Should the balance not
be sufficient, a presentment under 10 Vict. cap. 107, should be sought
for at the Presentment Sessions, provided the work were a desirable one
to undertake.
Nor did the new arrangement, under which the landlord paid one moiety of
the rate, and the occupier the other, pass without censure. It was, to
be sure, considered an improvement on the rule which compelled the
occupier to pay the whole; still it was urged that great numbers of the
occupiers of small holdings would be as much in need of relief as any
portion of the community, and in no position whatever to pay rates. That
was true enough, but a line must be drawn somewhere, and when they
determined to make the soil responsible, it is hard to see to whom they
were to look for rates, had they exempted the small farmers from them.
The exemption they made, namely, of those whose rent was under L4
a-year, was probably not liberal enough, but there does not seem to have
been any great reason for finding fault with it.
But the great and fatal blot in the Labour-rate Act was, that under its
provisions the people could not be employed on works capable of making a
profitable return. Lord John Russell's Government followed the precedent
set by its predecessors as to the class of works upon which employment
was to be given; but there was this important difference in their
legislation,--the former made no grants under their Labour-rate Act,
while the latter supplied about half the cost of the Public Works from
the Treasury, the remainder being a loan.
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