_To the Honorable the Chairman and Members of the Metropolitan Board of Works_. The Memorial of the Vestry of the Parish of Chelsea, in the County of Middlesex. SHEWETH, That the Parish of Chelsea is very extensive and populous. That it comprises about 9000 houses, is nearly 800 acres in extent, and contains a population of about 70,000 persons. That the matters of public concern to so large a number of inhabitants are necessarily very numerous and weighty. That by the 92nd section of the Metropolis Local Management Act, your memorialists are authorized to defray expenses, as well for paving, lighting, watering, cleansing, or improving the parish, as for those public concerns; by the 150th section they are enabled to erect a building for parish purposes; and by the 183rd section they are permitted, with the sanction of your Honourable Board, to borrow any sums of money necessary for defraying such expenses. That with reference to the purposes for which a building so erected may be used, Mr. Toulmin Smith is of opinion that “under these words, (public concerns of any parish, or of the inhabitants thereof) it will become matter of obligation on the Vestry in the case of a single parish, and on the District Board in the case of parishes combined in a district, to provide for the expenses of public meetings, and those other similar matters touching ‘public concerns’ which are now done irregularly and illegimately. * * * The words in the section are imperative,—these expenses ‘shall be defrayed accordingly.’” Again, “the most economical course will always be to make such a building a part of the erection for the offices, &c., of the board, as has already been done in the case of St. Pancras Vestry Hall, and in some other cases in the Metropolis.” That acting within the discretion thus vested in them your memoralists have erected a Vestry Hall, which is suitable in every respect for the purposes of your memorialists, and for the before-mentioned public concerns of the inhabitants. That as evidence that the large room was much required in this parish, and is fully appreciated by the inhabitants, your memorialists do state that since its opening on the 30th November last, seventy meetings of various kinds have taken place therein, which may be thus classified:—Religious and Moral, twenty-seven; Intellectual, twenty; Social, Political, and to encourage the Volunteer movement, twenty-three. That for nineteen of these meetings the use of the room has been given absolutely without charge, and for the others a scale of payment has been arranged by your Memorialists, which is in their opinion equitable and fair—and which has been submitted to your Finance Committee.