ON LOCAL C0VEE2OIENT AND TAXATION OF TOWNS (IRELAND).
Mr.
Murphy.
9.
Have not the corporations the power, and did not they exercise it, of creating honorary freeman ?—Yes,
that was one of the abuses.
10.
In virtue of that power they created Roman Catholics honorary freemen on some occasions, did they not ?—On
some few occasions they did.
11.
Those Roman Catholics had a right to take part, not in the governing body but as a portion of the freemen at large ?—Yes.
Chairman.
12.
Those old corporations were abolished, were they nor, in 1840 ?—Yes.
13.
What became of those 61 to which you have ieferred ?—They
were all abolished.
14.
What was their future history?—Ten
of them were replaced by municipal councils in 1840; the others were replaced by commissioners under the Act of 1828, or under local Acts.
Some of them have had no government at all since ; I do not recollect the exact figures.
15.
Were not municipal commissioners created in some of them?—There
were 19 bodies of municipal commissioners created by the Act of 1840; the object of those 19 municipal commis¬ sioners was to hold trust of the corporate pro¬ perty until commissioners were appointed under the Act of 1828.
Of those 19 towns that came under the municipal commissioners, the vast majority either adopted the Act of 1828, or they adopted the Act of 1854, and most of them adopted both Acts: but there is one remnant of that system of government which still continues, namely Carrickfergus.
That has lead to a great deal of confusion, because it was supposed in the Sanitary Act, 1874, that.it
was a sanitary authority, but the Local Government Board, after the Act passed, found that it was not, as, though the Par¬ liamentary borough had a population tof 9,000, the municipal borough had only 4,000.
So that it is a great complication in the town law and the sanitary law of Ireland allowing this one body to remain as the municipal commissioners of Carrickfergus with a population of 4,000 in¬ habitants.
16.
Carrickfergus then remains under a form of government which was intended by the Act of 1840 to be merely temporary ?—Yes,
it was the last of the 19 towns; all the other towns very promptly adopted one or the other of the Acts.
Dr.
Ward.
17.
What is the local authority of Carrick¬ fergus?—The
board of guardians is the local sanitary authority.
18.
Is not that the case also in Gal way?—I
think not.
Chairman.
19.
Did that Act of 1840 in any way recognise the existence of the Act of 1828 ?—Yes,
in the Act of 1840 the Act of 1828 was recognised to this extent, that the town councils were allowed to adopt it for lighting purposes instead of their old vestry powers.
It was also adopted in part for the mode of election, and in part for rating, and it was adopted in several other ways, and also all towns that chose to adopt it for town government got the corporate property.
There were 10 created town councils, and all outside that number of towns that adopted the Act of 1828 got the corporate property.
20.
Has any town in Ireland obtained a 0.105.
only
Chairman—continued, charter except the ten which did so immpdiately after the passing of the Act of 1840'?—Yes;
there is one town, Wexford; that is the town, and that makes 11 town councils.
21.
Are you aware whether any other appli¬ cations for charters have been made?—1
was consulted some -hort time ago about applying for a charter to a town quite large enough to have one, but we found that it would lead to a great deal of complication because a number of the provisions of the Act of 1840 were quite incon¬ sistent with the Act of 1854, and there would be considerable complication, and therefore I advised the town against its being applied for under that ground, because, ovring'to the two sets of pro¬ visions, there would be great embarrassment in working.
22.
Did the town in that case remain under the Act of 1854 ?
-Yes; it did.
23.
What was that town?—Lurgan.
24.
To what extent was the Act of 1828 adopted by the towns in Ireland?—By
66 towns.
25.
How many are still under it?—There
are only 12 still under it.
There are the four sanitary authorities that I mentioned, and in addition to those there are eight: Tipperary, Mallow, Duugannon, Omagh, Monaghan, Down-patrick, Wicklow, and Fethard.
26.
What led to this change in the popularity of the Act of 1828?—The'first
town, the most enterprising in Ireland, was Kingstown.
It began to be developed by the making of the packet station there, and the commencement of the railroad.
The inhabitants very soon found that the provisions in the Act of 182S were very imper¬ fect for a growing town, and they got an Act in 1834 repealing the Act for King-town, and getting ad the most modern improvements that were adopted at that time.
Then Belfast, the next that began to develope at that time, got a local Act in 1845, another in 1846.
and another in 1847, adopting all the modern town legislation usual in England.
Then, in 1847, the Towns Clauses Act and the Commissioners Clauses Act were passed for local Acts in England, and imme¬ diately the most enterprising suburb of Dublin, Rathmines, took advantage of it, and the inhabi¬ tants obtained, in 1847, a local Act adopting ail those provisions.
Then Dublin in 1849 got a local Act.
After the Dublin corporation got their Act in 1849, it was felt that it was hard that so many towns should be under the machinery of local government which had been thus condemned, and at the same time the inhabitants could not afford the expense of local Acts; and that Act of 1854 was to enable towns to get the benefit of the Towns Clauses Act of 1847, and the Commissioners Clauses Act of 1847, without going to Parliament for a local Act.
27.
Can you give the Committee such a state¬ ment of the provisions as to the powers of the town authorities in the Act of 1828 and in the Act of 1854, as will show to us the difference between them?—In
the Act of 1828 powers were conferred for lighting, watching, cleansing, paving, wells, pumps, pipes, sewers and drains, fire engines, naming and numbering street?,
re¬ moval of cellar stairs, compelling footways to be kept clean, prevention of nuisances, and pro¬ viding against stray cattle.
Those were all dealt with by the Act of 1854, and in many cases in a more complete manner.
The Act of 1854 con¬ ferred new powers as to laying out new streets, A 2 dealing
Mr.
W.
X.
Hancock, LL.D.
28 April 1870".
