John Yates--"honest John Yates"--was a frequent speaker, and always with effect. Mr. Barkeley Smith was our best and most ready debater, Mr. Clarke Aspinall our most humorous speaker. The first important debate which took place in the Council after I entered it was on the proposal to purchase land from Lord Sefton for the purpose of making Sefton Park. It was a prolonged discussion and the decision arrived at shows that the Council in those days was long sighted and able to take large views and do big things. Not only was power taken to purchase land for Sefton Park but also to make Newsham and Stanley Parks, costing in all £670,000; and this movement to provide open spaces has continued to this day, and has been supplemented by private munificence, until Liverpool is surrounded by a belt of parks and open spaces containing upwards of 1,000 acres, and in addition many churchyards have been turned into gardens, and small greens have been provided in various parts. I have often been asked if the work of the city was as well done with a Council of 64 as it is now with a Council of 134. I think the smaller Council took a more personal interest in the work. The Committees were smaller and better attended, and the Council more thoroughly discussed the subjects brought before them. With the larger Council and larger Committees more work and more responsibility falls upon the chairman and the permanent officials. I fear the larger and more democratic Council scarcely appreciates this fact, also they fail to see that if you want good permanent officials you must pay them adequately. We have fortunately to-day an excellent staff who do their work well with a full sense of their responsibility. One peculiarity of the larger Council is the time given to the discussion of small matters, and the little consideration given to large questions of policy and finance. This I attribute to the fact that the Council contains many representatives who have not been accustomed to deal with large affairs, and who refrain from discussing what they do not fully understand. In this respect I think the present Council shows to some disadvantage. An immense work has been done municipally during this period in re-modelling and re-making Liverpool. In the 'sixties the streets of Liverpool were narrow and irregular, the paving and scavenging work was imperfectly done, the system of sewerage was antiquated, and the homes in which her working people had to live were squalid and insanitary; cellar dwellings were very general. To change all this demanded a great effort and a large expenditure of money, but in the 'seventies and 'eighties we had men in the Council capable of taking large views.