When on Tuesday the London County Council resumed its sittings
after the Easter recess, the Chairman took the oppor- tunity to review the work of the past year. Dealing with the doings of the Committees, he remarked incidentally that the Chairmen, except in the case of "the Finance and any. other important Committee," ought to be changed each year, —a declaration which, if carried out, would in our opinion be fatal to anything like sound administration. The Working Classes Committee, which was congratulated upon having taken time for due consideration, has, it appears, decided to imitate the system of common lodging-houses adopted in Glasgow. The most visible work accomplished was that of the Parks Committee, which has begun to experience the benefits derived from the unity of London. The millionaires would not give to Highgate or Clapham, but are apparently going to prove as liberal to the Metropolis as a whole as they are to the great provincial towns. Last year the Council received as gifts, Myatt's Fields (containing fourteen and a half acres) and £10,000 for laying them out, and Waterlow Park (thirty acres), with 26,000 for maintenance,—open spaces forming no mean addition to the permanent lungs of London. The Asylums Committee has had to grapple with the neces- sity for a terrific outlay,—half-a-million is now being spent on the Clubury building, and yet the Committee is about to ask for another Asylum. The sewage question remains as per- plexing as ever, and was described as "probably the greatest problem" with which the Council has to deal. Apologising for his review of the year's work, Lord Rosebery used a remarkably felicitous illustration.. "The members," he said, "were like miners working in different galleries of a mine. They all met in the open air at fixed intervals, but of each other's daily work they were, many of them, more or less ignorant."
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