The Express.
London, England, 1867-11-26 00:00:00

QIOQ WATEEyLONDONBILIDOL

MS net 1t7.685.."--Alt7r;-loou, 2h. 17wi.
TO-ltoi:zow-31,. ming. 21L 211. s.hu.

LONDON, TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 26.

THE first Ministerial measure of the session
was read a second time in the House of
Commons last evening. It is a Bill to Amend
the Metropolitan Streets Act which was passed
hurriedly at the fag-end of last session, and
which came into operation, potentially at
least, on the first day of the present month.
But, in fact, the authorities have not ven-
tured to enforce some of its most important
provisions, one of which Mr. GATHORNE HARDY
now asks Parliament to repeal. The sixth section,
passed no doubt with the best possible intentions,
might be described as a clause to deprive
ten thousand of the poorer inhabitants of
London of their habitual employment, and only
means of gaining an honest livelihood for them-
selves and their families. It enacts that "no
" goods or other articles shall be allowed to rest
" on any footway or other part of a street within
" the general limits of the Act "—that is to say,
within four miles in any direction from Charing-
cross—" or be otherwise allowed to cause obstruc-
" tion and inconvenience to the passage of the
" public, for a longer time than may be absolutely
" necessary for loading or unloading such goods
"or other articles." The costenuongers, the
dried fish merchants, the dealers in cheap trinkets,
staylaces, ready-made boots, earthenware, and tin
pots, the entire class, in short, of street and itine-
rant hawkers, whose trade was thus suppressed,
naturally rose in protest against this
enactment. Indignation meetings at the Nag's
Head, in Leather-lane, and deputations to the
HOME SECRETARY, have done their work. The
Bill which Mr. GATnoRNE HARDY has introduced
removes the prohibition complained of, so far as it
affects oostermongers, street hawkers, and other
itinerant tradesmen who may conform in the con-
duct of their business to the regulations of the
police. As a provisional measure, intended to
bridge over a winter which threatens to be more
than usually severe, the Bill may deserve, and
indeed demand, acceptance. But it cannot form
a permanent settlement. Legislation by Sir
RICHARD MAYNE and Colonel FRAZER, as a sort
of Lower House, with Mr. GATHORNE HARDY for
the Upper Chamber, cannot be more than a
temporary settlement. Street trading is unques-
tionably a public inconvenience in London. The ob-
struction and the noise form a nuisance which would
not be tolerable, if considerations of convenience
could be balanced against considerations of life and
death, of independence or pauperism, of honesty or
almost enforced crime. A rick person, in any
of the streets in which this hubbub of sellers and
buyers resounds, must lie in torture. The condition
of the coeterniongers and hawkers themselves is not
such as it is desirable to perpetuate. They stand
for hours exposed to the rain and cold, chilled as
much by the want of motion as by the season.
The only members that they exercise are their
tongues and their lungs ; and these have not the
physical force to promote a healthy circulation.
The reform that is needed is to put a roof over the
costermongers and hawkers, and to build walls
round them; or, in other words, to erect retail
markets in the districts in which street-trading
now prevails. Centralization must be avoided.
The markets should be in the hearts of the places
most densely inhabited, and in sufficient number
to make long journeys and elaborate preparation
for purchases unnecessary. The very poor must
find what they want at their own doors, if they
are to have it at all. It is indeed this demand for
provisions close at hand which street trailing has
come into existence to supply. A wholesale meat
market is in course of completion in Smithfield ;
the Government contemplates the erection of pub-
lic slaughter-houses in the suburbs. These
things will help to supply defects and
remove abuses which have existed too long. The
necessity of retail markets is equally or even more
pressing, and it is felt by those whose inability to
help themselves gives them a special claim upon
legislative sympathy. Miss BURDETT COETTS'II
inexhaustible beneficence has never been more
wisely directed than to the erection of the new
Columbia Markets in Bethnal-green. A project
for new market• in Paddington appears, we see,
among the parliamentary notices. But much
more is necessary. The homes of the poor in
London have been ruthlessly demolished for the
general convenience, in order to clear the ground
for lines of railway, for new law courts, and for
street improvements. The Legislature would
confer • benefit, which would mitigate the un-
avoidable harshness of some of the measures of
demolition and reconstruction which it has sanc-
tioned, by opening markets in all the poorest
districts of London. There is a special reason
for its action, in the fact that London—the
City proper excepted—is without any go-•
vernment of its own. It stands practically
to the Imperial Legislature in a position
like that which the District of Columbia occupies
towards the Congress of the United States. Local
self-government scarcely exists in it. The cha-
racter of some of the provisions of the Metro-
politan Streets Bill affords a strong argument in
favour of a scheme of municipalities for the metro-
polis more or les closely resembling those which
Mr. MILL and Mr. AYRTOS have brought for-
ward. In an assembly representing exclusively
the internal iuteresta of London ur of its
several parts, such a blunder as that which