by a justice of the peace other than the oath respecting the qualification by estate. The county council may appoint a member of the council to be vice-chairman, to hold office during the term of the chairman.

Powers of County Council.-There shall be transferred to the council of each county the administrative business of the justices of the county in quarter sessions assembled—that is to say, all business done by the quarter sessions or any committee appointed by the quarter sessions, in respect of the several matters following, namely, the making, assessing, and levying of county, police, hundred, and all rates, and the application and expenditure thereof, and the making of orders for the payment of sums payable out of any such rate or out of the county stock or county fund, and the preparation and revision of the basis or standard for the county rate; the borrowing of money; the passing of the accounts of and the discharge of the county treasurer; shire halls, county halls, assize courts, judges' lodgings, lock-up houses, court houses, justices' rooms, police stations, and county buildings, works, and property, subject, as to the use of buildings by the quarter sessions and the justices, to the provisions of this Act respecting the joint committee of quarter sessions and the county council; the licensing under any general Act of houses and other places for music or for dancing, and the granting of licences under the Racecourses Licensing Act, 1879; the provision, enlargement, maintenance, management, and visitation of and other dealing with asylums for pauper lunatics; the establishment and maintenance of and the contribution to reformatory and industrial

schools: bridges and roads repairable with bridges, and any powers vested by the Highways and Locomotives (Amendment) Act, 1878, in the county authority the tables of fees to be taken by and the costs to be allowed to any inspector, analyst, or person holding any office in the county other than the clerk of the peace and the clerks of the justices; the appointment, removal, and determination of salaries, of the county treasurer, the county surveyor, the public analysts, any officer under the Explosives Act, 1875, and any officers whose remuneration is paid out of the county rate. The salary of any coroner whose salary is payable out of the county rate, the fees, allowances, and disbursements allowed to be paid by any such coroner, and the division of the county into coroners' districts, and the assignment of such districts; the division of the county into polling districts for the purposes of parliamentary elections, the appointment of places of election, the places of holding courts for the revision of the lists of voters, and the costs of and other matters to be done for the registration of parliamentary voters; the execution as local authority of the Acts relating to contagious diseases of animals, to destructive insects, to fish conservancy, to wild birds, to weights and measures, and to gas meters, and of the Local Stamp Act, 1869; any matters arising under the Riot (Damages) Act, 1886; the registration of rules of scientific societies, the registration of charitable gifts; the certifying and recording of places of religious worship; the confirmation and record of the rules of loan societies, &c.

Financial Organisation of the County Council.-In assigning the sources of revenue to be under the control of the councils (other than the various rates heretofore levied in the counties) the Government had two objects in view-one to avoid increasing the burdens of the ratepayers, and the other to separate the national from the local finances. It has been customary for Parliament to vote annually certain sums of money, known as grants in aid, to assist the local authorities in defraying certain charges imposed upon them by legislative enactments, such as those relating to disturnpiked and main roads in England and Wales; teachers in poor law schools; poor law medical officers, and medical officers of health; inspectors of nuisances; registrars of births and deaths; pauper lunatics in England and Wales; cost of prosecutions; subventions in aid of the police in counties, boroughs, and the metropolis; schools for the education of pauper children; and other minor matters. The grants from the Imperial Exchequer amounted in the aggregate to about 2,600,000l., but they will no longer appear among the appropriations of Parliament. In their place the new Act provides that the Commissioners of Inland Revenue shall, under such regulations as the Treasury may prescribe, pay into the Bank of England to the Local Taxation account, such sums as may be ascertained to be the pro

Scotland

ceeds of the duties collected by those commissioners, in each administrative county in England and Wales, on the following licences :For the sale of intoxicating liquors for consumption on and off the premises; dealers in game; beer dealers; spirit dealers; wine dealers; refreshment-house keepers; dogs; killing game; guns ; appraisers; auctioneers; tobacco dealers; carriages; trade carts; locomotives; horses and mules; horse dealers; armorial bearings ; male servants; hawkers; house agents; pawnbrokers and plate dealers. The receipts from the above licences are estimated to yield about 3,000,000l., and the amounts collected in each county are to be paid to the Council of that county by the Commissioners of Inland Revenue, subject to the payment of those charges formerly met by the grants in aid from the National Exchequer. It is also reserved to the Sovereign, by an Order in Council, to transfer to County Councils the power of levying all or any of the local taxation licences. In addition to the above revenues, the Act provides that two-fifths of the Probate duty (about 2,000,0007.) shall be allotted to the County Councils in aid of the poor and other rates.

THE GOVERNMENT OF SCOTLAND.

Since the union of England and Scotland into the kingdom of Great Britain, in the year 1707-a union which was not merely legislative, but also executivethe government of Scotland has become a part of the general administration of Great Britain. The business of government was thereafter under the control of officers who acted for the entire United Kingdomexcept that, to meet some difficulties which were experienced in the collection of the revenue, separate commissions of customs and excise were for a time continued, but have since been abolished. The Act of Union provided, however, that a separate seal should be kept in Scotland, to be used in all documents relating to private rights or grants which formerly passed the great seal of Scotland; and that the Scottish courts of law should continue separate and independent.

At the union a third secretary of state was appointed in London, to take charge of Scottish affairs. But in 1746 this officer was discontinued, and his duties

divided between the two remaining secretaries of state, until the home department of the secretariat was organised, in 1782. Then the business relating to Scotland, which was necessarily of a domestic character, fell to the home secretary, by whom it was discharged until 1885, when the office of secretary of Scotland was created by Act 48 & 49 Vict. c. 61.

for Scot

The jurisdiction of the secretary for Scotland ex- Secretary tends over certain powers and duties pertaining to land. Scotland, which formerly belonged to the Privy Council, the Home Office, the Treasury, and the Local Government Board of England. To this office is attached the trust of keeper of her Majesty's seal. The lord keeper of the great seal is one of the officers of state, who in many matters still represent the crown in Scotland.'" The secretary is vice-president of the Scottish Education Department, which virtually makes him minister of education for Scotland.

The secretary exercises important statutory powers under the following subjects :-Poor law; public works loan acts; salmon fisheries; fishery board; prisons; education; school sites; board of manufactures; lunacy; public health; roads and bridges; local taxation returns; wild birds' protection; police; general register house; alkali works; assessors of railways; public parks; markets and fairs; county general assessment; registration of births, deaths and marriages; parliamentary divisions; artisans and labourers' dwellings; turnpikes accounts; locomotives; food and drugs; sheriff court houses; burial grounds and river pollution.▾

The secretary for Scotland receives a salary of 2,000l., and is assisted by a permanent under-secretary, 1,5007.; and an assistant under-secretary, 1,000l."

At the period of the union, the executive government of Scotland consisted of the following great officers of state-A lord high chancellor, a lord justice-general, a lord justice clerk, a lord privy seal, and a lord advo

For a history of the office, see Smith's Secretary for Scotland, London, 1885.

▾ lb.

w Civ. Serv. Est. 1888-9, p. 178.