We are glad to see that in some of the
London Vestries a stir is being made against the discreditable practice of spending the rates in providing dinners for the Vestrymen and for their cus- tomers. At the Newington Vestry, on Wednesday, quite a tumult arose on the discussion of an item of £55 for a dinner, provided out of the resources of the ratepayers, for twenty vestrymen, with seven of their friends, and thirty-one farmers or brickmakers, who had bought the refuse of the parish. The defence offered was that such a dinner was a good advertisement of the refuse which the parish wanted to sell. But £55 spent on advertising, if that were desirable, would obviously do a great deal more in informing the public than any dinner of fifty or silty people could do. Municipal jobbery not only degrades municipal life, and keeps the better class of men out of it, but it necessarily renders municipal bodies grudging and jealous of anything like sound expenditure on great public objects,—everybody giving the municipal financiers credit for making away with twice as much money as they really need. Municipal jobbery not only breeds bad administration, but paralyses all healthy municipal pride as well.
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