Where then, it will be asked, does the Municipal Assembly come in, for there is a Municipal Assembly which is divided into two chambers? To which the answer is that the Municipal Assembly is practically reduced to the function of a debating society; for, says Dr. Shaw:-- The eighteen executive departments take away from the municipal assembly the larger part of the ordinance-making power; the board of public improvements in practice controls municipal plans and policies as regards the construction of works, and the board of estimate and apportionment intervenes to prepare the budget, both on the side of income and on that of disbursement. It is true that the budget must be voted by the Municipal Assembly, which on that occasion sits as one body. But its control is practically nil. The real financial control is vested in the Board of Estimate and Apportionment. Mr. F. V. Green, writing in _Scribner_ for October, 1896, points out that the framers of this board carefully avoided the principle of direct election. He says:-- Probably in no other part of the globe, however autocratic its government, is such power of taxation and appropriation committed to so unrepresentative a body as in this foremost city of the land of liberty, whose Government originated in a protest against taxation without representation. And it is a still more curious anomaly that this system, which was established as one of the results of the overthrow of the Tweed _régime_, and has been in operation for twenty-three years, is the most successful feature of the present form of city government--the only one of which criticism is seldom heard. After this non-elective board has approved of the estimates, they are then sent down to the Municipal Assembly to be voted. But, says Dr. Shaw, the Municipal Assembly must complete its action within a certain number of days. It may not add a penny to the estimates at any point whatsoever. It is permitted to throw out items or to make reductions, but it must not offset these by voting increased sums for any object. When it has completed its consideration, the budget goes to the mayor for his final action. The mayor has authority to veto any amendments that the municipal assembly may have made. That is to say, he may restore any amounts that have been subtracted. But, it will be said, the Mayor’s veto may be overridden. It may, but only if there is a majority of five-sixths of the Municipal Assembly against him. Such unanimity is practically unattainable. It would, indeed, seem as if the chief purpose of the Municipal Assembly was to give its members practical lessons in the working of simple sums of vulgar fractions. Again, to quote Dr. Shaw:--