New York Daily Tribune

That Gas.

Our readers have been favored with at least twice as much talk in favor of the proposed Gas Contract as against it--the famous Gas Report (fathered by a Committee of the Board of Aldermen,) Mayor Kingsland's Message, and Mr. Lamp-Commissioner Childs's 'Annual Report,' in good part devoted to a clapperclawing of ex-Mayor Woodhull's Veto Message. The modesty and propriety of such a replication to a Mayor's Message in a Street Commissioner's Annual Report has not yet crawled through our hair, to say nothing of the civility and decency of the Lamp-man saying that he don't see how the Mayor "could be ignorant of the great advantages" of the Gas job-said "advantages" being undoubtedly more visible, palpable and pocketable to the Lamp-man than to the Mayor.

But we are willing to leave the argument where it stands, the Gas Company, through the Lamp Commissioner, having the last word. All we ask is that the Mayor and Council shall fairly consult their constituents and be guided by their opinion. If they can bring themselves to believe that the People of our City really desire or assent, in this day of rapid and immense progress, especially in this very matter of producing artificial light, to tie themselves up with a fifteen years' Contract for Street-lighting, more than two years before the present Contract expires, let them go forward in the way they are importuned to go. But if they feel and know, as we know, that ninety-nine of every hundred citizens insist that no such Contract be now made, how can they go forward? All that is asked on our side is time. Let the People have a chance to act on this matter in the next Charter Election; we ask nothing more. Give us a chance to take the sense of the City. We require but that. And, gentlemen of the Council! if you refuse it--if you rush on to consummate this vetoed Contract-the People will not forget it-they will remember it and you as long as you live!