y, with the
governor and executive boards, is appointed by the President. The
election of the larger house and of the delegate to Congress is
sufficient security to the people, and Washington is to-day in most
respects the best-governed city of its size in the United States. The
powers of the little Assembly are very limited: the governor can veto
its measures; Congress can override them both; the President can veto
the acts of Congress; two-thirds of Congress can still surmount this
veto. This complicated system may retard good measures, but it is not
probable that any very bad one can long survive under it.

The Baron Haussmann here is the Board of Public Works. It is grading,
filling, paving, planting, fencing, parking, and making the
thoroughfares what they would never have become by ordinary means. At
last we see what Washingtonians never saw before--vast public operations
having a consistent and tangible shape; obeying a purpose that can be
understood, defined and executed; beginning somewhere and ending in
something. Within its sphere this Board has despotic power: it would be
worthless with any less. It dares to strike without fear or favor, and
hit whoever stands in the way: the way would never be cleared if it did
not. It makes bitter enemies by its inexorable exactions: the public
cannot be served except at the expense of the individual. A strong party
has fought it by injunctions and failed: the same persons will no doubt
continue to fight, while the Board will no doubt continue to vindicate
itself and go on with its work. It made some mistakes which wrought
hardships to individuals who wished it well, but such were the
difficulties before it at the outset that it might have made greater
mistakes and still been forgiven. It is to be hoped that it will have
enemies enough to watch it closely, criticise it sharply and hold it to
a strict accountability; but should it have enough to really interfere
with its present course, then we shall have to add one more, and a great
one, to the list of Washington's calamities. The new blood that created
it is able to sustain it, while the air it has done so much to purify is
already laden with blessings from the lips of strangers.

In the matter of public improvements an equitable adjustment of
relations--always heretofore uncertain and unsatisfactory--between the
District and the general government still remains to be accomplished,
and at this writing is impatiently awai