desirable to obtain further information before
making it the subject of a new enactment, and
accordingly, in 1848, the Metropolitan Sanitary
Commission was issued. The practical result was
to supersede all the separate commissions—
Westminster, Holborn, and Finsbury, Tower Hamlets
Poplar Marsh, Surrey and Kent, and Greenwich
—and to consolidate them by issuing new
commissions to the same individuals for all these
separate jurisdictions. These commissions
became fused into one by the Metropolitan Sewers
Act of 1848—an important measure, that did
not make any alteration in the principle of the
law, but considerably extended the powers and
authority of the commissioners, who were,
however, still Crown appointed. The area of
jurisdiction was extended to a circle of twelve miles'
radius from St. Paul's, excluding the square
mile, or thereabouts, contained in the City
proper; all doubts as to the legal right to
construct sewers were removed, all sewers were
vested in the commissioners, and full power
was given them over all private drainage. Their
authority to make rates was defined and
extended, and in place of the old troublesome
qualification of a ratepayer, as one who received
benetit or avoided damage, the principle was
established of levying the rate over a certain
definite area or district.

It is not necessary here to go into the history
of the different Metropolitan Commissions of
Sewers since 1848, until the creation of the
Metropolitan Board of Works in 1855. The
commissioners were often men of high scientific
eminence, business talent, and well-earned
popularity. They endeavoured to grapple with the
great London drainage question, by inviting
plans from competent engineers; and, in the
different discussions and examinations of
witnesses, the public were much enlightened on
the subject of London drainage. So much
opposition was shown to entrusting new sewer
works of great magnitude and cost, to a
limited crown-appointed commission, that
Government, yielding to the expression of the general
sentiment, infused a new element by the
nomination to the new board of one local
representative for each of the metropolitan boroughs.
In 1855, the bill for the better local management
of the metropolis became law, and, under
its provisions, that sifted upper parish parliament,
known as the Metropolitan Board of
Works, came into existence. After six
hundred and forty years of legislation, practice, and
experience, the management of underground
London and something more was handed over to
a purely representative assembly. The changes
effected by the Metropolitan Sewers Bill have
already been adverted to; but much more
extended powers are conferred by the Metropolis
Local Management Act and its amendments.

The amount of rates leviable under the
Sewers Act, has been successively one shilling,
threepence, and sixpence in the pound; it is now
unlimited. The purposes for which such rates
might be levied were confined to drainage only.
The new acts comprise paving, cleansing, lighting,
and improvements, the many details of
street management, and the important duty of
supervising all constructions formerly controlled
by the Building Act. These powers above and
below ground are exercised by a corporation
entirely parochial in its origin, which numbers
forty-six members. These members are picked
vestrymen, sent by their respective parishes to
sit at the Metropolitan Board of Works; and
as the vestries are elected by the ratepayers, the
root of the sewer corporation is representative.
No member can hold office, without re-election,
more than three years, and, once a year, one-
third of the members retire by lot. The chairman
is chosen by a majority of his fellow-members,
and may be turned out of office, at any
time, by two-thirds of a special meeting
convened to consider his appointment. His salary
a fifteen hundred a year; but none of the
members are paid, and he is assisted by a paid staff,
chosen in a similar manner, consisting of secretary,
engineers, solicitor, clerks, and messengers.

The vast underground property itself held in
trust, managed, or being constructed by this
corporation, the City commissioners, and the
district parish boards, for the benefit of the
ratepayers, must be reserved for description
in a concluding chapter.

LACENAIRE.

In the middle of January, 1835, a fashionably
dressed traveller, while making a halt at Beaune,
in Burgundy, was brought before the magistrate
to explain a swindling transaction of which he
was accused. He was also charged with assuming
the false name of Jacob Levi. He
protested so vehemently his innocence of both
these charges, in such correct, fluent, and clear
language, that the magistrate was about to
discharge him, when the procureur du roi, the
king's attorney, wishing for further information,
ordered him to be detained as a precautionary
measure.

A few days afterwards, the Beaune police were
not a little astonished to learn, that their chance
prisoner was no other than the famous Lacenaire,
whom the authorities had been in search for, as
the author, amongst other crimes, of a double
murder recently committed in the Passage of the
Cheval Rouge, Paris.

The noise which Lacenaire's trial for this crime
made throughout the whole of France is still
remembered. There was revealed to the wondering
Parisians a speculator in whose eyes a murder
was merely a matter of business—a man who
conceived and calculated the chances of an
assassination with the coolness of a banker, and
who performed the operation with the calmness
of a surgeon. He made some people shudder,
attracted others, and found enthusiastic
admirers. He received visitors who were urgent
to the point of importunity; and—who would
believe it?—scented and sympathetic notes from
not a few women of fashion. For more than
two months, Paris would listen to and talk
of nothing else than the adventures of Lacenaire,