Sir Michael Hicks Beach spoke at Cheltenham on Saturday last
on the occasion of the opening of the new public hall which has been erected by the Town Council, at a cost of 250,000, to replace the old Assembly Rooms. After discussing what were the true and necessary functions of a municipality in the way of promoting the prosperity and attractions of a town, Sir Michael approached the question of municipal trading. The true way to avoid any abuse of the system was to place the ratepayers in the position of shareholders in a well-managed public company,—i.e., "to have a proper audit of municipal accounts of all kinds, conducted by qualified and independent auditors, who will show, to the understanding of the most un- skilled persons, precisely on what the rates are being spent, and what advantages they have secured." The recent fall in municipal credit was due, not to any fear of insolvency, but simply to the immense multiplication of Government and municipal loans in the last ten years, with the consequent over- stocking of the market, and to the fact that the ordinary person preferred a high income to a good security. The only remedy he could suggest for what was, he believed, merely a transient difficulty was that municipalities should be very chary about undertaking any new work, and he recommended this view not only to the Town Council of Cheltenham, but to the Government of the country.
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