Cabinet, remained throughout obdurately mute, and that during the oft-renewed discussion of details not a sentence of approval is recorded from the lips of Sir J. Graham, Mr. Cobden, Mr. Bright, Mr. Disraeli, or Mr. Gladstone. In the Lords, more than one grave misgiving found utterance, but no division took place. Lord Derby objected to a compulsory rule of uniformity in the mode of electing members of the central board, preferring that the traditional usages of each district should be allowed a salutary freedom of choice: he cited as an example the senate of the American Union, each of whose states was guaranteed by the Federal pact the right to nominate its two representatives in the way it thought best, and not according to any arbitrary method to which it had been unaccustomed. Practically there was true wisdom in permitting a diversity which would enable them to try by the experience of comparison what was the best method of selection. But grinding to a level was the order of the day, and without further alteration the measure became law.
The central Board of Works, called into existence by the Act of 1855, was destined to falsify many of the predictions hazarded regarding it. Allowed to choose its own chairman, and to make bye-laws for its own procedure, it wisely eschewed from the outset every pretension to guide or govern public opinion in questions not strictly within its province. The fewness of its members contributed greatly to form and to confirm the habit of adhering closely to matters of business, and treating every proposed deviation from the plain track of duty, not only as a waste of time to be reprehended, but a breach of order to be resisted peremptorily and without debate. A numerous assembly, however chosen, would have been more easily beguiled into philanthropic platitude, suggestive illustration, plausible digression, and at length undisguised rhetoric. In its exemplary abstinence, under all temptations to sin in these respects, the Metropolitan Board has consistently proved itself worthy of all praise. Breaking with the traditions of failure that encompassed its immediate predecessor, the Commission of Sewers, it set about the great work of arterial drainage specifically assigned to it, and carried the enterprise to completion within a reasonable time. That done, it undertook the northern embankment of the Thames,
