OCR Text |
Show LONDON IMPROVEMENTS. The Metropolitan board of works hi'3 now jurisdiction over 115 square miles of land, upon which dwell a population of 3,.")i;jt0OJ people in 451,74- houses. The board has been in existence for twenty-one years, and it has done a vast amount of work of the utmost importance and value. The complete drainage of tho whole metropolitan diatiict has been accomplished accom-plished by it; it has built the magniti-cent magniti-cent embankments on the l iver, un-t un-t qualh d in the world, at a cost ol i;2,403,Cu'J; it has provided parks, gardens and open spaces, many of them very beaotilnl, at the coat nf :il:i.t;ai; it lmj Uiin a great number of new and handsome streets and is A building others; it has almost transformed old London and changed it I rum an ugly and ill-pUnned city into a really handsome and delightful metropolis. Strange to say, the board has done all this iu such a way that it now lias a debt of only i.'J,l.j,'JSo, and this debt embraces also the coal of large improvements now being carried car-ried on involving an expenditure of :;, 000,000. The tax levied by the board this year will lie a little over ljj. in the pound (4. (id), which will rai?e the sum ot 441,079. The board will also receive 23;i,000 from the coal ami wine dues of the city of London, Lon-don, which are now paid over to it. Sir Charles Dilke has recently written a paper on the taxation of Paris, iwtiicli shows that tilings are belter doco in London than in the French capital. Tlie Parisians are chargtd in local taxation 4 a head, and Ihi is independent of taxation for the general government. New York World. |