The question of lighting the city afresh by the Government has been raised.
The contract for lighting this city at present is taken at $1.48 per lamp per month, and although the advantages of gas over oil are indisputable for myself, I should prefer to have any assigned district lighted by eight oil lamps, @ #1.48 equal to #11.84, than by one gas lamp at $12 per month. There can be no question on the score of expense that oil is preferable to gas at the Company's rate.
With gas at the price now fixed, the city would be most brilliantly lighted; the distances between lamps are occasionally too far apart for oil, but they cannot be materially lessened for gas.
It is possible, therefore, under these circumstances that the Company might be induced to modify their terms and require payment, say, at a rate for its illuminating power in comparison with our present oil lamps, or upon some other plan hereafter to be determined upon. A gas street lamp consuming a thousand feet is lighted for 9 shillings per month; double that rate the Company might probably consider insufficient here, but it would even then be three times higher than now paid, a rate to cover which is generally complained of.
In the arrangement for any supply of gas for the whole city, no doubt the Government should have some general...