Page:United States Statutes at Large Volume 3.djvu/627



nuisances; to establish night watches or patrols, and erect lamps in the streets; to preserve the navigation of the Potomac and Anacostia rivers adjoining the city; to erect, repair, and regulate, public wharves, and to deepen creeks, docks, and basins; to regulate the manner of erecting, and the rates of wharfage, at private wharves; to regulate the stationing, anchorage, and mooring of vessels; to provide for licensing, taxing, and regulating, auctions, retailers, ordinaries, and taverns, hackney carriages, wagons, carts, and drays, pawn-brokers, venders of lottery tickets, money-changers, and hawkers and pedlars; to provide for licensing, taxing, regulating, or restraining, theatrical or public shows and amusements; to restrain or prohibit tippling houses, lotteries, and all kinds of gaming: to regulate and establish markets; to erect and repair bridges; to open and keep in repair streets, avenues, lanes, alleys, drains, and sewers, agreeably to the plan of the city, to supply the city with water; to provide for the safe-keeping of the standard weights and measures as fixed by Congress, and for the regulation of all weights and measures used in the city; to regulate the sweeping of chimneys, and fix the rates or fees therefor; to provide for the prevention and extinguishment of fires; to regulate the size of bricks to be made or used; and provide for the inspection of lumber and other building materials to be sold in the city; to regulate, with the approbation of the President of the United States, the manner of erecting, and the materials to be used in the erection, of houses; to regulate the inspection of tobacco, flour, butter, and lard, in casks or boxes, and salted provisions; to regulate the gauging of casks and liquors; the storeage of gunpowder, and all naval and military stores, not the property of the United States; and the weight and quality of bread; to impose and appropriate fines, penalties, and forfeitures, for the breach of their laws or ordinances; and to provide for the appointment of inspectors, constables, and such other officers, as may be necessary to execute the laws of the corporation.

. And be it further enacted, That the said corporation shall have full power and authority to lay taxes on particular wards, parts, or sections, of the city, for their particular local improvements; and, upon application of the owners of more than one half of the property upon any portion of a street, to cause the curb-stones to be set, and the footways to be paved, on such portion of a street, and to lay a tax on such property, to the amount of the expense thereof: Provided, That such tax shall not exceed three dollars per front foot; and, upon a like application to cause the carriage-way of any portion of a street to be paved, or lamps to be erected therein, and light the same, and lay a tax, not exceeding the whole expense thereof, in due proportion, on the lots fronting on such portion of a street; and, also, to impose an addition or interest on the amounts of any such taxes, not exceeding ten per centum per annum, when the same shall not have been paid within thirty days after the same shall have become due. The said corporation shall also have power and authority to provide for the establishment and superintendence of public schools, and to endow the same; to establish and erect hospitals or pest-houses, watch and work-houses, houses of correction, penitentiary, and other public buildings, and to lay and collect taxes for the expenses thereof; to regulate party or other walls and fences, and to determine by whom the same shall be kept in repair; to cause new alleys to be opened through the squares, and to extend those already laid out, upon the application of the owners of more than one half the property in such squares: Provided, That the damages which may accrue thereby, to any individual or individuals, shall be first ascertained by a jury, to be summoned and impannelled by the marshal or the District of Columbia, (and it is hereby made his duty to summon and impannel the same, in all such cases, upon application to him in writing by the mayor of the city,) and such