ABSTRACT
The central executive committee felt this, and attached to its report of 30th March, 1863, as an appendix, the following extracts from the minutes of the meeting held on the 5th March, 1863 :—
family, and give them relief at a certain rate per hour, so as to make up the relief of the family to the scale. * * * If contracts for useful public works are undertaken, such engagements should be made by some public body, such as a municipal corporation. But public works would cause an outlay which would increase the burdens of ratepayers. Unless, therefore, parliament, in consi-- deration of the gravity of the crisis, give greatly increased powers to raise money on loan for public works, at low rates of interest, and for long periods of years, it is scarcely to be expected that when so large a part of the capital of the cotton districts is unproductive, town councils will consider themselves justified in charging their boroughs with any such large outlay as would be required to set all the able-bodied men now relieved on work. But if municipalities were enabled-for all purposes for which they are now authorised by law to contract loans-to contract new loansto spread the repayment of all loans over a much longer period of time, and even to postpone the payment of the first instalment for five or more years, many works would certainly be undertaken by town councils which would otherwise be neglected. Supposing this to be done, it would be open to the town councils to set the able-bodied either on piece-work, or on work by the hour, at the ordinary rate of wages per hour. As in the supposed case of the landed proprietor, town councils might allow the workman to earn wages, in which case a limited number would be wholly removed from the relief lists. Or they might allow a larger number of men to labour four or five hours daily, or to work by the piece until they had earned a given sum per week, as part of their relief from the board of guardians or relief committee. What has been said of town councils applies, in their respective spheres, to improvement commissioners, to boards acting under the Local Improvements Act, and to other local authorities now more or less empowered to borrow money for public improvements. Suggestions have been made by drainage engineers and others, that the cotton districts offer a field for the profitable investment of a large capital in the improvement of land. That is a most obvious truth. A large extent of the land below the level of three hundred feet above the sea, and a still larger tract from three hundred to six hundred feet high, would pay the proprietor for draining and liming. But no government would impose these
improvements as an obligation on proprietors, and enforce a charge of the cost on landed estates, even with a renewal of the oppor-- tunity for repayment in twenty-two years, at six and a half per cent per annum (the then rate of discount). All such improve-- ments are necessarily dependent on the progress, among landed proprietors, of an intelligent foresight as to their own interests; and nothing is more certain than that great tracts of land below the level of three hundred feet from the sea remain undrained, notwithstanding such powers as exist to borrow, through the agency of land improvement companies. I t is equally apparent that a crisis which reduces the rents, and increases the burthens of landed proprietors, is not one which they would select for charging their estates with new burthens; unless the motives to do so at this time were made to preponderate, in the same way as is proposed in the case of town councils. * * * That which remains as an obvious resource is to increase, with a view to this object, all the existing facilities for loans for public and private works within these counties-by lengthening the term of years for repayment-by reducing the interest on the loans-and by post-- poning the repayment of the first instalment for five or more years."
