Excerpt from Parochial Self-Government in Rural Districts: Argument and Plan

The Author's object is to refer, for as many purposes as practicable, the action required upon parish affairs in rural parishes to the general body of the inhabitants, who are the individuals personally affected, and are in contact with and have under their eyes the facts upon which action has to be taken. The machinery proposed by the Author's Bill practically amounts to a restoration of the old liberty of and powers for administration possessed by the inhabitants in vestry assembled. In those popular assemblies personal rights and property interests balanced their claims if they were found to clash, and, with free discussion and common consent founded upon it, the inhabitants, for at least a century and a half, carried on their parish business with striking and quite incontestable success. Nor did any indications of decay appear until, through the effects of centralizing aggressions, all parochial independence had been gradually extinguished.

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