We open public squares and enlarge and widen our streets at an immense expense, in order to increase the health, convenience and beauty of the city ; all of which might be saved, if we were content to live, as our ancestors did, in narrow streets, without parks, squares, or public places. In thus adding to the convenience and beauty of the city, however, and increasing its salubrity, we act wisely, because it improves the health, accommodation and comfort of the inhabitants but with the most unaccountable inconsist- ;

ency, we submit to the use of water which entails upon its recipients more insidious evils than narrow streets, plain buildings, or closed parks and squares, merely because the cost of procuring a pure and wholesome article may add to our taxes a few cents on each hundred dollars of property annually.

It was impossible to resist such statements ; and, accordingly, we find the Joint Committee of Fire and Water, to whom was referred the communication of the Commissioners, with its various accompanying documents, reporting in a few days (on the 4th March) a fullconcurrence in the views of the Commissioners, and a recommendation that measures be forthwith adopted to take the sense of the citizens, as required by law, as to whether the great work should be undertaken. The report of this Committee, drawn, we believe by Wm. S. Johnson, pays only a merited compliment to the Commissioners, when it says " if any confidence is to be placed in man, or any deference yielded to his opinion as mere authority, these Commissioners are entitled to it. They consist of five of our most respectable, intelligent, and public spirited citizens they have, for two successive years, de- ;