SECOND READING. (Hansard, 10 July 1861)

§ MR. TITE
said, he rose to move the second reading of this Bill.

§ MR. LOCKE
said, he rose to order. When the Bill was last before the House, he was counted out while speaking on the Motion for the second reading. He submitted, therefore, that the debate was an adjourned debate, and that he was in possession of the House.

§ MR. SPEAKER:
If, as the hon. and learned Gentleman states, the House was counted out, that does not make the debate an adjourned debate.

§ MR. TITE
said, he would then proceed to explain the objects of the Bill, which had received the assent of all the local bodies in the Metropolis, and also of the Select Committee to which it was referred last Session. The Bill was originally introduced at the close of the Session of 1859, it was then printed and circulated; after much discussion and many amendments late in the Session of last year he again introduced it, and it virtually passed this House, nothing remaining but the third reading, when, owing to the lateness of the Session, he was obliged to withdraw it. The Bill he now presented was word for word the Bill of last year, and was principally intended to amend the Act of 1855, by which the Metropolitan Board of Works was established, but it would not give to the Board any new powers. Under the old system of the Commissions of Sewers two large sums were borrowed and spent on the drainage of the Metropolis. The first, amounting to £200,000, was to 683 be repaid in 1865. The second amounted to pound;142,000. Of that sum pound;42,000 had been paid off, and the remaining pound;100,000, as the law now stood, was to be paid in certain proportions by certain parishes in the Metropolitan district. Those proportions were felt to be unequal and unjust, but the proper time for discussing that question would be when Bill No. 2 was brought under the consideration of the House. The Bill before them was also intended to give a remedy against any parish which refused to collect the drainage rates made by the Board. As the law now stood the money required for main drainage, or any large arterial drainage, was to be obtained by sending a precept to the vestries or district boards. The precept was sent by them to their overseers; and if they neglected to obey it the Metropolitan Board had no immediate remedy. The parish of St. George's Hanover Square, had refused to allow its own collector to get in the drainage rates imposed by the Board, and the Board was put to the trouble of having to send their own collector to get in the rates from that parish. The Metropolitan Board of Works had been charged with neglect of its duties. What were the facts? The Board had seventy miles of drainage to construct, of which forty-five had been commenced. No less a sum than about pound;500,000 had been expended, and he had the authority of the engineer of the Board for stating that in two years the Metropolis would be relieved from the greater portion of the drainage which now fell into the Thames. Another great work in-trusted to them was the making of a new street from the vicinity of the terminus of the South-Eastern Railway to Stamford Street. It was a work of enormous difficulty; but it was now nearly finished; and the street had been constructed with a subway over the sewer so as entirely to obviate the necessity of taking up the pavements. He believed that so extensive a business had never been conducted in so short a time by any public body either in the City of London or in Paris. Besides this, there were other streets they had to make, one in connection with Victoria Park, and another from St. Martin's Lane towards the Strand. These works involved an immense amount of labour, and it could not, therefore, be justly alleged that the Metropolitan Board had neglected their duties. The new offices, which had been called a palace, had cost only pound;14,000, and were really less expensive in the nett than the alterations 684 which must have been made at Greek Street, and when also there was not sufficient space for the wants of the public. The Bill before the House, as he had said, gave them no new powers; it simply sought to explain and amend the powers they possessed. The provisions were really intended for the benefit of the whole Metropolis, and not to oppress the ratepayers in any particular. He begged to move that the Bill be read a second time.

§ MR. LOCKE
complained that a Bill of such magnitude, comprising 116 clauses, and involving the interests of 3,000,000 of Her Majesty's subjects, should be brought forward at so late a period of the Session, to be discussed in so thin a House. He would not say it was monstrous as regarded the Metropolis, but as concerned his own constituents it was most inconvenient. Such a measure demanded a full and scrutinizing consideration. The constitution of the Board of Works was eminently vicious, and before they came to that House for extended powers they ought to have reformed their own constitution. They could not enjoy the confidence of the Metropolis unless they were elected directly by the ratepayers. In the Select Committee upon the local taxation of the Metropolis the Chairman of the Board, Mr. Thwaites, had been asked whether he thought any alteration should take place in the mode of electing its members—whether they should not be elected directly by the ratepayers rather than by the vestries, who, in nineteen cases out of twenty, selected their own members to represent them, but he had declined to give any opinion on the subject. Other members, however, were examined, and their opinion decidedly was that the Board would be more efficient, and enjoy greater confidence if directly elected by the ratepayers. Constituted as the Board now was, he had no confidence in it. The Bill as it went before the Select Committee last Session consisted of the two Bills, No. 1 and No. 2; but the Committee had struck out the clauses which now constituted No. 2 Bill; and the hon. Member for Bath, not satisfied with the decision of the Select Committee, had revived those rejected clauses and constituted them into a second Bill. What was called the Rock Loan and other loans by the 118th Section of the Metropolis 685 Local Management Act, had been settled on the same principle as under the General Sewers Act, the 13 & 14 Vict., certain burdens being imposed on particular parishes; but the Metropolitan Board of Works, actuated by the trumpery spirit of the select vestries from which they sprang, sought unfairly, unjustly, and contrary to the law to double the liabilities of his constituents. That was the real object of No. 2 Bill. He would, therefore, oppose both Bills. The hon. Member for Bath was, in that respect, running directly counter to the decision of the Select Committe of last Session; and the borough of Southwark did not choose to suffer their interests to be compromised by this trick.