20th Sept. We referred cursorily yesterday in our summary of the proceedings at the ratepayers' meeting on Wednesday to the discovery that was made, apparently only just before the ratepayers came together, that the tous bridge chosen by the Works Committee of the Council as the most suitable, started on the Shanghai side from a point eight feet above the present level of the roadway; we refer to it again because the incident seems to shew that there is or was something amiss in the surveyor's department, or such an important discrepancy could not have been entirely overlooked in the Reports that were issued to the ratepayers a few days ago. The Shanghai end of the bridge proposed by Messrs. Kingsmill and Vowell was intended to be eight feet above the Frongkew end four feet, nine inches, resent level of the ground, and the
Those who remember that at spring tides the water often comes up to the level of the present roadway, if they had worked the matter out in their heads, would have seen that it was impossible to provide a headway of twelve feet above even ordinary high water in a length of 190 feet (half the length of the bridge) with a gradient of 1 foot in 33. It would be practicable at considerable expense to attain the level proposed by Mr. Kingsmill on the Shanghai side, by making the approach to the bridge begin at the Margary Memorial; but to get from the corner of the Public Garden on to the bridge it would
eight feet in height, or to raise the be necessary to have a flight of steps whole north end of the garden. On the Hongkew side, however, the difficulty of providing for an extra height of four feet nine in the new roadway would be very much greater; for not only would the approach to the bridge have to be carried a considerable distance down Broadway, but the approaches from the Hongkew Bund on each side would have to be similarly raised. All this is, of course, practicable, but at a very large Now the difficulty is to understand how this was not discovered in the surveyor's department of the municipality, or, if it was discovered, why it was not brought to the notice of the Works Committee, the Council, and the ratepayers. In the list of advantages offered by this particular bridge in the Works Committee's report, a great deal is made of the easy gradient and the great headway, and there is not one word of how those advantages were secured. The members of the Council, thie Chairman, the Works Committee, and their colleagues, are not supposed to have any technical knowledge, iit they have a staff to advise them, which is highly paid, and on which they suppose themselves able to rely. It is only on the reports given them by their staff that the Council can make up their reports, place governed as Shanghai is by an and it is most important that in a
unpaid Council of the residents that they should be able to put the fullest confidence in their paid officials. It is obvious that in this case Mr. Clark, the late surveyor, grossly neglected his duty, to put it in the mildest way. He has gone with a gratuity of a year's salary in his pocket, leaving behind him the "disingenuous" remark to which the Chairman of the Council referred on Wednesday, and also having brought the Chairman himself and the Works Committee into the mess in which they could not help feeling themselves to be at the ratepayers' meeting. We acquit the new surveyor of any. blame in these remarks. He has, we have no doubt, had an over-pressure of work of all kinds since his arrival, as several serious matters had to be left over until he arrived, matters connected with the lighting, the drainage and the paving of the Settlement, and he. probably thought that it would seem importance contained what would have ungracious if one of his first reports of
been a weighty condemnation of his predecesser. Probably if he had had more time at his disposal, he would have found some way of indicating to the Council before, not after, the late pamphlet was issued, how grave an omission Mr. Clark had made, and the Council would have been extricated from a very disagreeable position; for besides the false position in which they were put by seeming in their pamphlet to recommend the adoption of a work which they were obliged to disavow when the meeting came on, it could not but be disagreeable to have two prominent ratepayers, like Mr. Thorne and Mr. Macleod, proposing and seconding " resolution which was, and was only done as, a protest: against the Council's action. From all this they would have been saved if the surveyor's department had been more careful' and more outspoken; and if omissions like
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.