The new Lord Mayor of London, Mr. Alderman Stone, was
sworn in on the 7th inst., and at the evening banquet took occa- sion to denounce the " West-end threatenings " the City had received. The Corporation, he said, had great pleasure in being- an example, but it was an example to be imitated, not destroyed. The City is clearly going to resist Lord ElCho's Bill, and the Metropolitan Board is by no means too favour- able to it, while Earl Fortescue has written to express the old Whig dislike of any Ruch scheme. He says plainly that a Municipality for all London would be dangerous to the independence of Parliament, would leave the Houses, and the Sovereign, and the Bank at its mercy. That fear is undoubtedly well founded, if the new Council is to have the powers of the Council of Liverpool or Manchester ; but we are not yet convinced that the danger, though it is real, could not be avoided by vesting certain powers in the Home Secretary. It is quite clear, how- ever, that nothing will be done at present, or until there is a much stronger body of opinion in favour of a scheme which makes statesmen of both parties wince and recoil. The Tory journals, we see, are in favour of the old idea of making the electoral boroughs municipalities, and vesting in their Councils the powers of the numerous local Boards now existing. That scheme is reasonable enough, but it does not create a London ; and the Councils, unless federated, would fight like English parishes under the old Poor Law, or Railway Boards before they deckled to plunder the public instead of each other.
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