View report page

53
forward, if the principle involved in the present Bill shall receive the sanction
of the Legislature, and they view with the deepest apprehension the
large amount of additional taxation which will consequently be imposed on
the already very heavily taxed Metropolitan Parishes.
That your petitioners are justified in this apprehension by the terms of a
Report presented to the Metropolitan Board of Works by the Committee
on Works and Improvements, on applications for parks and open spaces in
the districts of Bermondsey, Hampstead, and Finsbury, dated the 13th day
of January last, from which it appears that the estimated cost of providing
the said three parks will amount to the sum of £500,000, but which your
petitioners believe will in point of fact far exceed that amount.
That your petitioners respectfully beg to remind your Honourable House
that the local taxes in the Metropolitan Parishes are already very heavy,
and that the extra taxation which must be resorted to in carrying out the
Main Drainage scheme, and other urgent and necessary works for which the
Metropolitan Board was originally constituted, must inevitably be very
large; and if to this is to be added the burden of providing parks for all the
crowded Metropolitan districts, great injury and inconvenience must be
occasioned to the ratepayers, and essential works of local improvement will
be greatly limited and retarded, if not altogether stopped.
That the assessments to meet the expenses of additional parks, if levied
in the manner proposed by the present Bill, will be oppressive, and calculated
to injure the value of all house property in the Metropolis, except in
the districts immediately benefitted, which will thus have their value augmented
at the expense of the ratepayers at large; and your petitioners urge
this consideration on your Honourable House the more strenuously that
the pressure of local taxation is even now found to have the effect of driving
great numbers of the inhabitants to seek a residence beyond the Metropolitan
boundary, thus throwing a great deal of property either out of occupation
altogether, or causing it to be let at greatly reduced rents.
That your petitioners submit that it is unjust to tax the ratepayers of
remote districts for the establishment of a park from which they can derive
no benefit whatever; and that if from the great increase of population, or
other causes, new parks and open spaces are required in the Metropolis,
these should be provided at the National expense, in the same manner as
the existing parks have been provided, or if not exclusively at the cost of
the nation, then partly by the nation and partly by the district or districts
immediately benefitted.
That in any view it is altogether premature to propose the establishment
of a park for Finsbury, or elsewhere, in the manner proposed by the present
Bill, until the important and expensive works of general drainage and
Metropolitan improvement, now in progress and contemplated, shall have
been provided for, and the amount of taxation which these works involve
has been definitively ascertained, when, as your petitioners believe, it will
be found that any further increase of the local burdens would be intolerable
and oppressive.
Your petitioners therefore humbly pray that the said Bill may
not pass into a law, and that they may be heard by themselves,
their counsel, agents, and witnesses against the preamble and
whole clauses thereof, and that such amendments may be made