m of three years. The list
of powers which the parish authorities may exercise is extended, if
not imposing. It includes the maintenance of foot-paths, the
management of civil parochial property, the provision of fire
protection, the inspection of local sanitation, and the appointment of
trustees of civil charities within the parish. The meagerness of the
population of large numbers of the parishes, however, together with
the severe limitations imposed both by law and by practical conditions
upon rate-levying powers, preclude the authorities very generally (p. 186)
from undertaking many or large projects. It is regarded commonly that
the parishes are too small to be made such areas of public activity as
the authors of the act of 1894 had in mind. Practically, the parish is
little more than a unit for the election of representatives and the
collection of rates.[267]

[Footnote 267: Lowell, Government of England, II.,
281.]

For purposes of poor-law administration, as has been pointed out,
there have existed since 1834 poor-law unions, consisting of numbers
of parishes grouped together, usually without much effort to obtain
equality of size or population. These unions not infrequently comprise
both rural and urban parishes, and in cases of this kind the board of
guardians is composed of the persons elected as district councillors
in the rural parishes of the union, together with other persons who
are elected immediately as guardians in the urban parishes and have no
other function. The conditions under which poor relief is administered
are prescribed rather minutely in general regulations laid down by the
Local Government Board at London, so that, save in the matter of
levying rates, the range of discretion left to the boards of guardians
is closely restricted.[268]

[Footnote 268: Ashley, Local and Central
Government, 52-60.]

VIII. LOCAL GOVERNMENT TO-DAY: URBAN

*196. The Urban District.*--Of areas within which are administered the
local affairs of the urban portions of the kingdom there are several
of distinct importance, although in reality the institutions of urban
government are less complex than they appear on the surface to be. In
the main, the legal basis of urban organization is the Municipal
Corporations Consolidation Act of 1882, which comprises a codification
of the Municipal Corporations Act of 1835 and a mass of subsequent