Page:The government of London.djvu/20

 ." As contrasted with the aggregate power and work of the vestries, it is perhaps enough to note that while the total outlay by the latter is about two millions and a half, the expenditure of the Board last year was £3,341,592, of which above two millions was supplied by loan chargeable on future rates. The funded debt of the metropolis, after deducting assets, is now £11,665,047, which has been raised on easy terms, and without which, or an intolerable increase of present taxation, it would have been impossible to attempt works so varied and so vast as those we have seen completed. The true check upon indefinite and improvident expansion of the funded debt will be found in adherence to the legitimate limits originally assigned to the Board; and which its best friends will ever deprecate any temptation to overpass. It was not set up to compete with public money in speculative or commercial undertakings with joint-stock companies, still less to agglomerate such as already exist for the making of gas, the supply of water, the organization of traffic, or the dealing in any other want or commodity for the public at large. Once entered on the illimitable field of money-making enterprise, the temptation to mortgage the resources of the future would be irresistible, whenever plausible invention or the glittering promise of unprecedented profit should happen to mislead the majority for the time being. For public trustees it is bad enough to compete with private capitalists; to take over their investment and goodwill and risk, without the preservative check of direct self-interest, is infinitely worse. The great body of metropolitan ratepayers, though they watch jealously the augmentation of liabilities incurred in their name, do not grudge what they recognize as fairly within the proper province of the Board. In May, 1879, there was a further issue of consolidated stock to the extent of £2,150,000, which, owing to the credit at which it stood in the market, realized £2,181,451; and why? Because it was understood that "this money was applicable only to special improvements and other purposes sanctioned by Parliament: toll bridges, £500,000; Artisans' Dwellings, £300,000; street improvements, £787,000; loans to local authorities, £538,000; and the remainder for the fire brigade and open spaces."