of a good many things, the state of the elements should not be left out of consideration. A wet season will keep people indoors to read, or send them to the reference library, and a dry season sends the people to the fresh air. Returns may go up or go down, and all the explanations which could be given one way or the other might not absolutely cover the ground. It is well to have statistics to see what each town is doing individually, but unfair comparisons must be guarded against, and this fact especially should be kept in mind by newspaper writers. In course of time there will be uniformity in statistics; but at present that is a much more difficult matter than it would appear, as before this can be done several radical changes in library administration will have to be made.

Public Libraries will pass through the stage of criticism which they have now entered in the eyes of many of the public, and they will come out of the ordeal none the worse for the process. The essential fact remains that these institutions, if properly managed, may bring advantages of the highest order within the reach of even the poorest classes of the community. Nowadays, we all profess to be anxious about the education of the masses of the people. But real education can only be begun in elementary schools. If the children of the working classes are to be truly educated they must do something more than pass the fourth or the sixth standard: they must learn, as they grow to manhood and womanhood, to take an unaffected interest in things of the mind, and to carry on their studies not merely for the sake of material profit, but because they find in intellectual life the source of one of their deepest and purest pleasures. If this ideal is to be attained, there must be libraries where every one will be able to find the kind of books he or she may want.

The total cost of the libraries in sixteen towns last year was £62,548, for a gross population of 3,097,212. This works out to a fraction less than 4 d. per head, adult and juvenile, of the combined population of these sixteen towns for the maintenance of these libraries and their branches last year. And what had the people in return?

1. In considering the cost of Public Libraries, it should in fairness be remembered that the expenditure incurred is not exclusively spent in providing books to read at home. The cost referred to includes the provision of an inviting and agreeable place to read in, instead of the more expensive and less salutary places which have absorbed so much of the time and money of the working and other classes.

2. Then, besides books for taking away, there is associated with the Public Library a reference library, a newsroom, etc., containing the best newspapers and periodicals to be found in this important branch of literature, much of which must be considered as very solid reading.

3. There are, in addition, at many of these places lectures, science and art classes, museums, and art galleries.

This simple fact alone is worth volumes of statistics as to the classes of literature read by the people, and a host of other details

in figures. Friends of this movement may fasten opponents to this simple fact, and challenge them to produce another department of our national expenditure where there is for so small per head of the population so much far-reaching utility and solid actual value for public money spent.

W

CHAPTER XVIII.

Public Library Funds, Buildings, &c.

HEN the vote is in favour of adopting the Acts the work of the provisional committee is at an end, so far as their immediate work is concerned, and the Town Council, or other governing body, will forthwith elect a library committee or commissioners, to whose care the organizing of the library will be entrusted. It is very essential that the members of this committee should be men of close sympathy with the movement, and who are willing to take upon themselves the labour, which is not by any means light, of the formation of a library. Two or three members of the committee should be deputed to visit the Public Libraries in some of the large centres, and so gain a practical insight into their working and management. Every librarian worth the name will only be too glad to answer questions and to show such visitors over the premises under his control. It is very essential that there should be on this committee a fair percentage of burgesses, as mentioned in the previous chapter. For many reasons this is wise. In most towns there are a number of shrewd, farseeing men of too retiring a disposition to seek municipal honours, who would on a library committee be a decided acquisition. They are not responsible to constituents, as are the representatives on the Council, and so look at some matters from a different standpoint. Most towns are now adopting the plan of having burgesses on this committee, and some towns have even gone to the extent of having five-sixths of the number elected from outside.

The question of funds is, of course, the all-important one, and if the provisional committee have succeeded in securing a handsome list of promises of donations, on condition that the Acts be adopted, all the better, and this will be found an immense lever in bringing the ratepayers to a satisfactory decision. Promises for such a fund as this become infectious, and, either in the form of so much cash or so many books, they aid most materially in forwarding the movement. The names of those who give books and money go down to posterity in the history of the library, for the names should be published in the first report. Further than that there should be in books of reasonable value presented in quantities of say fifty or over, or books bought with the equivalent in money, which is better still, a neatly printed label bearing the name of the donor. There is scarcely another object which could be named which so powerfully appeals to the benevolence of all sections of society as this, A church or a chapel appeals to a

section. The Christianizing of coloured races appeals to a section. But a Public Library provides the charity which begins at home, and which, when established, is for all classes, and continues for all time. The spirit of emulation thus helps and popularizes the movement, and these appeals are rarely made in vain.

The question of loans has been a somewhat troublesome one, but no serious difficulty in this direction has been experienced, with the exception of one or two instances, where there were special causes to account for it. A glance at the paragraph on page 380 will show the indebtedness existing among these institutions, and from whence the loans have been obtained, and the terms of repayment. Two or three years ago a correspondence took place between the finance committee of the Birmingham Town Council and the Treasury, on the subject of the repayment of a loan for Public Library purposes, and as the principle involved and laid down is a very important one, the gist of these communications is here given. In accordance with the authority conferred by the Council, the committee caused to be presented to the Lords of Her Majesty's Treasury, a memorial, in the name of the Corporation, praying for their lordships' sanction to the borrowing by the Council of a loan of £6,150, for the following purposes, viz., for the purchase from the Council of the Midland Institute of certain portions of the institute building, for the purposes of the Central Public Libraries, £1,300; for defraying the cost to the institute of the alterations rendered necessary by the surrender of the said portions of the institute building, also of the cost to the Public Libraries of making the necessary alterations to divide the libraries from the institute building, together with the cost of connecting and adapting the new rooms to the purposes of the library, £1,500; for furnishing the wing of the reference library, temporarily used as an art gallery, with chairs, tables, and desks, for the accommodation of readers, £250; together, £3,050; for the purposes of the Constitution Hill Library, £400; for providing fittings, furniture, and casts for the School of Art, £2,700. In reply to this application a communication was received from the Treasury inquiring whether, if the proposed loan of £6,150, under the Public Libraries Act of 1885, was consented to, the Corporation would undertake by formal resolution to pay it as follows, viz. :-As to £1,300, £1,500, and £400, in thirty years from date of borrowing; and as to three sums, making up £2,950, in ten years from that date. On behalf of the committee the Town Clerk replied, "Your letter of the 27th August, 1885, has been laid before the finance committee of the Corporation, and I am directed to inquire under what statute the Lords Commissioners of Her Majesty's Treasury consider it to be their duty to impose conditions upon the Corporation with reference to the period for the repayment of the loans under the Public Libraries Act, 1885, taken in connection with the Birmingham Corporation Consolidation Act, 1883. Hitherto the Corporation have been under the impression that the application for the loan having been passed

by the Council, and public notice given of the same, and no objection taken, the loan would be sanctioned by the Lords Commissioners, leaving the Council to determine the period for repayment, having due regard to the purposes for which the money is to be applied. As the period of ten years appears to the Corporation too short a time for the repayment of the sum of £2,500 for providing fittings and furniture for the School of Art, and £250 for furnishing the new wing of the Reference Library, it is perhaps desirable that this question should now be raised." In answer to this communication, a letter was received from one of the secretaries to the Treasury, in which he said, "I am to state that in the opinion of this Board their general power under section 16 of the Act 18 and 19 Vic., cap. 70, to require repayment within a certain period if they choose to attach such condition to their sanction, remains unaffected by the provisions of the Birmingham Local Act. The effect of section 87 of the latter Act is to enable the Corporation to raise any sum they choose for Public Library purposes, but that fact does not compel the Treasury to assent to whatever period of repayment the Corporation may desire to fix in the case of particular loans. The Town Clerk is correct in stating that it has hitherto been left to the Town Council to determine the period for repayment of Public Library loans, but circumstances have brought very forcibly before my Lords the great and increasing pressure of local taxation, and they consider it to be of much importance to assert in the case of Public Library loans the same principle as that suggested by Parliament in the Municipal Corporations Act of 1882, sec. 112, viz., that the generation which incurs the debt should also pay it whenever practicable. The Municipal Corporations Act prescribes thirty years as the proper period of repayment of loans raised under that Act, and my Lords consider that Public Library loans generally should have no longer currency. With regard to furniture and fixtures, the rule my Lords have acted on not infrequently, in connection with loans under various Acts, has been to require repayment in ten years, as it is manifest that a loan for the acquisition of articles liable to deterioration, breakage, &c., should not have an equal currency with loans for the acquisition of land or the erection of substantial buildings. If, however, the fixtures in the present case are of a solid and durable character, my Lords would not refuse an extension to twenty years of the currency of that part of the loan which represents their value."

The Town Clerk rejoined with a communication respecting the interpretation of the law, enclosing a memorandum by the chairman of the finance committee, and, on the committee's behalf, stating that, on the whole, looking to the permanent character of the Midland Institute and Public Libraries buildings, he was instructed to ask that the sums to be borrowed for the purposes of purchase of buildings and structural alterations might be extended to sixty years, while the committee were willing to accept a period of twenty years as a reasonable period for the very substantial furniture that will be placed in the libraries. The

following is the memorandum prepared by the chairman of the finance committee, referred to in the foregoing letter:-" Public Libraries Loan. I have read the Treasury letter, and I think that the Corporation ought to press, as a matter of principle, for a term of at least sixty years, for such portions of the loan required as are to be expended upon works of a permanent character. The sum involved is not large, but the principle is important. The Treasury state that circumstances have brought forcibly before them the great and increasing pressure of local taxation. Capital expenditure, for the purposes of Public Libraries, is a necessity which it is impossible to avoid; and the very way to make that expenditure burdensome is to place the charges in respect of it upon one generation only, by refusing to extend the loan over a term of years commensurate with the life of the works which it represents. Since posterity will get the benefit of the improvements, it appears that those who have brought them about should be charged with no more than the use or hire of the means which effected the desirable result. Under the present system the men of to-day will make a free gift to the men of to-morrow. Why should they do this? Let both parties share the burden fairly. Applying this principle to the items in the proposed loan, which represent permanent structure, it would clearly be unfair to accept the suggestion of the Treasury that the term of thirty years, laid down in the Municipal Corporations Act, should be applied to portions of the present loan. Under all the circumstances, I am clear that the Treasury should be pressed to extend the term for portions of the proposed loan to sixty years; and it would seem probable that they would not be indisposed to yield. To accept their present ruling would be to admit their right to determine the period of the loan; while to contest it, would be to assert the right of the Corporation to, at any rate, a voice in the matter."

The reply from the Treasury further contested the view of the finance committee, and said: "It is of course open to Parliament to fix any term of years that may seem good for the repayment of loans raised by Municipal Corporations, and to extend, or alter existing limits; but my Lords hold that where, as in the Public Libraries Act, Parliament has not seen fit to specify the duration of loans raised under it, but has expressly subjected them to Treasury approval, they have been invested with a discretionary power to limit the currency of such loans. The power to give or withhold approval implies the power to attach to the approval any conditions that are not inconsistent with other provisions in the Act. The enormous growth of local indebtedness during recent years has led my Lords to consider it their duty, wherever practicable, to apply to Public Library loans the same limit of thirty years that Parliament has indicated in the Municipal Corporations' Act as the maximum currency of ordinary loans raised by such corporations under Treasury sanction, even though they may be for the purchase of land, or erection of permanent buildings. As pointed out in the statement of your financial committee, such a limitation increases the immediate burthen of capital expenditure,