Page:A thousand years hence. Being personal experiences (IA thousandyearshen00gree).djvu/34

 He instanced the crying case of the thorough resanitation of London, which had hitherto been attempted, with such utter inefficiency, by private enterprise, and latterly, but hardly to much better purpose, by the Board of Works. During any thirty years of this century, the complete sanitary reconstruction might have been accomplished, and the cost entirely covered by the rise of value in the interval.

Yellowly's view, in this important direction, was, that the State should undertake the larger works of such progress, and that this would be done too without involving the country in any public debt or direct liability. He was opposed to national debts, as serious hindrances to progress, and gave us at times his ideas about reducing the interest of our present debt and finally extinguishing the principal. His plan for financing the great works in question was by "special trusts," such as that lately proposed in the abortive London Water Works scheme.

Then again, the "Parliamentary block," which rendered any great general progress, such as he contemplated, perfectly hopeless, even under the new prospect of the clôture, as well as anything else in the old ordinary way, he proposed to remove bodily, by substituting for viva voce debate a special parliamentary publication of written views. In this way he thought that opinions and views would be expressed more freely and generally, as well as more calmly and carefully than before, while measure after measure could be quietly, but with all due expedition, told off as the public needs required. As Yellowly was still in the prime of life, and already something of a leading man in his union, and amongst his class, I hardly