The Economy of Local Rates ‘203 
as soon as the locality (in whose service the enumera- 
tors are usually engaged except on the census day) is 
to benefit by a few shillings per head of persons 
enumerated, accuracy is likely to give way to interest. 
I do not mean that non-existent persons will be 
invented for census purposes, but that the heads of 
households will be encouraged to insert members of 
their families who are temporarily absent and are 
enumerated elsewhere. I know of one case of this in 
the London intermediate census of 1395, which was 
taken to settle the distribution of the equalisation 
fund,! and I do not doubt it was by no means isolated, 
nor that the practice would not become very important 
if Lord Balfour of Burleigh’s scheme were carried out. 
It is, I think, extremely important to keep the census 
returns free from all bias. (2) Further, supposing 
fhe population to be properly ascertained, it is by no 
means an efficient indicator of the amount which 
should be spent in the prevention of destitution. 
Small areas, and even the larger areas likely to be the 
rateable areas for this purpose in the future, are far 
from containing equal proportions of persons likely to 
fall into distress. In the unions as they are now con- 
stituted, it is easily conceivable that the cost per head 
of population would be four times as much in many 
anions as it would be in many others, simply owing 
to the fact that poor persons are a larger proportion 
of the whole population in some places than in others. 
There are many reasons for this. but the most 
! Under the London (Equalisation of Rates) Act, 1894, which pro- 
vided for the levying of a rate of 6d. in the £ all over London, and 
the distribution of the proceeds between the various districts with 
separate sanitary rates in proportion to their population.