and the state of the small thoroughfares, in Clerkenwell and Shoreditch for example, shows that leaseholders are not a class to he entrusted with the interests of the public, or even, when there is a need for generous consideration, with their own. The conduct of parochial affairs is left, however, to these little tradesmen, and to speculating builders, and a few surveyors and solicitors of the same inferior grade. These men, the lower quality of popular intelligence, promoted to transactions much beyond their usual experience and to duties far above their comprehension, are the local governments and administrators of the largest and most wealthy city in the world.
For more than forty years there has been lamentable want of a conservative, foreseeing care for public works in London. A full quarter of a century after the necessity for arterial drainage, for the Thames Embankment, and for the Holborn Viaduct, had been obvious to all the world, these works at length were undertaken; a whole generation having been denied the use of them, and left in needless danger and discomfort. Each work is, for a metropolis, an ordinary undertaking, save indeed in its excessive costliness and show. The Embankments are inferior in length to those of a provincial town in France, and yet they have been made to look absurdly self-important and pretentious. The new Viaduct is level, which is all that could be wanted; but besides it is a monument of coarse expensiveness, with a ridiculous pretence of patronage of art. The citizens of London make the Viaduct a demonstration of their wealth, and of their want of wit to use it.
Before the first Reform Bill, London and its environs received from every Government imperial and judicious care. It then was evidently understood that highways were a public need, and should be planned with forethought for extended local intercourse. On both sides of the Thames the town was girt by a succession of wide avenues, laid out with generous judgment, that refused to spoil a great improvement for the
