of London; all of them superficial, dealing with the population merely, severed from the land, and so without regard for permanently local interests. Such schemes would scarcely do substantial good: for large and permanent success the freeholders should undertake the primary requirements of a neighbourhood, the laying out of roads and streets and sewers, and gas and water works. Of these things leaseholders and tenants have a temporary user only, and are therefore, naturally, seldom zealous for their liberal development and sound construction. Public parks and playgrounds, viaducts and bridges, baths and libraries, are still less likely to engage their serious care. They may, perhaps, after much painful talk, be glad to get these necessaries for themselves; but they have no long-sighted, generous prescience and local statesmanship, which looks beyond the little space and time that parish vestrymen can compass and appreciate.
The reason for this failure is the want of full proprietary interest. Apart from a few isolated Land Societies, there are not in all London probably a thousand men who live in their own freehold houses: other freeholders are few, and mostly public bodies and non-residents. The population generally are mere tenants, often in the third or even fourth degree, on terms extending from seven days to twelve months and three years. Commercial buildings, and most dwelling-houses rated at above three hundred pounds a year, are leased or underleased for seven years or more, the tenant doing all repairs; but the pernicious system of agreements for a shorter term is rapidly extending upwards in the scale of rental.
Thus the general population is a mobile element, and not a stable mass, and but a small minority take any active part in parish business. These are the vestrymen, who hold as leasehold property a large number of the smaller London houses, and who often make it their chief business to prevent, and not to undertake and forward, necessary public works. The street paving, lighting, and road-making are directed by these people;
