REPORT OF A COMMITTEE OF THE SELECT COUNCIL OF PHILADELPHIA. READ NOVEMBER 10TH. 1796

Philadelphia: Printed by Zachariah Poulson, Junior, 1796. 24pp. Stitched and untrimmed. Outer untrimmed margins with some light wear, minor foxing. Contemporary plain rear wrapper present. Very Good.

The Report is a rare analysis of the municipal infrastructure of Philadelphia and the financing necessary for performing City services. It is an informative, detailed picture of the necessities of eighteenth century America's leading City. The Committee members were John Connelly, Samuel Mickle Fox, and John Bleakley. They sign in type on page 17.
Municipal receipts-- from taxes, fines, rentals of city property-- are used for "Lighting and watching the city": 718 lamps are lighted under specific schedules, at enumerated costs; 23 watchmen, whose "routes, and the times of crying the hour are prescribed to them by the Commissioners." Funds are used for "Paving and repairing old pavements." The work involved, with its costs, is enumerated. "Cleaning the streets" is also a municipal function, "so essential to the health of the citizens." The city must clean the "filth" and "manure," costing "the city annually a considerable sum." The 300 "public pumps and wells," and the need for more of them, require maintenance and planning.
Various properties owned by the City are let to private parties in exchange for rent. These include market stalls, wharves, the Schuylkill ferry and bridge, the Potter's-field. Procedures for determining and recording city receipts and expenses are delineated. Two tables, at pages 18 and 19, print the City's receipts and expenses for June 1789 through each subsequent year. An analysis of City property appears at pages 20-24, and is signed in type at the end by George Roberts and Samuel Mickle Fox.
Evans 30996. ESTC w6143 [4- AAS, JCB, Lib. Co. U Penn.].