For years the City had been content to suffer for its principles. Ever since 1847 it had continued to return a Jew to Parliament, in the person of Baron Lionel Rothschild, in spite of the fact that he was not allowed to take his seat. As soon however as the Bill became law, the House of Commons passed the necessary resolution, and on the 26th April the Baron took his seat, and the City recovered its full representation in Parliament. Both Alderman Salomons and Baron Rothschild commemorated their respective victories by endowing scholarships in the City of London School, open to candidates of every religious persuasion; and a like scholarship was founded by a committee known as the "Committee of the Jewish Commemoration Fund."[837]
The City's finances.
The city of London was, as we have seen, known in earliest times as the king's "Chamber," and the Chamberlain was the king's officer. The City in fact served as the purse of the nation, until such time as the establishment of the Bank of England did away with the necessity of direct applications to the Corporation for loans, to enable the government of the kingdom to be carried on. Like the nation itself, the City has had its times of pecuniary distress, and nothing but the most careful nursing of its estate has enabled it to tide over its difficulties. More especially was this the case at the close of the civil war, and again, for some years after the Great Fire, as well as at the commencement of the reign of Queen Anne.
The City's public spirit.
The City has not wasted its substance. Large sums have been expended upon local improvements, upon the erection of markets, upon bridges, not forgetting that latest marvel of engineering skill, the Tower Bridge, upon the City's schools, upon the erection of the Guildhall library with its adjacent Museum and Art Gallery, as well as upon the establishment and maintenance of one of the most successful Schools of Music ever known in this country. At the close of the year 1882, the Corporation had, within a comparatively recent period, expended nearly six and a half millions, out of its own funds, upon improvements within the city and liberties—improvements which benefited the inhabitants of the metropolis generally no less than the citizens themselves.[838] Nor has the Corporation stayed its hand at the city's boundaries. During the short period of ten years preceding 1882, a sum of more than £300,000 was expended out of the city's cash for providing open spaces for the people, including Epping Forest, Wanstead Park, West Ham Park, and Burnham Beeches, but irrespective of the later acquisitions of Coulsdon and other adjacent commons in the county of Surrey, since dedicated to the public.[839] An area exceeding 6,000 acres in all, has thus been preserved for posterity and placed beyond risk of purprestures and encroachments.
The City and the Metropolitan Board of Works.
From the time when the Metropolitan Board of Works was first established in 1855, down to its disestablishment in 1889, the Corporation contributed large sums of money to assist that body in carrying out the stupendous work of the Thames Embankment, a work of which Londoners may well be proud, and were engaged jointly with the Board in freeing from toll the bridges of Staines, Walton, Hampton Court, Kingston and Kew, on the Thames, as well as Tottenham Mills and Chingford bridges on the Lea.
Abolition of coal and wine dues, 1889.
Since the abolition of the coal and wine dues in 1889, the whole of which had been devoted to carrying out improvements, erecting public buildings, and freeing bridges, in and near the metropolis,[840] the work of the Corporation, as well as of the London County Council (the successor to the Metropolitan Board of Works), in this direction has been sorely crippled. It was popularly supposed that the coal dues affected the price of coal and gas, and that as soon as the dues were abolished the price of these commodities would at once go down. The result has proved to be far otherwise. An income of more than half a million sterling, produced in such a way as to afford the minimum of burden to the taxpayer, and expended in such a way as to produce the maximum of benefit to the whole of the metropolis, has been lost to the City and the London County Council, whilst the consumer not only pays the same price as before for his coal and gas (the middle-man pocketing the tax), but finds himself saddled with an increased rate.
The City as Port sanitary authority.