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49
On the opening of the Inquiry, the Parish of St. James was,
concerned in only two competing Companies:—The London
Electric Supply Corporation, and the Metropolitan Electric
Supply Company; the Westminster Electric Supply Corporation
withdrew St. James's from their proposed area of supply
the St. James's and Pall Mall Company were already
established under a licence, and the applications by other
Companies for licences could not proceed because the Vestry
withheld their consent.
The Vestry had already agreed terms with the Metropolitan
Company (formerly the South Metropolitan Company),
so that beyond watching the proceedings with regard to that
Company, in order to see that the advantages gained by
negotiation and embodied in their draft Bill were not lost,
there only remained to consider the attitude which the
London Electric Supply Corporation would adopt at the
Inquiry, for up to that time they had not in terms assented
to a single amendment suggested by the Vestry, On the
Inquiry being opened, Mr. Pember, the counsel lor the
Company, adopted the Vestry's objections as typical of most
of the objections of the local authorities generally, and
treated them in a somewhat hostile spirit. Lord Crawford,
Chairman of the Company, in his evidence, declined to entertain
one of the most important of these objections, that
relating to overhead wires, saying, in effect, that although
willing that the Order should not authorize overhead wires—
which the law itself enacts—he intended to rely upon his
"common law rights" to suspend wires overhead, if he
required them, and that he absolutely declined to come
under any obligation to remove existing wires, although he
stated, at a later period, that he would prefer to lay his mains
underground as a general practice.
D