Artisans' Dwellings Improvement Act, and borrowing at the three and a half per cent rate, the corporation has already purchased for the sum of seven million five hundred thousand dollars the area covered by all the vilest habitations in the borough. The act empowers the municipal authorities to pull down, but not to re-erect. The private individuals, however, to whom the corporation may convey a title, will have to rebuild under conditions conformable to the health of the community and to the special convenience of the working-class. It need surprise no one if Mr. Chamberlain be yet found to have been a better sort of Haussman to Birmingham.
Nor are the daring schemes of this municipal innovator yet exhausted. Not content with giving the people light, water, and wholesome dwellings, he is the author of a scheme to make them the proprietors of their own public-houses; and, from the favorable manner in which the Lords' Committee on Intemperance have spoken of his proposals, it is not at all unlikely that Parliament will permit the capital of the midlands to make the experiment which her ex-mayor desires.
What he proposes is, that the corporation should possess itself of all the public-houses in Birmingham,—some eighteen hundred in number,—the owners having first been expropriated on a scale of compensation fixed by the legislature. Thereupon one thousand are to be abolished at a stroke, and the remainder equipped in such a manner as to supply all the legitimate wants of the community. And the scheme, he calculates, will pay, and pay well.
It has several obvious advantages. The servants of the corporation would, unlike the publicans, have no
