Sir John Lubbock on Tuesday made an address in the
London County Council on that body's finance. Broadly, the Council now owes £17,045,000—the whole debt of London being nearly 240,000,000—its annual expenditure is 22,844,000, and it imposes on London a rate of 11.75d., or, say roughly, a shilling in the pound. This is not- excessive, but it must be remembered that London is also taxed by the School Board and the Vestries; so that the total taxation, though it differs in every locality, is seldom less than 5s. in the pound. The Council, moreover, like the School Board, has a tendency to magnificence, would like to buy up the water and gas supply, has pledged itself more or less to spend a million on one road under the Thames, and has on hand at least one dangerously costly philanthropic plan, the ex- tinction of slums. It has tried one experiment already, the reform of the Boundary Street area in Bethnal Green; and the Chairman, with satiric simplicity of statement, thus sum- marises the result:—' I may call the attention of the Council to the fact that the amount already spent under the Acts is 21,011,000, and the number of persons housed for that great expenditure is only 30,500, while there is no annual income, the 21,011,000 being the difference between the price paid for the property and that for which it was resold, so that it is an absolute loss." There are Iwo it-pared and sevenly "insanitary -areas " under consideration for the same kind of treatment, so the ratepayers will understand what to expect.
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