subscription or donation, and the rate must not exceed sixpence
in the £.
The Public Libraries Acts enable the authority adopting them to provide public libraries, museums, schools for science, art galleries and schools for art. The expenses in a rural parish are defrayed by means of a rate raised with, and as part of, the poor rate, with a qualification to the effect that agricultural Public Libraries Acts. land, market gardens and nursery grounds are to be assessed to the rate at one-third only of their rateable value.
The expenses of a parish council may not, without the consent of a parish meeting, exceed the amount of a rate of threepence in the £ for the financial year; but with the consent of the parish meeting the limit may be increased to sixpence, exclusive of expenses under the adoptive acts. If it Finance: expenses of parish council. is necessary to borrow, the consent of the parish meeting and of the county council must be obtained. The expenses are payable out of the poor rate by the overseers on the precept of the parish council.
One of the most important powers conferred upon a parish council is that which enables them to prevent stoppage or diversion of any public right of way without their consent and without the approval of the parish meeting. The council may also complain to the county council that the district council have failed to sewer their parish or provide a proper water-supply, or generally to enforce the provisions of the Burial Acts; and upon such complaint, if ascertained to be well founded, the county council may transfer to themselves the powers and duties of the district council, or may appoint a competent person to perform such powers and duties. In a parish which is not sufficiently large to have a parish council, most of the powers and duties conferred or imposed on the parish council are exercised by the parish meeting. It may be convenient here to add that where, under the Local Government Act 1894, the powers of a parish council are not already possessed by an urban district council, the Local Government Board may by order confer such powers on the urban council. This has been done almost universally, as far as regards the power to appoint overseers and assistant overseers, and in many cases urban councils have also obtained powers to appoint trustees of parochial charities.
The foregoing is a sketch of the scheme of local government carried out in England and Wales. No attempt has been made to deal with poor law (q.v.) or education (q.v.). The local administration of justice devolving upon the justices in quarter or petty sessions is hardly a matter of local government, although in one important respect, General observations. that, namely, of the licensing of premises for the sale of intoxicating liquors, it may be thought that the duties of justices fall within the scope of local government. It will be seen that the scheme, as at present existing, has for its object the simplification of local government by the abolition of unnecessary independent authorities, and that this has been carried out almost completely, the principal exception being that in some cases burial boards still exist which have not been superseded either by urban district councils or by parish councils or parish meetings. There are also some matters of local administration arising under what are called commissions of sewers. These exist for the purpose of regulating drainage, and providing defence against water in fen lands or lands subject to floods from rivers or tidal waters. The commissioners derive their authority from the Sewers Commission Acts, which date from the time of Henry VIII., from the Land Drainage Act 1861, and from various local acts. It is unnecessary, however, to consider in any detail the powers exercised by commissioners of sewers in the few areas under their control.
Authorities.—G. L. Gomme, Lectures on the Principles of Local Government; S. and B. Webb, English Local Government; Redlich and Hirst, Local Government in England; Wright and Hobhouse, Local Government and Local Taxation; W. Blake Odgers, Local Government; Alex. Glen and W. E. Gordon, The Law of County Government; Alex. Glen, The Law relating to Public Health; The Law relating to Highways; W. J. Lumley, The Public Health Acts (6th ed., by Macmorran and Dill); Macmorran and Dill, The Local Government Act 1888, &c.; The Local Government Act 1894, &c.; Hobhouse and Fairbairn, The County Councillors’ Guide; Pratt, The Law of Highways (15th ed., by W. Mackenzie); Archbold, Law of Quarter Sessions (4th ed., by Mead and Croft); J. Brooke Little, The Law of Burials; Archbold, On Lunacy (4th ed., by S. G. Lushington). (A. McM.; T. A. I.)
General Bibliography
Among earlier works devoted to, or dealing largely with topography, a few may be mentioned out of a considerable mass. W. Camden, Britannia; sive florentissimorum regnorum Angliae, Scotiae, Hiberniae . . . chorographica descriptio (1586 and subsequent editions; in Latin, but translated by several successive writers both in Camden’s time and later); M. Drayton, Poly-Olbion (a descriptive poem, first issued in a complete form in 1622); T. Fuller, History of the Worthies of England (1662); J. Leland, Itinerary, and Collectanea, edited by T. Hearne respectively in 1710 and 1715; T. Cox and A. Hall, Magna Britannia (1720, based on Camden’s Britannia, in English); D. Defoe, Tour through the whole Island of Great Britain ... divided into Circuits or Journeys (1724–1727); various works of Thomas Pennant, published between 1741 and 1820, and, at the same period, of Arthur Young (topographical treatises on agriculture, &c.); W. Gilpin, Observations on Picturesque Beauty made in the Year 1776 in several Parts of Great Britain (1778); Essays on Prints and Early Engravings; Western Parts of England (1798), and other works on various districts; Gentleman’s Magazine (1731–1868); E. W. Brayley, J. Britton and others, Beauties of England and Wales, or, Original Delineation, Topographical, Historical and Descriptive, of each County (1801–1818; both the authors named wrote other descriptive works on special localities; Britton wrote Architectural Antiquities of Great Britain, 1835); Daniel Lysons (with the collaboration of his brother Samuel), Magna Britannia, Topographical Account of the several Counties of Great Britain (1806–1822; the counties were taken alphabetically but on the death of Samuel Lysons in 1819 the work was stopped at Devonshire); Sir G. Head, Home Tour in the Manufacturing Districts of England (1835); Nathaniel Hawthorne, English Notebooks (1870). Among modern publications, out of a great mass of works of more or less popular character, there may be mentioned the well-known series of Murray’s Guides, in which each volume treats of a county or group of counties.
Early in the 20th century the Victoria History of the Counties of England (dedicated to Queen Victoria) began to appear; its volumes deal with each county from every aspect—natural history, prehistoric and historic antiquities, ethnography, history, economic conditions, topography and sport being dealt with by authorities in all branches.
The maps of the Ordnance, Geological and Hydrographic Surveys delineate the configuration and geology of England and the adjacent seas with a completeness unsurpassed in any other country. For ordinary detailed work the best series of maps is found in Bartholomew’s Survey Atlas of England and Wales (Edinburgh Geographical Institute, 1903), which, besides small distributional, physical and other maps and letterpress, contains a magnificent series of coloured-contour maps on the scale of 12 in. to 1 m. (also issued in larger separate sheets).
Statistics of every kind—of climate, agriculture, mining, manufactures, trade, population, births, marriages, deaths, disease, migration, education—are liberally furnished by government agencies.
See also A. J. Jukes-Brown, The Building of the British Islands (London, 1888); Sir A. C. Ramsay, Physical Geography and Geology of Great Britain, edited by H. B. Woodward (London, 1894); Lord Avebury, The Scenery of England and the Causes to which it is due (London, 1902); Sir A. Geikie, Geological Map of England and Wales (scale, 10 m. to 1 in.; Edinburgh, 1897); E. Reclus, Universal Geography, vol. iv., The British Isles, edited by E. G. Ravenstein (London, 1880); H. J. Mackinder, Britain and the British Seas (2nd ed., Oxford, 1907); G. G. Chisholm, “On the Distribution of Towns and Villages in England,” in Geographical Journal, vol. ix. (1897), pp. 76-87; vol. x. (1897), pp. 511-530; A. Haviland, The Geographical Distribution of Disease in Great Britain (London, 1892); A. Buchan, “The Mean Atmospheric Temperature and Pressure of the British Islands” (with maps), Journal of the Scottish Meteorological Society, vol. xi. (1898), pp. 3-41; W. M. Davis, “The Development of Certain English Rivers,” Geographical Journal, vol. v. (1895), pp. 127-148; H. R. Mill, “The Mean and Extreme Rainfall of the British Isles,” Min. Proc. Inst. C.E. (1904), vol. clv. part i.; “A Fragment of the Geography of England—South-west Sussex,” Geographical Journal, vol. xv. (1900), p. 205; “England and Wales viewed Geographically,” Geographical Journal, vol. xxiv. (1904), pp. 621-636.
ENGLAND, THE CHURCH OF. The Church of England
claims to be a branch of the Catholic and Apostolic Church;
it is episcopal in its essence and administration, and is established
by law in that the state recognizes it as the national church of
the English people, an integral part of the constitution of the
realm. It existed, in name and in fact, as the church of the
English people centuries before that people became a united
nation, and, in spite of changes in doctrine and ritual, it remains
the same church that was planted in England at the end of the
6th century. From it the various tribes which had conquered
the land received a bond of union, and in it they beheld a pattern
of a single organized government administered by local officers,
to which they gradually attained in their secular polity. In
England, then, the state is in a sense the child of the church.
The doctrines of the English Church may be gathered from its
Book of Common Prayer (see Prayer, Book of Common) as
