Tus experience of the past three years has shown how much the want of'an abiding element is felt in the Municipal Council. However well suited the individual members of the Council have been, the Council as a whole has always lain under the sentence of dissolution and every year, in its budget, has been providing, not ways and means for its own expenditure, but a legacy to be left to its successor to carry out. This practice of the introduction of the Budget by a moribund Council was one of the peculiar growths of the system. It; was not made; it grew. No man in his sane senses would have evolved such an idea, but the difficulty of overcoming the dilemma has hitherto been too great for its successful accom-pushment. The alternation has lain in part between the Council, in articulo morris, leaving the legacy of the Budget to its successors, or the incoming Council in a state of babydom bringing forward a budget of its own, The first is inconvenient; the second would be suicidal. The proposal therefore that members of the Municipal Council should be elected for more than one year, and should retire by rotation, which would impose on the framers of the annual Budget the responsibility of carrying it out, and vhich vould confer on the Council the clement of continuity which it now lacks, seems to be both reasonable and advisable. Not to multiply instances, we may notice the changes of policy with regard to the bridges across the Soochow Creek, and also with regard to the Volunteer force, as examples of want of continuity in the councils: of the Municipality. By one Council the latter have peep fostered, by another neglected. One body of men assembled as-a Council obtain arms at a heavy expense; and their successors, instead of keeping alive the spirit of volunteering, leave the arms in store, and show themselves so careless about the matter that their spirit is sure to spread to the various Corps. Another reform equally urgently needed is the power of acquiring land for public purposes. At present, one obstructive landholder may be able to sot at defiance the best intentioned scheme for the permanent improvement of the Settlements, "by either refusing to sell, or demanding a price out of all reason for the land necessary to be acquired. It is doubtful bow far the present Regula. tions were intended to confer this power of compulsory acquirement. Most probably such an idea never entered into the heads of the framers, who, hardly appreciating the real nature of our requirements, produced a document compared with which the Treaty of Tientsin is Incid. Again, the want of
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.