after a more or less protracted term of years, successfully carried through, free of any ultimate cost.
We did not, indeed, keep quite strictly, in every case, to where the sure "unearned increment of value" of the real estate was ultimately to clear all costs. Some of these special great national works were adventured upon under more ordinary prospects as to final reimbursement; as when the bold but successful and convenient project was taken up of concentrating all the public offices in one grand and commodious edifice, reared upon the less crowded space, at the time, just a little outside the metropolis. The costs in this case were met, partly by sale of the superseded offices in their too crowded but valuable sites, and partly by the increasing fees and rentals of the future, as I shall have presently more fully to tell. And, again, when the State took in hand the inauguration of a great national theatre, and other such works, of a kind which private enterprise was not ready for, or not disposed to try in the way most desirable or beneficial, we would, in such cases, group the several results under one trust, with its better promise of a successful average. But any such works were exceptionally few, and only the occasional subjects of the special trust system. The regular field lay rather in those works which repaid first cost by the reliable future rise of value in the nation's real estate, through the certain advance of the people, in numbers, in science and commerce, and in wealth.
The first great step in this direction—in the regular road, so to say, of these special trusts—was the ever famous resanitation, or rather sanitary reconstruc-
