OBSERVATIONS. (Hansard, 1 March 1861)

§ SIR JOHN SHELLEY
said, he wished to add a word to what had been said on the subject of the Thames Embankment. He had been a Member of the Committee of last year, and he did not understand that Committee to recommend that the Metropolitan Board of Works should merely have the raising of the money to pay for the Thames embankment. His own opinion was that if the ratepayers and inhabitants of London were to pay for the embankment of the Thames the sole responsibility of its construction should be left in their hands. His experience of Government interference was not such as to lead him to wish for it on-'the present occasion. The appointment of a Royal Commission had taken him completely unawares, but when he saw how the Commission was constituted he was more astonished still. It was impossible that the Lord Mayor of London, who was named Chairman of the Commission, could give to the subject the attention which it deserved, inasmuch as his duties in the City were sufficient to occupy fully the whole of his time. The next name on the Commission was that of the Chairman of the Metropolitan Board of Works himself. There 1232 could be no doubt that Mr. Thwaites had enough to do at present, and that he had committed a great mistake in consenting to become a Member of the Commission. It would have been far better if he had remained independent of the Commission, so that when the subject came before his own Board, he might have been able to express an unbiassed opinion. The composition of the Commission generally was such that he doubted whether its Report would carry much weight with it, or prevent the whole subject from being reopened.

§ MR. LOCKE
said, he presumed that the Royal Commission was to select some plan for the embankment of the Thames. He agreed with his hon. Friend who spoke last, that neither the Lord Mayor of London, who had been a member of the Metropolitan Board of Works, nor the present chairman of that Board, should have been placed upon that Commission. The Government would have done far better if they had selected some engineers or architects in whom they could have reposed confidence. It was true that there were professional men on the Commission, but they would be overruled to a certain extent by the other Commissioners. He also thought that if the Government were going to exercise their taste in the embankment of the Thames they ought to do what was done by those private individuals who indulged in articles of vertu—pay for them out of their own pockets. The ratepayers, it seemed, were to pay the whole expense, and yet the Government were to select the plan. Now, they might select an extraordinarily expensive one; and, on the other hand, the Metropolitan Board of Works might choose to have some regard for the pockets of their constituents. If the Government did select a handsome plan—and he had great confidence in the taste of the Chief Commissioner of Works—they ought to make some provision for obtaining the necessary funds. He could not agree with the hon. and learned Member for the Tower Hamlets that the whole matter should be left in the hands of the Metropolitan Board of Works. Up to the present moment that Board had effected no one object that had been intrusted to them. The only thing they had done was to open up a little street leading from the corner of King Street, Covent Garden, into Long Acre; but even that street was not completed, because a house had been left standing which projected into the roadway. The Board had received £94,000 to make 1233 an improvement in Southward, which, if it had been carried out, would to a certain extent have rendered unnecessary the expenditure of a large sum of money upon the embankment of the Thames; he meant the opening of a street from High Street in the Borough to Stamford Street, making a wide road along the south side of the Thames, and thus relieving the great thoroughfares on the other side of the river. Nothing had been done by the Board beyond pulling down some very valuable property in High Street, where for eighteen months a great chasm had existed, and the householders in the neighbourhood complained that they were saddled with heavier rates in consequence of that property having been destroyed, as it seemed, for no purpose whatever. He was not disposed to intrust the embankment of the Thames to a body which had been so neglectful of its duty.

§ MR. CONINGHAM
said, he was glad that the Government had undertaken the great work of the Thames embankment. The great thoroughfares on the north bank of the river were becoming every day more and more encumbered, and he was convinced that unless something were done to relieve the pressure great public inconvenience would arise. He thought the Metropolitan Board of Works could not be intrusted with an operation of such magnitude and importance as the embankment of the Thames.