§ MR. FERRANDsaid, two years ago he had directed the attention of the Home Secretary to the state of the Bradford Reservoirs; and on the bursting of the Sheffield Reservoir he again noticed the matter, and his statements were described as being greatly exaggerated by the Mayor of Bradford, who had been communicated with by the Home Secretary, and who stated that the Bradford Reservoir had been emptied. After that statement he received communications from persons residing in the neighbourhood of the reservoir, complaining of the great danger to which they were exposed. At his instance the Home. Secretary, after some hesitation, directed Mr. Rawlinson, the Government Inspector, to visit the works in his neighbourhood, and that gentleman's Report had been laid before the House. There was this alarming fact in connection with these hill reservoirs—that the people resident in their neighbourhood had no protection whatever for their lives or property. In the case of a recent Bill in regard to a reservoir in Lancashire, an application was made on the part of Colonel Towneley, for a clause enacting that the Water Company should not impound water, without having a certificate from a competent engineer that the works were secure. The Parliamentary Committee, however, who considered the Bill, refused the application, with the remark that the parties had a remedy by an action at law. Yet in that very case the embankment of the reservoir had twice before that time given way. Of what value was a right of action against a bankrupt company, and it appeared that the shareholders in the company would only be liable to the amount of their shares. The Sheffield Company, for instance, were ruined by the inundation; and if it had not been for the subscriptions collected throughout the country, the sufferers would have received no relief. There was no personal responsibility attaching to the 1319 owners of such works. Just before the dreadful calamity at Sheffield, one of the shareholders was heard boasting that the waterworks were one of the best speculations going. Now, he held that in regard to the supply of water there ought to be no speculation whatever. It ought to be furnished at the cheapest possible price as a necessary of life; and ample protection ought to be afforded to the inhabitants in the neighbourhood of every reservoir for their life and property. The sole aim of the companies, however, seemed to be to obtain high dividends; and in order to effect that object the lowest tender for the construction of a reservoir was accepted, and thus the reservoirs were too often badly constructed in the first instance, and afterwards grossly neglected. The frightful catastrophe at Holmfirth in 1852 would be in the recollection of the House. The reservoir burst in the dead of the night, and destroyed a great many lives and a vast amount of property. The jury found a verdict, declaring that the reservoir was originally defective, and that the Commissioners had been guilty of gross and culpable negligence, and regretting that they could not return a verdict of manslaughter. Notwithstanding that warning, Parliament took no steps whatever to insure the improved construction of embankments. These works continued to be erected on the same false principle as formerly, and the consequence was the Sheffield inundation in the previous March, when 265 lives were sacrificed, property was destroyed to the amount of about £1,000,000, and 20,000 persons were reduced to destitution. The jury in that case expressed their opinion that there had not been that engineering skill and attention in the construction of the works which their importance demanded, and that the Legislature ought to take such action as would result in frequent, regular, and sufficient inspection of all reservoirs of that character. In the inquiry as to the Bradford Reservoir, the engineer, under whose advice and authority it had been constructed, distinctly confessed that the embankments were all more or less dangerous. Even after the awful experience of the recent inundation the same engineer designed another reservoir for the Sheffield Company on the same unsound principle as that which gave way. Mr. Rawlinson, as soon as he heard of it, drew the attention of the Home Secretary to the fact, that every objectionable feature in the Bradford Re- 1320 servoir was reproduced in this new one. The jury stated in their verdict that in their opinion the Legislature ought to take such action as would result in a governmental inspection. But Mr. Rawlinson and Mr. Beardmore declared that they could not recommend the adoption of that suggestion, inasmuch as the Government could not ensure ultimate safety, and the responsibility must rest with the engineers. He could not understand that advice. The right hon. Gentleman, however, did interfere. He wrote to the Waterworks Company and told them that they would incur the gravest responsibility if they continued the embankment; and he had no doubt that if they had persevered, the right hon. Gentleman would have applied for an Order in Council to stop the operations. Precisely the same thing had been going on in his own neighbourhood at Bradford. Eleven reservoirs were in the course of construction there on the same false and dangerous principles as the reservoir at Bradfield. One of the principal causes of the bursting of the Bradfield reservoir was that the embankments were formed of material scooped out of the interior. Mr. Rawlinson had pointed that out as a most dangerous principle, and yet every one of the reservoirs in the neighbourhood of Bradford was being constructed in accordance with it, and, as a necessary consequence, every one of them was in a dangerous state. It was under such circumstances that he had been requested by a number of persons in his own neighbourhood to bring the question under the notice of the House. At present they were in a state of constant alarm lest their lives should be sacrificed. In his opinion it was necessary that some alteration should be made in the mode in which Parliament legislated upon the subject of waterworks. Parliamentary Committees did not devote sufficient attention to the evidence brought before them in connection with water schemes, and they ought to insist on the most rigorous measures for the preservation of human life. Most of the schemes themselves were originated by engineers and land surveyors, who went all over the country in search of a water supply, and having found it, induced persons connected with the locality, under the promise of a high rate of interest for their money, to embark their capital in a speculation of this sort. Their first step was to buy off all the influence which might be used against them, and having once accom- 1321 plished that object they announce the fact to a Parliamentary Committee, who were satisfied with the mere assertion of the fact, and never considered it their duty to inquire into the means by which it was brought about. The Bradford Waterworks' scheme had been promoted entirely in that way; and he believed that a large majority of the water schemes which came before Parliament were got up in a similar manner. In 1853 Bradford had become a corporate town, and the Waterworks Company sold their waterworks to the corporation at a profit of cent per cent, many persons connected with the company being also members of the corporation. The corporation, in the face of an opposition from some of the most respectable inhabitants, then came to Parliament for power to go a distance of twenty-two miles from Bradford to collect water for the supply of that town and eight other places. In carrying out that gigantic scheme, not the slightest protection was given to the landowners or farmers of the district, who were deprived of the natural flow of the water, the only persons who were protected being the mill-owners, who went to the heavy expense of appearing before Parliament in their own defence. The corporation obtained borrowing powers to the extent of £383,500. In 1858 the corporation again applied to Parliament for powers to supply ten other places with water, and to borrow to the extent of another £200,000. In 1862 they applied again to Parliament for powers to borrow a further sum of £100,000, and for an extension of the time for completing the works. A large number of the inhabitants were opposed to that gigantic expenditure, and he believed that the whole sum for which borrowing powers had been obtained, or nearly £700,000, had been expended, or would very shortly be so, and yet it appeared when Mr. Rawlinson was sent down the water had not been conveyed to the borough of Bradford, or to any one of the other eighteen places. He was in formed that a Bill had been passed through that House, called the Sheffield Waterworks Bill, contrary to the Standing-Orders, and that it was before the House of Lords, where the corporation of Sheffield were opposing it. The promoters of that Bill proposed to raise £400,000 to pay their liabilities, and to increase the water rates of Sheffield 25 per cent. A petition from 12,000 householders in that borough against the Bill had been sent to him, and the petitioners complained of the at- 1322 tempt to tax them for the consequence of the misdeeds and scandalous negligence of the Waterworks Company. Having endeavoured to give the House some idea of the way in which Waterworks Companies were got up as speculations and jobs, he would now touch on the means used to procure water. In the borough of Bradford the spring water of the district, one of the best gifts of Providence, had been recklessly destroyed, and the corporation had gone twenty-two miles off for water, thus creating a dearth in some of the mineral districts, where the article would yet be much needed. When a spring disappeared from a district there was no legal right given to examine whether the water had not been taken away underground, by stealth, in pipes. These parties collected all the spring water that could be found for miles around and left nothing for the supply of the district but what was collected in the compensation reservoirs. In many instances in his own neighbourhood farmers and others had been deprived of their spring water; on three occasions his own property had been deprived of it by stealth, and once he was obliged to apply to the Court of Chancery for redress. These reservoirs were filled by the rainfall mostly during summer thunderstorms, the gush of which was necessary for cleansing the streams in which the filth and sewage of the district were pent up. No authority was placed in the hands of any local board or any magistrate to insist that the owners of these reservoirs should let sufficient water rush down the streams in order to purify them. Hence the course was stopped, malaria arose, and the health of the district was affected. The right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for the Home Department ought to see that a clause was inserted in all future Waterworks Bills empowering local Boards of Health to order the flooding of these streams during the summer months:—