John Morrison Davidson

“ Mr. Beal, almost single-handed, has carried dismay into their camp. The Grocers' Company has given a hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars to the London Hospital, and the guilds are organizing a technical college to cost a hundred thousand dollars per annum. But these are not tokens of genuine repentance. They are mere dissembling peace-offerings to be set aside by the public with contempt.
The existence of so many anomalies and gigantic abuses convinced Mr. Beal, as early as 1861, that what is really wanted is a single municipality for the whole of London. ”

“ Beal was examined, considered the whole subject; and ever since his views have been rapidly winning public approval. Mill, Buxton, Elcho, and Shuttleworth have each unsuccessfully brought in bills embodying Beal's ideas. Latterly Mr. Gladstone has promised his powerful support, and placed the reform of the municipality of London at the head of his long list of "unredeemed pledges." Eventual triumph is, accordingly, as good as certain. When it comes, it will be the cleansing out of the biggest Augean stable in Christendom. ”

“ Whatsoever his hand has found to do, he has done it with his might. There are many good men willing to discharge public duties at the solicitation of others; but Mr. Beal is not one of these. It has been his function to invent duties for himself and others, as the sequel will show. ”

“ Many suburban estates were bought and subdivided among the shareholders as sites for cottages; one out of many advantages of the arrangement being that thousands of artisans, then without the franchise, were thus enabled, by a flank movement, to obtain it. ”

“ There was no London School Board in those times, and young Beal's education was accordingly of a somewhat meagre kind. He attended several local schools kept by private teachers, but never got beyond the "beggarly elements" of the three R's. He was eventually put to business in his fourteenth year, the consequence being that Mr. Beal is substantially a self-taught man. No one who has gone through the regular scholastic mill could doubt this for a moment. The matter of his writings is always excellent ”