Scottish Provision
The Public Libraries Act 1850 initially only applied in England and Wales, but it was extended to Scotland in 1853 and there was a further Act, the Public Libraries (Scotland) Act, the following year when library authorities were granted the right to raise the rate by 1d. and to spend money on books, maps and specimens as well as on library and museum buildings. In addition to this, it was no longer necessary for there to be a poll of ratepayers for the Act to be adopted and uptake was instead authorised by a two-thirds majority at a public meeting of those who possessed or occupied a house of £10 annual value. This referred to homes that might reasonably be expected to have a net annual rental value of £10 a year or more. However, a poll could still be requested by any five voters present. In 1855, similar amendments were introduced in England and Wales in a more wide-ranging Act. This included provision for the 1d rate and the authority to buy books, newspapers, maps and specimens. It also contained the amendment that had already been made in Scotland, that of the two-thirds majority at a public meeting of ratepayers.
Read more about this topic: Public Libraries Act 1850
Famous quotes containing the words scottish and/or provision:
“We’ll never know the worth of water till the well go dry.”
—18th-century Scottish proverb, collected in James Kelly, Complete Collection of Scottish Proverbs, no. 351 (1721)
“Why should the generations overlap one another at all? Why cannot we be buried as eggs in neat little cells with ten or twenty thousand pounds each wrapped round us in Bank of England notes, and wake up, as the Sphinx wasp does, to find that its papa and mamma have not only left ample provision at its elbow but have been eaten by sparrows some weeks before we began to live consciously on our own accounts?”
—Samuel Butler (1835–1902)