Daily National Intelligencer

City Police.—In an Exposition of the administration of the Municipality of the City of Savannah for the past year, from the pen of the Mayor, we find several traits well worthy of imitation. The following liberal provision, and the remarks which accompany it, apply with remarkable force to the City of Washington:

"Public Trees.—The Corporation allows three dollars for each tree furnished, planted, and insured to thrive and grow.

Considering the extent of our city, covering, as it does, more ground than many others of twice its population, with numerous and spacious squares, and that, without the benefit of shade during the tropical heat of the summer months, that heat would be almost insupportable, this expenditure is certainly short of what it ought to have been, with an exchequer better filled than that of our city happens to be, The charge of either waste or extravagancy will, therefore, I hope, be readily repudiated from this item of the expose.

The amount paid, from the 10th July, 1819, to the 10th July, 1820, under this head, was, for planting 337 trees, 1011 dollars. A surprising indifference appears to be manifested, in our city, even to the preservation of the trees we have, and for which agreeable ornament to the Pennsylvania avenue we are indebted to the taste of the venerable Jefferson. The amount laid out in one year in the City of Savannah, appropriated to the same purpose, would serve greatly to beautify more than one of the main avenues through our city. But, at one time, the ward interests in the Council are so marshalled against each other as to defeat such a proposition; at another, the Corporation is of opinion that the Superintendent of the City ought to make this improvement at the expense of the fund arising from the sale of city lots; the Superintendent has no power, though he had the will, so to dispose of the public funds; some few individuals are disposed to contribute to a fund for this purpose, but they rightly conceive that there is no justice in their exclusively paying taxes for the embellishment of the City. In short, what is every body's business is nobody's business; and, notwithstanding the evident utility and beauty of the trees on the Pennsylvania Avenue—their comfort to us, and the approbation uniformly bestowed on them by strangers—we go on, summer after summer, scorching and broiling ourselves in the fervid rays of the sun, and spring after spring is allowed to pass, without our availing ourselves of the experience of the preceding season. To obviate the opposition to this work, which arises from sectional jealousies or indifference, we venture to suggest the planting of double rows of trees on each side of at least one avenue or street in every one of the six Wards composing the city. A highly ornamental plan of this sort might, we think, be devised, the expense of which would not amount to more than one year's salary of one of our town officers, and not to half the cost of one of the bridges over the canal that intersects the city."