§ THE EARL OF MALMESBURYsaid, he wished to put a question to the noble Earl the President of the Council in reference to those alterations made in the piece of water in St. James's Park, which he had before brought under the notice of the noble Earl. Their Lordships would remember that on Friday night the noble Earl had founded his justification of those alterations principally, if not exclusively, on sanitary considerations, and he wished to know whether his noble Friend would have any objection to lay before the House any correspondence which might have taken place between the Board of Health and any other public department with respect to the sanitary condition of St. James's Park, or any official document that Board might have issued recommending such steps as those which had been taken in that quarter by Sir Benjamin Hall. It appeared from the reports published in the public press of the statement made by his noble Friend on Friday that Sir Benjamin Hall had received no authority from Parliament to carry out those changes. Now, if that right hon. Gentleman had acted in the matter on the Urgent recommendation of the Board of Health, such a fact would, no doubt, furnish a partial excuse for engaging in that work without the consent of Parliament, but would afford no ground for throwing the cost of the undertaking on the national exchequer. As the sanitary laws at present stood works similar to those going on in St. James's Park, were executed throughout England at the expense of the local proprietors. In the city of Salisbury, works of a precisely similar character had been constructed out of purely local rates, which amounted to not less than two-thirds of one year's rental of that city; and, in other places, the burden had fallen very heavily on the owners of property. He did not propose to go into the argument about the recreation of the people and the adornment of the metropolis—it would be childish to suppose that; he was not as much in favour of such things as anybody 381 else—but he wished to see the expense put on the proper footing, and if, as his noble Friend, the President of the Council was reported to have said, and no doubt correctly, these alterations were necessary on sanitary grounds, the expense ought to fall on the inhabitants of the metropolis, and not on the country generally. Sir Benjamin Hall seemed to have acted in that case from the mere exercise of his own judgment, and he (the Earl of Malmesbury) should be glad to know whether any communication had taken place between the right hon. Baronet and the Treasury, in order that their Lordships might ascertain whether the Treasury had given him any authority for following the course he had adopted.
§ EARL GRANVILLEsaid, he did not think that in his address of Friday last he had put the case for those improvements on mere sanitary grounds so exclusively as his noble Friend seemed to imagine. But he certainly did say that owing to the dirty state of the water in the Park, containing as it did a great deal of offensive matter, the improvement had been thought desirable on sanitary grounds. The present Chief Commissioner of Works had formerly been President of the Board of Health, and in that capacity had become perfectly acquainted with the unwholesome condition of the lake in the Park. He consulted the Board of Health with respect to those works, and had received from that Board a recommendation that they should be carried into effect. The Treasury had also given their sanction to the undertaking; and he could have no objection to the production of the correspondence that had passed between the different officers of the Government upon the subject. As his noble Friend had, very properly, taken an economic view of that matter, he was very glad to be able to inform him that there would be effected in the supply of water to St. James's Park a saving of not less than £900 a year, which formed a sum equivalent to the interest on the whole of the expenditure that was to be incurred.
§ THE EARL OF MALMESBURYthought he knew what the noble Earl meant; he believed that when the facts came to be fully investigated it would be found that no such saving as his noble Friend had just stated could in reality be effected. He believed in fact it would be the other way.
§ THE EARL OF EGLINTONwished to 382 know whether any similar improvements were to be made in the Serpentine?
§ EARL GRANVILLEsaid, he was not aware that any such improvements were at present in contemplation.