Should act now.

Emphasizing what the Globe had to say respecting electric railway franchises, the Toronto Star remarks:—

"The Globe gives the counties of Ontario a useful warning when it cautions them not give electric railways perpetual franchises to use their roads. Rights extending over a period of fourteen years, and renewing them on valuation, ought to be good enough for any company. The right of the county or the Province to take over such roads at their value, if it should be desirable to do so in the future, ought to be preserved."

Before any further concessions or renewal of privileges are conceded to the Metropolitan Railway, unless the Company agree to amend the perpetual franchise clause, to a twenty-one year term, subject to renewal by mutual agreement or arbitration, the Council should insist on the agreement being presented to the Legislature for confirmation, and thus give an opportunity for citizens to be heard in favor of such amendments as the Railway Committee of the House many deem reasonable. The future interests of the municipality—the rights of rate-payers who have property at stake, and the claims of their posterity, demand that the franchise clause be so amended as not to subject the taxpayers of a quarter of a century or a century hence, to the power of a monopoly. The Council should take the initiative in this matter, and not leave it to private citizens to remove the grievance.

Railways: Met.Ry.

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