uses: it administers and makes regulations
concerning parks, bridges, tunnels, subways, dairies, cattle diseases,
explosives, lunatic asylums, reformatory schools, weights and measures.
It grants licenses for music and dancing: it carries on, in fact, the
whole administration of the greatest City in the world, and, in some
respects, the best managed City.

In order to carry out these works the Council expend about 600,000_l._ a
year. It has a debt of 30,000,000_l._, against which are various assets,
so that the real debt is no more than 18,000,000_l._ The rating outside
the City was last year 121/2_d._ in the pound. The first Chairman was Lord
Rosebery. He has been succeeded by Sir John Lubbock and Mr. John
Hutton. The list of County Councillors contains men of every rank and
every opinion. Dukes, Earls and Barons, sit upon the Council beside
plain working men--an excellent promise for the future.

Such is the government of London. Within the City what was intended to
be democratic has become oligarchic. The election by the whole people
has become the election by 8,000 only. Without the City a great
democratic Parliament attracts men whose historic names and titles
belong to the aristocracy. In the London County Council the Peers may,
if they are elected, sit beside the Commons.

Lastly, what is the chief lesson for you to learn out of this history?
It is short, and may be summed up in a few sentences.

1. Consider how your liberties have grown silently and steadily out of
the original free institutions of your Saxon ancestors. They have grown
as the trunk, the tree, the leaves, the flower, the fruit, grow from the
single seed. The Folk Mote, the 'Law worthiness' of every man, the
absence of any Over Lord but the King, have kept London always free and
ready for every expansion of her liberties. Respect, therefore, the
ancient things which have made the City--and the country--what it is.
Trust that the further natural growth of the old tree--still
vigorous--will be safer for us than to cut it down and plant a sapling,
which may prove a poison tree. And with the old institutions respect the
old places. Never, if you can help it, suffer an old monument to be
pulled down and destroyed. Keep before your eyes the things which remind
you of the past. When you look on London Stone, remember that Henry of
London Stone was one of the first Mayors. When you go up College Hill,
remember Whittington who gave it that name. When yo