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and had gained experience of its great popularity, and of the influence 

 it was destined to exert. Indeed, we in Brooklyn were already feeling 

 the consquence of its construction in a manner not at all satisfactory to 

 us. Not only had we been brought to understand the whole subject of 

 our duties better, but during those years — those long, those everlasting 

 years — from 1861 to 1864, there had been great changes. Our city had 

 been changing, and in all its change we saw a tendency becoming man- 

 ifest which gave some of us much anxiety. 



I speak of a tendency which we then saw toward results which we 

 could not help anticipating with disquietude. Let us look at the facts, 

 however, as they are patent to us to-day, and you will better under- 

 stand what it was that we then saw or thought we saw. During the 

 last two years nearly one-half more houses have been built in Brooklyn 

 than in New York. New York in 1867 built two thousand eight hun- 

 dred and eighty houses. Brooklyn three thousand six hundred and 

 fifty-nine. New York in 1868 built two thousand one hundred and 

 twelve houses ; Brooklyn three thousand three hundred and seven. It 

 is certain that our population is increasing more rapidly than that of 

 New York, and unless New York shall absorb the eastern towns of 

 Westchester County, our city must be expected to gain yearly until it 

 shall become the larger of the two. The question with which we are 

 most concerned is, then, not so much the amount of population which 

 we are to have in the future, as its character and its capacity. By cha- 

 racter I mean especially its ability to meet its monied obligations, and 

 thus bring down the per centage of its taxation. 



It is never desirable that classes should be separated in the way 

 they were tending to separate here five years ago ; it is never desir- 

 able that the rich should so draw themselves apart in distinct com- 

 munities or quarters as to throw upon the poor an overwhelming share 

 of the burdens of carrying on the necessary expenses of their local 

 government. You are aware of the terrible suffering which has oc- 

 curred this year in the Eastern suburbs of London from this cause . 

 and also in some of the suburbs of Paris, where a complaint was lately 

 made, that in a district containing 25,000 inhabitants there was not a 

 sino-le resident rich enough to be called on for charitable aid to those 

 in complete destitution. 



By the construction of the Central Park, New York placed us for a 

 time at special disadvantage in the competition for securing taxable 

 capital. She had done so before when she had brought in the Croton, 



