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Commissioners may assist emigration.
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51. It shall be lawful for the commissioners, when they shall think fit, upon application from the guardian or guardians of any electoral division, to direct a meeting of the rate-payers of such division to be held, after fourteen days previous notice given and published in such form and manner as the commissioners shall direct, at some place within the division to be named in such notice, at which meeting the guardian of the division, or if there be more than one, such one of the guardians present as shall have been first named in the return for such electoral division, and, in the absence of any such guardian, some rate-payer to be elected by the majority present at the meeting, shall be chairman; and if at any such meeting the majority in value of the rate-payers present shall agree to and sign an application to the commissioners for the raising of a rate to assist emigration, it shall be lawful for the commissioners from time to time, by orders under their seal, to direct the guardians to raise such sums as the commissioners shall think requisite for assisting emigration, such sums not to exceed in any one year one shilling in the pound upon the net annual value of the rateable property of such division; and the sums in such orders mentioned shall be raised by the guardians by a rate under this Act on such division, or by a charge on the future rates of such division, so that one fifth at least of the whole sums so to be raised under any such order shall be paid in the first and each subsequent year until the whole shall be discharged; and the sums so raised shall be applied, under the directions of the commissioners, by the guardians of the union, in conducting or assisting and in defraying the expences connected with the emigration to British colonies of poor persons resident in such division.
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