Vestries and district boards may days of meeting. XXXVII. Every vestry and district board (e) constituted under the firstly-recited Act, or this Act, may appoint their hold their meetings on such days of the week, except Sundays, as they may from time to time determine, notwithstanding any provision to the contrary contained in any local Act; and any business which, by any local or other Act of parliament, or custom, should be done by any such vestry on a certain day, may be done at any meeting of such vestry duly convened for the purpose, and held within seven days next before or after such certain day as aforesaid: provided that where the hour or time for holding such meetings is fixed by the local Act they shall continue to be held at the same hour or time. Certiorari for auditors' or disallow allowances ances. XXXVIII. Notwithstanding anything in the one hundred and ninety-fifth section of the firstly-recited Act contained to the contrary, if any person aggrieved by any allowance, disallowance, or surcharge by any auditors of the accounts of any vestry or district board require such auditors to state the reasons for the said allowance, disallowance, or surcharge, the auditors shall state such reasons in writing in the book of account in which the allowance, disallowance, or surcharge may be made (ƒ); and it shall be lawful for every person aggrieved by such allowance, disallowance, or surcharge to apply to the court of Queen's Bench for a writ of (e) The 39th section of the 18 & 19 Vict. c. 120, enables district boards to appoint the time and place of their ordinary meetings. There can be no provision in any local Aet affecting district boards in this respect, which are entirely the creation of the Metropolis Management Act. The effect of this provision seems to be to enable vestries to hold their ordinary meetings on any day except Sunday; but in the case of business appointed to be done on particular days, that may be done on any day falling within the period here defined, but at the same hour as is now fixed by the local Act. (f) See certiorari to remove auditor's disallowance of overseer's accounts, and what grounds for disallowance insufficient, Reg. v. Street, 16 Jur. 1085. certiorari to remove into the said court the said allowance, disallowance, or surcharge, in the like manner and subject to the like conditions as are provided in respect of persons suing forth writs of certiorari for the removal of orders of justices of the peace, except that the condition of the recognizance shall be to prosecute such certiorari at the costs and charges of such person, without any wilful or affected delay, and if such allowance, disallowance, or surcharge be confirmed, to pay to such auditors or their successors, within one month after the same may be confirmed, their full costs and charges, to be taxed according to the course of the said court, and except that the notice of the intended application, which shall contain a statement of the matter complained of, shall be given to such auditors or their successors, who shall in return to such writ return a copy under the hands of a majority of them of the entry or entries in such book of account to which such notice shall refer, ' and shall appear before the said court, and defend the allowance, disallowance, or surcharge so impeached in the said court, and shall be reimbursed all such costs and charges as they may incur in such defence out of the funds of the vestry or district board respectively interested in the decision of the question, unless the said court make any order to the contrary; and on the removal of such allowance, disallowance, or surcharge the said court shall decide the particular matter of complaint set forth in such statement and no other; and if it appear to such court that the decision of the said auditors was erroneous, they shall, by rule of the court, order such sum of money as may have been improperly allowed, disallowed, or surcharged to be paid to the party entitled thereto by the party who ought to repay or discharge the same, and they may also, if they see fit, by rule of the court, order the costs of the person prosecuting such certiorari to be paid by the vestry or district board to which such accounts relate, as to such court may seem fit, which rules of court respectively shall be Provision in case of a ves returned for more than one ward. enforced in like manner as other rules of the said court are enforceable (9). XXXIX. If any person be returned to serve in any tryman being vestry for more than one ward, he shall on or before the next meeting of the vestry after such election signify in writing to the clerk of such vestry his decision as to the ward which he may desire to represent on such return; and if before or at such meeting he shall refuse or neglect so to do, the vestry shall determine the ward which he shall represent; and the vacancy occasioned by such determination or decision shall be filled up by an election to be held for that purpose within one month from the date of such determination or decision, such elections to be conducted in the like manner as the annual elections of vestrymen. Elections to be held supplying vacancies occasioned XL. The thirty-fifth section of the recited Act of the annually for eighteenth and nineteenth Victoria is hereby repealed; and in lieu thereof be it enacted, That the vestry constituted by the said Act in every parish mentioned in the second column of schedule (B.) to the same Act shall, on the first Wednesday in the month of June in the year 1863, and in every subsequent year, elect so many by expiration of term of office. (9) The effect of this provision is to repeal that part of the 195th section of the 18 & 19 Vict. c. 120, which enacts that the allowance of the auditors shall be final and conclusive. See that section, p. 154, ante, which does not contain any provision for recovering surcharges. This section is in substance taken from the 35th section of the 7 & 8 Vict. c. 101, an Act relating to the poor. It does not, however, like that enactment make previous payment by the person surcharged a condition precedent to the right of applying to the Court of Queen's Bench. The Local Government Act, 21 & 22 Vict. c. 98, s. 60, also varies that provision of the Public Health Act, 11 & 12 Vict. c. 63, s. 122, which rendered the auditor's certificate final, and enables the allowance or disallowance to be removed by certiorari. For decisions on the auditing of poor rates, see Reg. v. Greene, 21 L. J. M. C. 137; Reg. v. Great Western Railway Company, 13 Q. B. 327. Reg. v. Read, 13 Q. B. 524. R. v. Winsford, 13 Q. B. 873, persons (h) qualified by rating and occupation, as required by the same Act and the recited Act of the nineteenth and twentieth Victoria to be elected vestrymen of such parish, to be members of the board for the district in which such parish is comprised, as may be necessary for supplying the vacancies among the members of such board elected for such parish occasioned by expiration of the term of office of the members going out of office at the time of such election. into wards thousand XLI. When at any time, upon any account taken of As to division the population by the authority of parliament, any of when parish the parishes within the metropolis not now divided into contains two wards for the purpose of electing vestrymen shall be houses (i). found to contain more than two thousand rated householders, it shall be lawful for the metropolitan board of works, upon the application in writing of the vestry, or of not less than five hundred rated householders of the parish, to divide such parish into wards, and to determine and set out the number, extent, limits, and boundary lines of such wards, but so nevertheless that no ward shall contain less than five hundred rated householders, and that the whole number of wards shall not exceed eight; and the metropolitan board shall apportion among the several wards the number of vestrymen to (h) The 35th section requires the persons elected to supply vacancies to be "vestrymen " of the parish. This enables others than vestrymen to be elected, provided they be qualified by rating and occupation, as required by sect. 6 of 18 & 19 Vict. c. 120. (i) The 3rd section of the 18 & 19 Vict. c. 120, ante, limited the division into wards to be made under that Act to parishes containing more than two thousand rated householders at the time of the passing of that Act. This enactment provides for the division of a parish into wards where the population has increased since the passing of that Act so as to exceed that limit. The duties entrusted to the metropolitan board by this provision are similar to those imposed upon the persons appointed by the secretary of state under sect. 4 of the 18 & 19 Vict. c. 120, ante. No parish shall be annexed vious notice. be elected for such parish, and shall, in assigning the number of vestrymen to each ward, have regard, as far as in their judgment is practicable, as well to the number of persons rated to the relief of the poor in each ward as to the aggregate amount of the sums at which all such persons are rated; and the number of vestrymen assigned to each ward shall be a number divisible by three, and a copy of the particulars of such division and apportionment shall be forthwith transmitted to one of Her Majesty's principal secretaries of state for his approval, and also to the vestry clerk of the parish to which such division and apportionment relate; and the said particulars shall, within seven days after such transmission, be published by the said board in the London Gazette; and at the expiration of not less than two calendar months the said secretary of state shall, if he approve of the same, publish the said particulars again with his approval affixed thereto in the London Gazette; but if the said secretary of state disapprove of the proposed division. into wards or apportionment of vestrymen, then he shall, subject, however, to all the above limitations, make such other division or apportionment as in his judgment shall be more conducive to a fair representation in the vestry of the interests of the ratepayers of the said parish, and shall publish the particulars of such fairer division and apportionment in the London Gazette, and the parish shall, after such publication by him in the London Gazette, be deemed to be divided into such wards so determined and set out. XLII. No representation shall be made under the two hundred and forty-ninth section of the firstly-recited without pre- Act, unless and until the metropolitan board of works shall have given to the churchwardens and surveyors of highways of the parish to which such representation relates two months' notice in writing (a) under their (a) The two months' notice to the churchwardens and surveyors directed by this section is in addition to the one |