Metropolitan water supply, present and future ; in four letters to the "Daily News" newspaper / by John Loude Tabberner.

  • Tabberner, John Loude
Date:
1850
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Metropolitan water supply, present and future ; in four letters to the "Daily News" newspaper / by John Loude Tabberner. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.

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    constituted commissions as I have suggested to ad- minister the water service. I would be distinctly understood, in making these few remarks, as supporting literal local government over all institutioiis requiring for their support and conduct direct local rates ; for I contend that as the inhabitants pay for all such administrations, they are entitled to have a direct voice in the expenditure thereof; and if the control of such exjDenditure be solely vested in an irresponsible power to the rate- payers themselves, I further contend that in such an instituted power is perpetrated an unconstitutional infraction of the civil privileges of the public. I am aware the received supposition is, that no irre- sponsible power can exist under our constitution,— that through parliament all commissions appointed by the government are made responsible to the people,—and in such sense, in fact, is the political acceptance of such commissions; but, literally speaking, and indeed in a practical sense, commis- sions so appointed by the government to administer local affairs are irresponsible to those directly and immediately affected by their acts. So indirect, so remote, is the responsibility of such commissions to the rate-payers that it is not only understood as a matter of course to be, but really is, merely nominal. I also earnestly maintain that it has been, and, while England is naturally great within herself, ever will be, through our local institutions that the constitution of our common country derives its civil strength and political power: to destroy, impair, or circumscribe those local institutions,
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