sham. The temptation to reckless expenditure will neither be curbed by the shareholding interest of a joint-stock company nor the ratepaying interest of a local corporation, nor the union of both in one, as in Manchester or Birmingham.
To do him justice, the late Home Secretary seems to have shrunk from the invidious task of subjecting the property and people of the metropolis to the unbridled rule of a mere government board. If their rates were to be mortgaged for the supposed advantage of buying out the eight companies at a capital sum of thirty-four millions, he felt that they were at least entitled to a representative voice in the management of the affair; and his bill was. therefore framed for the constitution of a hybrid board composed of delegates from the Board of Works and the City Corporation, as well as three functionaries with high salaries named by the Crown. Practically, however, this device would have resulted merely in a consultative body resembling in its inability to originate, veto, or control, the Indian Council whose members are allowed the luxury of dignified discussion in tranquil times, and permitted to explain their ideas in confidential essays when the wind from the east is stormy, but who have no more power to take the reins out of the hands of the Secretary of State than the inside passengers in a mail-coach had to interfere with their driver. On they must go, whatever road he chooses to take, and at whatever pace he chooses to drive, certain only, if they call out of the windows that they are very uneasy, to be jeered at for their pains. As the bill was not discussed before the Dissolution, and was not reintroduced afterwards, it is needless to dwell on its specific characteristics. The report of the select committee points to a different constitution of Metropolitan Water Trust, recommending likewise, indeed, the sending of delegates by the City Corporation and the Metropolitan Board as well as representatives of certain suburban districts not comprehended within the jurisdiction of either; and omitting all mention of salaried Crown functionaries. Whether these last be added or omitted is a question of secondary importance. That of primary consequence is whether a central Water Trust elective in name or reality must not be regarded as the first story of a unified municipal edifice for the whole of London.
