The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1885-03-07 00:00:00

THE WORK OP THE BOUNDARY
COMMISSION.
The Boundary Commissioners for England and
Wales, says the Times, have done the work intrusted
to them. The results are shown in two volumes of
reports, one on the counties, the other on the boroughs.
These volumes give evidence of the care and trouble
which the commissioners have bestowed on their task,
and of the success with which their labours have been
attended. The business has been in some respects
much less difficult than it was expected to be. The
commissioners remark with satisfaction on the
very general absence of anything like a display
of party feeling in the different localities which
they visited. It could have been from no want
of opportunity. The decisions at which the
commissioners have arrived, subject to ratification
by the legislature, will have very important influence
on the fortunes of pclitical parties. It would have
been possible for them so to adjust boundaries as to
favour one party or the other, to crowd obnoxious
voters into one section of a borough or county, and so
to diffuse the remainder as to secure that they should
be in a minority in the rest of the sections. But
they have not been so much as suspected of any such
party designs as these, and when we remember the
atmosphere of suspicion in which they have
necessarily moved, the inherent difficulty of treating
all parties with equal fairness, and the predictions
which were freely hazarded as to the unfair character
of the redistribution which was to come, we could
scarcely ask any more convincing proof of the
absolute fairness with which their instructions
have been carried out. The one point on which local
feeling was aroused seems to have been about the
names of the new districts. In some counties the
prevalent wish was that the county name should be
preserved for each division, and that the points of the
compass should be used as their distinguishing mark.
In others the contest was between the claims of a
merged borough and those of a town more important
in itself, but not entitled in the past to separate Par-
liamentary representation. In these and in like
instances the Commissioners have been constrained
to give offence, partly from the nature of their in-
structions, partly from the re-Aure of the case. They
can say only that they have chosen such names as ap-
peared least open to objection and the most appro-
priate taking all circumstances into account. We
should hardly have noticed the point were it not
for the strange importance which has been assigned
to it, and for the indirect indorsement it gives to the
general character of the work which the Commis-
sioners have done. If the main work had been
faulty or defective, this trumpery question of names
would scarcely have been heard of; it would certainly
not have been pushed into any prominence. The
method of procedure which the Commissioners have
followed was determined for them by their instruc-
tions. Their first work has been to determine pro-
visionally the county and borough divisions. For the
counties they have, as a rule, adopted the petty
sessional areas as the units of divisions, but in many
instances they have found themselves compelled to
depart from their rule in order either to distribute
the population of the county with proxi-
mate equality among the several divisions,
or to include in one and the same division
important urban districts or communities engaged in
similar pursuits. In the case of boroughs they have
taken the wards formed for local elections as the best
basis of divisions. Their next step has been to give
public notice of what they have done, aed to bold a
local inquiry, the result of which has been to enable
them to make important improvements in some of
their provisional schemes. Their duties from first to
last have been very considerable in amount. They
have portioned out no fewer than forty-three counties
in England and Wales into two hundred and forty-
three divisions in all, and they have formed ninety-
one borough divisions. They began holding their
local inquiries on the 11th Dec. last, and they continued
them with scarcely any intermission up to the sth of
February. Their resolves, and the reasons for them,
are stated in detail in the reports, and a map is
added in each case, showing exactly what has been
done, and displaying in large capitals the name by
which each borough and county division is hence-
forth to be known. These maps, each authenticated
by a lithographed signature of some one of the Com-
missioners, add greatly to the value of the reports.
The Commissioners give the credit for them to the
officers of the Ordnance Survey Department, and are
profuse in expressing a gratitude which every reader
of the reports will feel almost equally with themselves.
It is impossible for us to give any adequate account of
the details of the Commissioners' schemes. Each
scheme forms a wide subject in itself. In the case cf
the boroughs there are thirty-eight separate reports,
each with a map appended to it. Of these thirty-
eight reports, fourteen deal with metropolitan
boroughs—fifteen if we include West Ham, which is
metropolitan in all but name. But the greatest single
work of the Commissioners has been the dividing out
of the borough of Liverpool. Liverpool, with a popu-
lation of more than 600,000, has furnished material
for nine divisions. Birmingham, with a population
of 437,076, comes next in order, and furnishes
material for seven divisions. Manchester follows
with a population of 424,224, and is marked out into
Those three teens head the list, hnt
they are dwarfed into insignificance by the aggregate
of the metropolitan boroughs.
The Boundary Commissioners for Scotland have
had comparatively light work. Out of four Scotch
counties they have formed twelve county divisions,
and out of three burghs thirteen burgh
divisions. They have also recommended a
change in the boundaries of seven other
burghs. Of the burghs with which they had to do,
Glasgow is by far the largest. With a population of
more than half a million, it claims seven divisions
with seven representatives corresponding to them.
But the Corporation are not, even so, content. Their
wish, strongly pressed upon the Commissioners, has
been for an extension of their Parliamentary
boundaries so as to include a large urban
population outside. This wish the Commis-
sioners have been unable to meet. The new
population, although urban in its charac.er, is not
included within the municipal boundary of Glasgow,
and, moreover, its inclusion within the Parliamentary
boundary would entitle Glasgow to more than seven
members, and would thus disturb the apportionment
of representation made under the Redistribution of
Seats Bill. For both these reasons the Commis-
sioners have felt bound by their instructions to take
no steps towards compliance with the Corporation's
request. The House of Commons has a free hand,
and it is to the House of Commons that the appeal
of the Corporation must be made. The Boundary
Commissioners for Ireland have had most to do with
the marking out of Irish counties. They have
formed, in all, eighty-four county divisions, and their
arrangements have for the most part been accepted
without dispute, and with* an absence of apparent
interest which they take as proof that their plans
were thought convenient and satisfactory. The
exception has been in Ulster, where political
feeling has run high, and where all sorts of
suggestions have been made, with a view chiefly
to party gain. The Commissioners have given them
a patient hearing, and have adopted such of them as
they could find legitimate reasons for, but for the
greater part there were no such reasons to be found.
Of Irish boroughs only twe required division, Dublin
and Belfast, but the Commissioners had trouble with
them both, in preparing provisional schemes and in
settling them finally in the face of the numerous
objections and alternative schemes with which they
were met. Dublin, like Glasgow, sought an exten-
sion of boundaries which the Commissioners were
unable to grant. So, too, did some other Irish
boroughs with populations more or less nearly
approaching 15,000; but, as these requests were con-
fessedly made in the hope of retaining their present
representation, the Commissioners did not think it
necessary to take any action upon them.