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tants, ancl representing nearly half the value of the metropolis,
were governed by bodies self-elected, or elected for
life, or both, and under no responsibility to the ratepayers.
"The results, as a matter of course," says an accepted
authority, "included enormous expenditure, extravagant
waste, perpetual conflicts of jurisdiction, and an absolute
want, all the while, of anything approaching to efficient
municipal administration."
Among the many objections with which the Bill was
met, it was contended that unprofessional men, such as
vestrymen, could never satisfactorily superintend works
which, like sewerage and drainage, demanded special
qualifications ; but the argument lost much of its force
when the promoter of the Bill informed the House that in
one case the official surveyor was a tailor, and in another a
law stationer.
When Sir Benjamin Hall took office on the 12th August,
1854,there was,as he subsequently assured the House,"hardly
an inspector in the whole of the metropolis, and he had the
greatest possible difficulty in making some of the Boards
appoint inspectors." In demonstrating the necessity for
some such reform as the Metropolis Local Management Bill
was designed to effect, the same statesman adduced it as a
regular fact that in Westminster all the limits of the
parishes and the boundaries of the different jurisdictions
were in the middle of the streets, so that while one side or
half of the street was paved by one authority, the opposite
side was paved by another. Constant quarrels arose between
the different Commissioners from this circumstance. There
was one great thoroughfare (in Westminster) where the
centre of the road was under one head so far as regarded
the paving, but the lighting and watering, unfortunately
for the inhabitants, rested with two other Boards, one on
the north and the other on the south. These two Boards
disagreed'—one saying, "We will have the watering done in
the morning," and the other, "We will have it done in the