We are happy to perceive that Londoners, after years of
patient submission to plunder, are at last beginning to complain loudly of the gas companies. The directors of those establishments know perfectly, well that gas is supplied in Plymouth at 2s. 9d. per 1,000 feet, yet having a monopoly, they sell us a sulphurous red vapour which spoils pictures, rots books, blackens silver, and poisons invalids, at nearly double that sum. The agitation for their extinction, however, to be successful should take an organized form. Let every man in London worried by their rapacity- and ignorance, that is, the whole population, petition, speak, and agitate in favour of transferring the monopoly to the Metropolitan Board -of Works. Then if they get bad gas they will have low rates, and the vestries can insist on their representatives improving the manu- facture. Mere complaints are of no use. We must enlist the selfishness of a great corporation, or the selfishness of the little corporations will defeat us.
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