ted by the city. Congress should
explicitly define for itself a course that can be depended upon, so that
the city can go ahead and know what it ought to do. The general
government, promising great things which began nowhere and ended in
nothing, laid out the city for its own use, and gave more space to
streets and ornamental grounds than to buildings. The plan was wise and
good, but did not appear so until the liberal citizens, unable to endure
the disgrace of such a city as the nation thrust upon them, taxing
themselves six millions of dollars for street purposes, went generously
to work, with their own money improved the immense fronts of the
government property, which pays no taxes, evolved something tangible out
of the old cloudy-magnificent plan, and gave the country, so far as they
could, a decent capital.

There is another important matter for adjustment. The city has left
nothing undone that money and labor could do to make the public schools
the best in the United States. It is doubtful whether there has ever
before been seen in any city or State an expenditure for public schools
so generous, under all the circumstances, as that of Washington within
the past few years. The best school-houses here are the best the
Prussian commissioners, who lately came to inspect them, had ever seen.
A very great number of the pupils educated by the city are the children
of government servants whose homes are in the States, and who pay no
considerable taxes here. Every State and Territory has received a
liberal allotment of public land for school-purposes except the District
of Columbia, which has probably done more for schools without the
endowment, considering the time and taxable property at command, than
any State has ever done with it.

Of course the city has received many benefits from the general
government, but the considerable ones have been indirect. The excellent
water-works, for instance, costing about three millions of dollars, were
built with the nation's money and by army engineers, because the nation
needed them, and show how entirely identical are the interests of both
parties. Their respective duties, while they need defining anew, are so
wedded that there is no room for serious difference. It is really a
matter for congratulation that the general government held back and did
not take more of the improvements into its own hands. The city's present
claims are by so much stronger: the two governments can work