Page:The government of London.djvu/21

 The central authority has in fact become the banker of the local boards, as well as the arbiter between them and any of their constituents who may think themselves aggrieved. Its other administrative functions are diversified and important, and their discharge, notwithstanding the activity of an efficient staff, is oftentimes extremely onerous. It would be vain to expect that eligible and independent men would be found to perform the executive duties now laid upon them in the way they ought to be fulfilled, if in addition thereto were super-added those of daily municipal government, or the far less compatible cares of any great commercial enterprise. Representative centralism, thus expanded beyond its natural bounds and proportions, would degenerate into a clumsy and dangerous motive power of functionaryism which it must keep in motion, but which it could have no power to direct or control. The same objection to a great extent applied to any hybrid board formed of delegates from Berkeley House and Guildhall to superintend, for they could not administer, in the true sense of the term, any of the great concerns in which the inhabitants of the metropolis at large are interested.

Upon the vestries and district boards devolved, under the Act of 1855 and successive statutes, the paving, cleansing, and lighting of streets, house drainage, repression of nuisances, intra-parochial improvements, inspection of bakehouses, dairies, drinking fountains, common lodging-houses, free libraries, artisans' dwellings, baths and washhouses, mortuaries, places for disinfection of furniture or clothing, analysis of food, and the care of gardens and open spaces; and for the carrying out of these manifold duties, powers of borrowing from public or private sources subject to the veto of the Metropolitan Board were legally conferred. It would have been miraculous, considering the wide disparity of condition in the communities out of which these primary schools of self-government were formed, and the utterly dissimilar proportion which their varied duties bore to one another in different places, if they had been found equally efficient or blameless. In the mere rate of expenditure and pay of necessary staff there has been, as was to be expected, great diversity, and in some instances startling contrasts. Some vestries availed themselves largely of their borrowing powers, applied the money to incontestably useful purposes, and steadily took measures for promptly and