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 intention to make the best of the present sources of supply, and to improve them as much as possible, without contemplating any of the projects for a supply from other channels, the immediate results of the transfer would be a considerable reduction of proposed expenditure for new works; an increase of net income from the consolidation of establishments; the better collection of rates at a lower percentage; and the new rates to be received from owners of houses who do not now take water from the companies."

Here is the stark naked theory of central absorption, as opposed to municipal self-rule, according to the latest version. The consuming (and non-consuming) public were to be alike taken in and done for without consent or opportunity to object, like the ignorant natives of a Polynesian island, or the abject ryots of some newly annexed jaghire of Hindostan. What signify the rights, prejudices, wants, or capacities of four millions of people inhabiting the "province covered with houses" that Sir George Lewis thought it was high time to endue with corporate privileges many years ago? True, they were citizens of no mean cities, that in the last fifty years have sent to Parliament a greater number of eminent men than any twenty towns municipally enfranchised —true they possess fixed property liable to yearly local taxation greater than all the corporate cities of Yorkshire and Lancashire taken together. True, they include in their muster-roll during more than half the year a large majority of the eminent physicians, advocates, jurists, men of letters, opulent merchants, eminent artists, rich bankers, landed gentry, and hereditary nobles of the realm. The insatiable greed of centralism desires to oust them from the management of their own affairs. What can they know about water or gas compared with half a dozen deputy-assistant commissaries, sitting in big back rooms in Whitehall, with ten times more to do than there are hours in the day to enable a hundred of them to understand it, or days enough in the year to enable them to dispose of it patiently or properly?

Economies in management are the ever-ready pretexts