OPINIONS OF THE LONDON JOURNALS
BOROUGH BOUNDARIES,
The Daily News refers to some curious revelations in the Boundary report as to the relation of the acreage of boroughs to the number of houses they contain. The first thing that strikes one is the great size of the little boroughs. Travellers may go for miles through some of these boroughs without knowing that they are in a town at all. Wareham is generally considered to be a very little borough. It has fewer than 350 electors, and only 1,159 male householders in 1,339 houses, but there are 23 acres of land to each house. Petersfield is a yet smaller borough, but there are more than 21 acres of land to each house. Midhurst, Retford, and Crickdale have over twenty acres to a house; Shoreham, Droitwich, and Wilton have about eighteen; while the list of those which have more than ten is too long to quote. In all these boroughs there is, of course, a very large proportion of the householders who are under ten pounds a year. They are, in fact, boroughs, the working class population of which consists of agricultural labourers. But in considering the question of the extension of the boundaries of the larger towns, it must be remembered that the overflow of the large borough populations into the county area is only the counterpart of the incursion of the county population upon the borough representation. There are more boroughs which have no considerable town population than there are counties into which the town populations have overflowed. There is more of county influence in the borough representation than there is of town influence in the county representation. But the action of the Boundary Commission was limited to the inclusion within borough boundaries of this overflow; it was forbidden to touch the corresponding and counterbalancing absorption of county districts within borough limits. Yet the one question is at least as pressing as the other. If the limits of large boroughs need to be expanded, the limits of little boroughs need to be contracted.