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local authorities, cannot coerce, and the managers of schools are quite as jealous, if possible even more jealous, of the interference of a central authority than are our Boards of Guardians. Religious and personal feelings enter more into Educational than into Poor Law matters, and the funds of school managers are their own or their own raising. Yet the Inspector is voluntarily invited and readily listened to as a counsellor and friend. I believe that a similar power should be entrusted to the Poor Law Board. Let the Board be made the medium of grants, conditional on efficiency, the grants to be made from national sources, and relieve the local ratepayer from some of the taxation we are heaping on his devoted head. It is just such grants should be given, first, because in that way income other than that derived from or expended on rental would bear its share; secondly, because the grants being conditional on efficiency,[1] well-managed parishes would receive from other than local sources compensation for expenditure entailed by other than local pauperism. It would place the Poor Law Board in more
- ↑ One of Mr. Lowe's principal objections to this plan seemed to be the impossibility of a test of efficiency. I contend that efficiency in Poor Law matters might be tested as easily and accurately as in schools.
Any one who has much knowledge of hospitals knows that an experienced Inspector could, without much difficulty, ascertain and report whether a hospital contained the air, space, and appliances which a hospital ought to contain. He could ascertain the amount and nature of the medical attendance, and could test the quality of the medicines. The number of paid nurses might be fixed by rules, and their qualifications and training ascertained by looking at a few dressings and bandages, or examining whether bed-sores exist to evidence neglect.
It is surely far more easy to test efficiency in matters connected
in his district up to the highest point of efficiency that had been obtained in any one of them.
Does any one who has watched the progress of education in England doubt that much of its success is due to the emulation thus produced? Advice backed by pecuniary aid is very differently received from that which appears to the recipient to be gratuitous interference.
