exist, or to buy them out and economically to take their places, if reasonable terms can be agreed upon. It will perhaps be time enough to discuss terms for a transfer and sale when the municipal trustees for the community who are to find the money are in a position to make a bidding or to receive one; meanwhile popular consideration had best be concentrated on the exact nature of the trust, and how it ought to be constituted. After all that has happened in the experimental history of metropolitan institutions, it is most desirable that we should have no more transitional expedients in local rule, but that the foundations should be laid whereon we may build permanently and securely not only for the wants of to-day, but for the time to come. To satisfy present weariness and impatience at the unsatisfactory state of things that now exists, it would not be difficult to put together a sub-department of the Local Government Board with a certain number of water trustees elected for form's sake by the people like poor-law guardians to come when summoned, sign their names in a book, listen to orders, and go home again; leaving the whole direction and management of another great branch of local taxation to the Government of the day. We know exactly what this hybrid system of responsibility without power, and power without responsibility, in local affairs comes to. We have seen the experiment tried out thoroughly, and we are now witnessing its results. Guardians of the poor have been gradually but steadily deprived of all power or discretion over the administration of relief; they are reduced to indignity and unimportance. They are representative in nothing any longer but the name; and if to-morrow the sham were swept away by an unpublished edict from Whitehall, neither rate- payers nor paupers would be conscious of the difference in any practical respect whatever.
It would be equally easy, were it thought politic, to create another central board by way of election, to whom might be confided the absolute control and guidance in all matters connected with water consumption and water supply. The Board of Works is such a body, and two years ago it was not only willing to undertake the task, but it actually went to great expense and trouble to lay before Parliament its views and calculations on the subject. From instinct not to be mistaken, though not easily to be explained, Parliament shied
