* * * * You might say that here was
a salient example of the superiority of individual effort, if it were not that another municipality in the North-West has gone, if not one better, one as good. Southport was fired by the Shrewsbury example ; and Southport is one of the few towns where the municipality is everything. It has its own municipal golf-courses, among other luxuries, and has so skilfully managed its various businesses that it claims to have reduced the rates beyond precedent. Some hold that the town would have been by this time almost rate-free, if it had not been hampered by that stupidest of all Government restrictions, which forbade a municipality to buy land unless it could show immediate need. Many critics grew gloomy at the threat of a municipal flower show and felt themselves justified when money was lost at the first venture.