[BILL 3.] SECOND READING.

HC Deb 08 March 1865 vol 177 cc1309-59

Order for Second Reading read.

LORD ROBERT MONTAGU

, in moving the second reading of this Bill, said, that the Nuisance Removal Act was directed against infection of the air, the present Bill concerned itself with the contamination of waters. The former Act dealt with stagnant pollutions; this Bill had to do with nuisances which flowed down from one place to the injury of other places. No one in the present day would deny the enormity and urgency of the evil with which the measure sought to grapple. Ten years ago the Committee on the Nuisance Removal Bill had inquired into the subject, and had ascertained that our rivers had become absolutely pestilential, and were, in fact, nothing but main sewers, and had urged the Government to take steps for the removal of such disastrous influences. The Sewage Commission, which reported in 1861, mentioned by name upwards of 100 rivers which they affirmed to be in an absolutely poisonous condition. The Fishery Commission gave a catalogue of as many more rivers which were as bad. The Committee appointed last year hot only confirmed this statement, but supported it by details of a still more revolting and nauseous character. It was now beyond a doubt that we made the water diffuse an evil which the earth alone would remove. Upon last year's Committee Members both of the late and present Government had sat—Gentlemen who for years had given their most earnest attention to the subject. Yet the Committee had been unanimous in the recommendations put forward at the close of this inquiry. This was a strong primâ facie case. A number of boroughs, among them Nottingham, Sheffield, Birmingham, Manchester, Preston, Coventry, Derby, Wolverhampton, Bath, Huddersfield, York, Stockport, Cheltenham, and Oxford, had memorialized and urged the Government to carry out the recommendations of the Committee. The Nottingham memorial had, in fact, actually sketched out the very plan which had been adopted in the Bill. This made the prima facie case still stronger. After such strong recommendations it was impossible that the Secretary of State for the Home Department could continue to sit much longer with folded arms, as he had done for the last ten years. Seventy large landowners—among them fifty Peers—and the Conservators of seven fishery associations had put forth similar views; so that a very strong prima facie case had already been made out for the Bill. He did not, however, desire to press its adoption in the present Session; all he asked was that it should be read a second time and referred to a Select Committee. All he sought was that the objections which might be urged against it should be stated and defined and sifted, with a view to their being met and removed before the Bill should be submitted to a new Parliament. He cheerfully confessed that there might be many imperfections; he allowed that there were serious shortcomings in the Bill. Yet he had worked hard and had done his best. He was not, therefore, asking too much of the House. All he desired was that they should discuss it in a friendly, and not a carping spirit; that they should labour together to improve, and not overthrow the Bill. Lords Ebury, Shaftesbury, and Llanover, representing the Sanitary Association and Fisheries Preservation Associations, had addressed a letter last March to the First Lord of the Treasury, in which they stated— That the increasing pollutions of the rivers and streams of the country is an evil of national importance, which urgently demands the application of remedial measures; that the discharge of sewage and of the noxious refuse of factories into them is a source of nuisance and danger to health; that it acts injuriously not only on the locality where it occurs, but also on the population of the districts through which the polluted rivers flow; that it poisons the water, which in many cases forms the sole supply of the population for all purposes, including drinking; that it destroys the fish, and generally that it impairs the value and the natural advantages derived from rivers and streams of water. Mr. Rawlinson, the Government engineer, on being asked (Question 3,999) his opinion with regard to the probable condition of rivers in case the present system were persevered in, said— One can hardly imagine the rivers and streams ever becoming worse than they are now. Instances had been given to the Committee of last year which demonstated the enormous extent of the evil, and made the Committee fully sensible that the people would not much longer endure the grievance. Mr. Whitehead, surveyor of the county of Somerset, speaking of the state of the river below Wells, said— At the mills, half a mile below the outfall, I have seen very large quantities of solid matter, pure foeces, taken up from the grating; and the stench at the mill is so bad that the miller can hardly remain in the house. Of the river Exe the same gentleman said— The town sewer discharges itself close to the Exe-bridge, and the whole bed of the river is one mass of pollution. Of the river below Sherborne he said— The whole stream for a mile and a half from the outfall is one mass of sewage, as you can see by walking on the banks and observing the different substances clinging to the sides. It does not contain any fish, and the farmer occupying the lands on the northern side of the river has been obliged to dig artificial places for his cattle because they cannot touch the water in the river now. Dr. Acland, Regius Professor of Physic at the University of Oxford, testified that the Thames was "a national disgrace." He described the process of fermentation which took place in the river. There was a disengagement of gas in the foul deposit at the bottom of the river, and large masses of black sewage were thrown up to the surface; these being light floated down with the current, or became entangled in the weeds and rushes at the sides. In course of time those masses either became disintegrated and dispersed through the water, or else they were re-deposited and again underwent the same process whenever a favourable opportunity occurred. In summer whole beds of this stuff were exposed; at best of times there was a great accumulation of feculent matter and impurities among the rushes. The condition of the river, he said, was frightful. Mr. Rawlinson referred to the rivers of Yorkshire and Lancashire, and asserted that they were even worse than the Thames; for although as much sewage did not flow into them as into the rivers in the south, the towns in those counties still being imperfectly sewered, yet in another respect they were worse off, as they contained a much less volume of water. Mr. Rawlinson was asked— Before the Tame reaches Birmingham, above Birmingham, does it not receive the sewage of 270,000 people?—Yes, and all the refuse of gasworks, pumpings of coal mines, and the drainings of that great district of South Staffordshire. Birmingham always suffers more or less from a type of fever. Its mortality is much higher than that of the metropolis. In speaking of the Medlock, at Manchester, Mr. Rawlinson stated that the river there was covered with a black scum, so thick that birds were able to walk over it. [A laugh.] The hon. Member (Mr. Jackson) laughed, not because he doubted the facts which he knew he was not in a position to controvert; not because he was ashamed of the condition of that great emporium of commerce with which he was connected; but simply because he was opposed to the Bill. If he had any answer to give to the deliberate statements of Mr. Rawlinson, the Government engineer, or thought that gentleman had spoken untruly, let him rise in his place and say so; but otherwise he must remind the hon. Gentleman that a laugh was no argument whatever; a sneer disproves nothing. Mr. Rawlinson was asked this question— In your report you state that the Medlock, at Manchester, is covered with a black scum so thick that birds are able to walk over it—Is that the case? And he replied— That is so. I know, as engineer to the Bridgewater Canal, that the abominations in the Medlock and its tributary rivers are so great that words would scarcely convey what it is.…You see the gas rise up in a bubble, and a mass of scum with it, which cakes on the surface. You might skim the Bridgewater Canal at Manchester and cleanse it completely every four-and-twenty hours; and this process of putrefaction with the subsoil takes place, and raises this scum, which again cakes and covers the surface. He added— The Clyde is worse than the Thames or than the rivers of Lancashire. That was the condition of the great arterial stream of Scotland, which was proud with the wealth, and white with the navies of Greenock and Glasgow. Can any one deny that the evil and disgrace is truly enormous? These were evils sufficient in themselves to demand instant removal—abuses freely confessed to be a disgrace to a nation which prided itself on civilization and advancement. But this is not all. From this sprung a brood of other evils not less malignant in their character than their sire. He alluded first to the pollution of our water supply. The water companies which supplied London, formerly took their water from opposite Lambeth and Chelsea. But a recent Act of Parliament had compelled them to remove their works, and to take water from above Teddington Lock, where the supply was at that time pure. But it had been given in evidence that the stream above Teddington now received the sewage of fifty towns; and this number was every year receiving additions as other places came under the Local Government Act. Even now the inhabitants of London were drinking the sewage of 800,000 persons. In a few years this would be doubled. Let them not lay the flattering unction to their souls that filtration offered any adequate remedy; it merely removed bodies held in suspension, but could not touch matters in solution. It strained out solids; what was dissolved passed through. Now, of the putrifying matters of sewage 6–7ths were in solution, and only l-7th in suspension; so that the water might be filtered till it was perfectly clear to all appearance and yet contain 6–7tlis of the sewage; and these 6–7ths were the most putrescible, the most deleterious of all. Let it be filtered 100 times, if they liked, and nothing practically would have been done to remove the pollution. It would look clear and bright, and colourless. For colour is duo to solid bodies in suspension. Mere solution is colourless. Dr. Hoffman and Mr. Witt, the referees to whom the Government had intrusted inquiries connected with the main drainage of the metropolis, wrote that— When water contaminated with sewage has been completely filtered through paper, sand, or even through animal charcoal, and by that means rendered perfectly colourless, clear, transparent, and inodorous, or after it has been treated with lime, it speedily begins (especially in hot weather) to ferment and putrefy, and becomes decidedly mischievous. These gentlemen, it must be observed, were speaking not of the common and gross appliances possessed by water companies; but of chemical filtration carried to the utmost extent of refinement that science enabled them to reach. And yet even this was utterly useless. Professor Way was asked— Do you consider that water which has once become polluted by sewage cannot be perfectly cleansed for drinking purposes, either by means of filtration, or precipitation, or deodorization, or any other chemical process? He replied— Certainly; it cannot be practically purified by any chemical process. Was he wrong, therefore, when he stated that the water supplied to London for drinking purposes did really contain the sewage of 800,000 persons? In the Greek fable we were told that when the god of strength had to perform the task of removing the immundicity of the Augean stable, he turned a river, and made it flow through the stable. We had followed the example of Hercules; we had resorted to the means which he had taught us, in bringing the Thames through every man's house, and thus clearing away the abominations of London. But there, unluckily, the analogy stopped. Hercules never proposed to drink up what had flowed through the stable; we, in our recklessness, drank the water which had flowed through our towns. Not only could argument be drawn from the repulsiveness of the unsatisfactory system at present acted upon, but also from the enormous expenditure which it necessarily involved. London was not the only great town which had been exposed to this evil. Manchester had to fetch water from a distance of twenty miles—none could be found nearer than twenty miles. What Manchester had to pay for such enormous works was the fine and punishment in which it was mulcted because of the impurity of rivers. A resolution passed at a recent meeting of the Sanitary Committee and also of the Committee of the Town Council in the borough of Nottingham, showed the mischief resulting from the same state of things to that town. It was stated— That impure liquid matter from the manufactures and population of Old Lenton, near Nottingham, flows into the river Trent about a mile and a half above the point at which a large part of the water supply of Nottingham is now drawn from that river. That the river Leen, which passes through the town, and which was about forty years ago a pure stream, and afforded the principal supply of water to the town for all purposes, is now foul and offensive by reason of its conveying part of the sewage of Nottingham and the whole of the sewage of an extensive and populous higher district, over which the authorities of Nottingham have no control, and flows with the rest of the sewage of Nottingham into the parish of Sneinton and thence into the river Trent. At Leeds, £150,000 had been expended in sewerage operations. It was then found that the water of the river Aire could not be drunk. They accordingly spent upwards of £350,000 or £400,000 in getting water from the river Wharfe. Thus it cost the town of Leeds half a million sterling to foul the river Aire. And, after all, the town is no better off than before. The river Wharfe was becoming as bad as the Aire. It received all manner of contributions from sewers, tanneries, paper mills, and manufactories. The river Wharfe had become so impure that on dipping a carpenter's foot rule four inches below the surface it was found impossible to read the marks upon it. Yet this was the water the people of Leeds drank; and the hon. Member for Leeds (Mr. Baines), drinking nothing but water himself, tried to persuade every other person to do the same. Last year Bills were promoted by water companies, involving in the whole, in order to carry out their objects, an expenditure of no less than £2,000,000. In one year alone, £2,000,000 had been withdrawn from the general resources of the country—£2,000,000 abstracted from the capital which employed labour—£2,000,000 taken out of the pockets of the ratepayers. And why? Merely because the Government had permitted persons to foul the waters which had formerly been drank and enjoyed by the country at large. Secondly, another evil which resulted from the pollution of rivers was that the growth of weeds was stimulated by the sewage. This prevented the natural scouring power of the stream, and thereby impeded navigation. It was an effort of nature to diminish the impurity of the water. This effort was continued as long as the impurity was slight. When it increased, the remedial agency was destroyed, the weeds were killed. Thirdly, fish were also provided by nature for the same object. But with the fishes, as with the weeds, when a certain point had once been reached, the sewage overcame and destroyed them. Mr. Ffennell, Chief Commissioner of Fisheries, stated that not a single salmon-smelt could get through the river at London down to the sea. The loss occasioned to fisheries all over the kingdom by this outpouring of sewage by mines, gas works, paper mills, and factories, was enormous. The deposit from sewage and ashes destroyed the spawn; the refuse from mines and factories poisoned the fish. Mr. Ffennell was asked these questions— Do you consider that allowing the sewage to run into the rivers in England materially diminishes the amount of fish in England?—Very materially. Do you see any reason why the Thames should not be as well supplied with salmon as Scotch rivers?—It only wants one thing—to purify the Thames from Richmond down to the sea. If that were done there is no question but that salmon would at once come into it. On this question of the fisheries he had been furnished with abundant evidence. At a meeting lately held at Chester, working fishermen came forward to state that they had picked up and taken in their nets dozens of salmon which had been destroyed by poisonous sewage, turned out into the river at Chester. Mr. Eden, the Inspector of Fisheries, had attended that meeting and received that evidence. The hon. Secretary to the River Dee Salmon Fishery Association had preserved a bottle of pure paraffin made from the water which had been taken from the Dee below the Petroleum Works. With regard to the river Calder, the following amusing passage occurred in one of the Reports of the Fishery Inspectors:— Some years ago the Calder was a brilliant fishing river. I could take my rod, or send my keeper, if a friend came unexpectedly to dine, and have a salmon for him to a certainty. But there is no such thing as a fish in the Calder now, and so strong is the infusion of dye-stuff contained in it, that slipping off its bank last summer I unfortunately underwent immersion in the water, and my Russia duck trowsers were dyed a determined deep blue, which defied the powers of bleaching to obliterate. Some hon. Members were apt to think light of the loss of salmon. Let them bear in mind, however, that loss of fish meant loss of capital, in return for which*nothing whatever was gained. On this point Mr. Ffennell was asked— The revenue from those salmon in the Thames would be very large, would it not?—Yes; very large comparatively with other rivers. The revenue from small rivers in Scotland is some thousands per annum, is it not?—Yes; and it would be very much greater on the Thames. Is it not useless to attempt to breed salmon in the Thames so long as the sewage of London is allowed to run into it?—Perfectly useless. The Thames contained no salmon. Its watershed was about equal to that of the Severn, which comprised 4,437 square miles. Only £1,000 worth of salmon was caught annually in the Severn. The watershed of the Tay was half that of the Severn—namely, 2,283 square miles; the yield of salmon was annually worth £30,000, yet the Tay was not half preserved. Clearly, therefore, if the Severn were allowed to produce its due proportion of salmon, it would yield about £120,000 a year. He had already stated that the watersheds of the Severn and the Thames were equal in point of extent. The Thames, therefore, in its normal condition, would produce £120,000 worth of salmon a year. The same might be calculated for every other river in England. The loss of revenue under this head was enormous. Yet this was not all. It was a direct injury to the poor. At the mouth of the river Dee 300 families found employment. How many families might there not be under happier circumstances at the mouths of the Severn and the Thames, were this great evil removed. The injurious effects of the river pollution were not confined to fish. Fourthly, cattle likewise had been poisoned. There were two instances mentioned before the Committee, of actions having been brought to recover damages for loss of cattle. Two days ago the Vice Chancellor Wood granted an injunction against the town of Banbury, because the pollution of the river by the sewage of that town had destroyed the plaintiff's cattle. He had also been informed by Mr. Whit-taker the vicar of Whalley, in Lancashire, that— The waters of the Calder and its tributaries were poisonous to cattle on their banks. That fact could be attested by Colonel Towneley, Mr. Peel, and Mr. Taylor, owners of the best shorthorns in the world, and winners at Chelmsford, Battersea, and Leeds, severally. Fifthly, let the House consider the sanitary aspect of the case. Could any one doubt that this was also injurious to health? All the witnesses concurred in regarding this as unquestionable. Mr. Rawlinson stated that Lambeth used to have worse water than Chelsea; it had at that time more disease. Subsequently it had better water than Chelsea, and the death rate was reduced below that of Chelsea. At Ottery St, Mary, where a stream received the drainage and furnished the water supply also, a fever always hung about the place, and was called in the country the Ottery fever. Epidemics and fevers, another witness affirmed, always infested those places which laboured under the evil of infected water. The surveyor of the local Board of Health at Exeter stated that— His attention had been called to the impure state of the river Exe, the emanations arising from which during the past summer had been of the most offensive character. "An unusually large number of fever cases among the inhabitants on its banks" had been the result. Disease in such localities was caused by the impurity of the water; but the air was also thereby contaminated. How near they were to disease in London last year might be seen by the Report of Dr. Letheby, who said— That which keeps down the offensiveness of the river during the summer time is either a low temperature or a copious rainfall. He added that there were periods of many months' duration every year, when from the evaporation of the water and the small supply from above, the flow of the stream was not downwards but upwards, and that at such times sewage discharged into the river at Barking would flow upwards to a distance far above the city bridges. Thus, in London, where £6,000,000 had been spent in improving the sewerage and purifying the river, the inhabitants were not secure from disease from this source. Dr. Acland told the Committee— There is not the slightest doubt that excrements from human habitations in the towns, polluted the waters in a very dangerous manner. I think it is perfectly established by sanitary investigators that disease, especially cholera, has been propagated in this manner. Dr. Acland described the effect of this state of things even in those cases where actual disease was not evoked. It produced a low condition of health, which rendered it necessary to administer quinine and other tonics and stimulants. When our forefathers ailed they were usually bled. This was always done at spring time and fall. Their diseases were always the results of having too much blood. But now every one was in a low condition—every one was weak and sickly and puny, and required quinine and other tonics and stimulants. This low state of health there was too much reason to believe was produced by the water which the people drank having been fouled by sewage. The Board of Health had as long ago as 1842 been of opinion that it was such a low state of health that drove people to the spirit shop. Thus, then, it was that no less than £25,000,000 worth of spirits were annually consumed in Great Britain alone. Thus it was that drunkenness prevailed, and the consequent loss of time from useful labour, and the expense of hospitals which resulted, and the unproductive maintenance of widows and orphans. He had next to speak of the evil done by mines, collieries, and manufactures. The Fishery Inspectors, in their second Report, said that— The injury done by the Deliffi mine, for example, would take two years' purchase' from the value of every acre of land on the hanks of the Dovey. It appeared that an injury of some £50,000 would be inflicted on the neighbourhood, because the company would not expend about £500 to remedy the evil. The injury which had been caused to a large population, in order to keep a trifling sum in the pockets of a few, was enormous. Another instance was given where many million tons of cinders, ashes, and spoil were thrown from one work alone into one of the tributaries of the river Usk. This was done, as the Inspectors of Fisheries pointed out— Not from any necessity consequent upon working the mines, but in order to save the parties the expense of providing heap or rubbish room. Such an injury was not local; at each flood it was carried many miles lower down the river. The sixth and last evil to which he would advert, was the injury to the drainage of the country. The rivers were silted up not only by the deposit from sewage, but also through ashes and cinders being thrown into them. The beds of the rivers were thus raised; and a swamp occasioned in the adjoining lands. The bed of the Rhyne at Weston-super-Mare had silted up two feet in the space of nine months. At Oxford, according to Dr. Acland, the Thames bad silted up as much as six feet; and the consequence was that the flat districts were in a sodden and water-logged condition. The scouring power of the river had also been diminished; and the accumulations increased at a more rapid rate. In Lancashire and Yorkshire many thousand tons of cinders were tipped into the rivers every year. Mr. Rawlinson stated that in those two counties there were river beds which had been thus raised ten or fifteen feet above their former level. In the Basin of the Mersey above Manchester 75,000 tons of cinders were tipped in every year. Mr. Rawlinson said he remembered a bridge under which a loaded waggon could have been driven, but under which a dog could now hardly crawl. These manufacturers dare not injure a private canal; with impunity they destroy public rivers. At Bolton a coal owner boats his refuse for three miles along the canal, until he comes to the Irwell; into that river he discharges his barges of refuse. The silting of rivers caused floods, and thus farming operations were stopped in the country surrounding them. For the injury was not local. Above Warrington—eighteen miles below any manufactory—the river was dredged yearly, and a hundred thousand tons of ashes and cinders were taken out of it. Such evils surely called for the instant interposition of the Government. The drinking water of the people was fouled; and no filtration could purify it. Weeds grew in the rivers, and navigation was impeded. The country lost an enormous revenue by the destruction of fish, and farmers by the death of their cattle. The health and strength of the nation declined; and the beds of rivers were silted up, so that drainage was impeded, and the surrounding country reduced to a waterlogged condition. What honest Government would permit such evils? What independent people could long endure them? Yet this was not all. They were daily increasing, and consequently a remedy was most urgently required. The cure must be both instant and vigorous. After 1848, when towns first began to divert their sewage into rivers, the evil was slight. Sewering advanced but slowly; the amount of pollution was trifling, and persons were not awake to the consequences. But now every year the sewage of new towns was poured into the rivers, and the evil was being multiplied tenfold. The danger was most urgent, and was constantly being enhanced. The evil was rapidly growing upon us. Dr. Acland, Regius professor at Oxford, said that the Thames there had become absolutely unbearable. How much worse, then, must it be for the City of London? Mr. Tom Taylor, the Secretary to the Local Government Board, was asked— Do you agree with the Commissioners in stating that it is an evil of great national importance?—I apprehend that it is, because it is a growing evil, and is, I fear, in course of growth to very serious dimensions. Then do you consider that it is absolutely necessary that sewage should not be allowed to run into streams and rivers?—That is the only way of preserving streams from pollution. This was bad enough in itself and in its consequences. What made it worse was its illegality. The law of the land was set at defiance. The practice was contrary to law. As early as the 12 Richard II. a statute was passed enjoining the mayors of boroughs to make proclamations against throwing filth or rubbish in the rivers. No communication between the cesspools of the houses and the sewers of the streets was permitted until 1847. The object of the latter was merely to convey the surface waters. It was the Board of Health that fostered the change by which cesspools were connected with the sewers, and the sewage was diverted into the rivers. The origin of this was the discovery that it was easier to remove these matters by water than by hand; besides which the removal was more completely performed. It was therefore more cleanly and more healthy. At first the cesspools were pumped out into the sewers by means of a fire-engine and hose. The Board of Health knew that they were thereby polluting the streams and acting contrary to law; but they excused themselves upon the ground of a greater good being achieved, and that the evil would work its own cure, by compelling the adoption of some other means of dealing with the sewage. The Board of Health, in fact, contemplated from the very first, the utilization of sewage upon land. According to the evidence of Mr. Gael and Mr. Tom Taylor, they very early set themselves to collect evidence in favour of sewage utilization. In former days human refuse was always applied to the land. There was a regular service of scavengers, established by law, who collected it every morning, and removed it in dung pots and dung carts to laystalls, which were provided by law. Thence the return carts which had brought vegetables into the towns, were obliged to take back the refuse, and it was all spread upon the land. There it ought to be put now as formerly. The only question was, how to get it there,—by the hand of man, or by washings of water? But the removal of matter was easier by suspension in water, and cheaper than by hand. That was fully established by the evidence given by the Government engineer before the Committee. An instance had also been related of the means by which the large reservoir of the West Middlesex Company had been cleaned out. It had silted up several feet, and an engineer had contracted to clean it out in four weeks for the sum of £400. He was aware that it would be much cheaper to puddle this with water than to cart out the silt; he therefore sent in some Irish labourers who, by stirring up the deposit, and letting it flow out with the water, cleared out the reservoir in four days at a cost of only £40. At St. Austell's, in Cornwall, instead of carting the china clay, which amounted to 200,000 tons a year, it was conveyed for three miles in pipes by suspension in water and by means of pumping. One clay merchant alone thus saves as much as £800 a year, which he would otherwise have to expend in carriage. Mr. Rawlinson, in illustration of the cheapness with which sewage could be removed by means of suspension in water through mains and with pumping engines, was asked— Some engineers have given it in evidence before the Committee that the carriage of a substance, clay for instance, by suspension in water is cheaper than to carry it in a cart; is that so, in your opinion?—I have no doubt about it. Then if it were remunerative to remove the matters of the cesspools to the land in former days by means of carts, will it not be still more remunerative, in these days, to remove it by means of suspension in water through mains, and with pumping engines?—There is no doubt about it; you can pump by those engines in the Lambeth Works, (which stand almost opposite this House, I believe) about 80,000 gallons 100 feet high, at a working cost (including coals, tallow, and wages) of one shilling. He wished to point out to the House that the sewage of towns must be applied to the land, and that there was no choice in the matter. There was no alternative. It was an imperious necessity. We must return to the land what had been taken from it, instead of robbing the land to poison the water. Filtration had been shown to be ineffective. Deodorization had been proved to be out of the question. Professor Way was asked— If sewage is not to be allowed to run into rivers, and if all those means of precipitation, filtration, and deodorization are ineffective, what other alternative is there for dealing with the sewage?"—"To use it in a liquid form upon land. That is, in fact, the only other alternative?"—"It is. Mr. Tom Taylor, Secretary of the Local Government Office, said the very fact of stating that this sewage should not be allowed to infect our rivers, was as much as to say that it must be put upon the land. That gentleman then gave it as his opinion that the utilization of the sewage upon the land should not be regarded as a commercial speculation, but should be carried out whether it paid or not. He went on to say that if the local boards did their duty, they would sewer the towns to prevent infection of the air; and if the Watershed Boards, to be formed under this Bill, did their duty they would protect the water of our rivers from pollution, and that the result would be the application of the sewage to the land. Deodorization of sewage had, in numerous instances, altogether failed. In the case of Croydon, after three or four injunctions had been obtained, they tried deodorization without success; and the Vice Chancellor said that he agreed with the opinion ex- pressed by Professor Way, in his evidence before the court, that the only way to deal with sewage was to apply it to the land. There were about sixty methods of deodorization referred by the Board of Works to certain referees, who reported in favour of the method of Mr. Dales, as being the only one which was likely to meet the requirements of the case. Nevertheless, Mr. Dales himself had said that, although hismethod of deodorization had been pronounced to be the best, he was of opinion that it was a mistake to attempt to deodorise the sewage, and that the only proper thing to do with it was to put it on the land. It was obvious, then, that chemistry had confessed itself vanquished and retired from the contest, and agriculture thereupon stepped in, and solved the problem. The land, in fact, was the only perfect deodorizer. It extracted from the sewage every element of putridity, or, in other words, every element of fertility. Dr. Acland stated to the Committee, that the power of the soil to purify water was most remarkable, and that it operated not only very efficiently but very rapidly. Professor Way was the first chemist to discover this great property of the soil. In his examination he said that the foul smell of the 'sewage was in an incredibly short period of time caused to disappear by means of the soil, but that chemistry could do nothing effectual in this direction. The soil, he said, exercised this extraordinary power of cleansing the impure water by abstracting from it all the manurial properties which it contained. This power was very limited in extent, but was immediately renewed by the roots of growing plants which freed the soil, and enabled it to fix another share of these fertilizing elements. This was, as it were, a finger post of nature, pointing to us the course which we ought to pursue. It is natural that the elements taken from the soil by the plants to serve as the food of man should be returned to it, to play their part again in the great cycle, and not "be cast as rubbish to the void." Some persons had asserted that the utilization of sewage upon land would be unhealthy to the population; but there was not a single witness who dared to assert this before the Committee. On the contrary, every one had said that, whatever advantages were to be gained by the moderate application of sewage to the land, it was evident that no evil whatever could result from such a system. Mr. Rawlinson, speaking of the Committee- room in which he gave his evidence, said that if it were a grass plot, it might be irrigated every morning with sewage, and that half an hour afterwards there would be no perceptible smell. Mr. Tom Taylor said, "He had heard of many applications of the sewage; but that he never heard of injury to health from it." Professor Way asserted that it was neither bad for health nor offensive if used in small quantities. He had now, he hoped, made out his case as to the absolute necessity of utilizing sewage, in order to prevent the pollution of waters. And thus the volume of every river would be maintained, the purity of the water secured, and the health of the people remain unimpaired. It must be done, whether it paid or not. He wished it to be expressly understood that he did not argue this question on financial grounds; he had established his case on absolute necessity, on the enormity of the evil, and because the Legislature had no other alternative. He had not as yet spoken of the value of the sewage, nor of its fertilizing power, in an agricultural point of view. He trusted he might now be permitted to fortify his case, to strengthen and to embellish his position, by speaking of the riches which would accrue from the adoption of this system. He would show the gain of the contrary course in the immense fertility of the land, which would be the result of this utilization. Though some hon. Gentlemen might endeavour to undermine the citadel which he had constructed, he could tell them that their efforts would be vain, as it was built upon the rock of necessity, which defied all the tools of the miner. He was, however, now going to build up certain outworks to the fortifications which he had raised. These might be destroyed without affecting the strength of the citadel. He would begin the second part of his subject by making a quotation from a speech of the Chancellor of the Exchequer last year in Liverpool. The right hon. Gentleman observed on October 13,1864— There is something, I believe, almost unprecedented as regards any great country, something quite unprecedented in the condition of a nation whose commercial position might now be defined as ours. Nearly one-half of the essential food of the people of England—I mean grain—is cultivated and raised in other lands; perhaps I might say, independently of food, nearly one-half of the whole materials of the labour of the country are also produced in other lands. What is the condition of a country whose industry is distinguished by features like these? Here is opened to us a vista almost interminable, because we are not only dependent, but we are unceasingly dependent, on foreign supply. These words of the Chancellor of the Exchequer he (Lord Robert Montagu) considered to be a powerful argument in support of his case. The greatness or insignificance of a nation depended, in secondary causes, upon the fertility of its soil. Adam Smith had said, "the sea and the earth are the two breasts of our great mother," without sustenance from these no nation can exist; and if the stream from one of those breasts were dried up, the people would dwindle and become puny. It was said the other night, in the course of the debate, that the strength of a nation depended upon its men—but it should be remembered that the men depended upon the sterility or fertility of the soil. Mr. John Stuart Mill had shown that the number of marriages and births varied every year with the price of wheat. Sparta sent 8,000 warriors to Platæa. In 100 years she could not muster 1,000 men. The historian Plutarch informed them of the reason. It was uninhabited by reason of its barrenness. The decline of Greece commenced from the sterility of the soil. For the farmer quits the field which ceases to support him. The Temple of Paestum was once in the midst of a dense population, rich gardens and fertile fields. It is now in a depopulated waste. The decline of Rome began with the importation of corn. And the Chancellor of the Exchequer had said that our state was unprecedented, because we depended upon foreign countries for our corn. China had now a population of 307 millions—a great nation in comparison with the thirty millions in the British Isles. She was able to maintain this great population because she did not lose an atom of refuse but maintained the fertility of the fields by restoring to the soil all that was taken from it. An Emperor in this land of Confucius, in one of his proclamations, said that he looked forward with deep concern to a period when the number of the people shall have exceeded the means of subsistence, and issued a decree that, for this reason, none of his people should presume to lose any of the refuse. Japan was also crowded with people, but they were not compelled to resort to other countries for food. They fed no cattle for manure, they purchased no guano, they imported no food, but they relied upon the utilization of human refuse. But our towns resembled the tub of the Danaides through which wealth was incessantly poured but which was all as quickly lost. A time there was, ere England's griefs began, When every rood of ground maintained its man. But now— Far away our children leave the land. And why was it? Because we took as much as possible from the land without returning anything to it. It was true they returned to the land what their horses had eaten, and the beds they had laid on; but that which man consumed was cast into the river and flowed to the ocean. A measure of human manure made a measure of corn. We threw away the former and imported the latter. This was like throwing away the wool of our sheep, and sending to Saxony for cloth. Ploughing and fine weather did not make full granaries. Every year the elements of corn and flesh were taken from our fields. If they were not returned thither those fields must become poorer and poorer. We drew on one side of the account and got no receipts on the other. What wonder was it if we were rushing to bankruptcy? The result was that we every year sent away £16,000,000 for foreign corn, all which money should go into our farmers' pockets. But a time would come when the fields in other countries would become exhausted, because all the elements of fertility had flowed out to sea; when civil wars or commotions would arise and cut short their supply; when their populations would so increase that they would want for themselves all the food they grew; when they would cease to want our coal and iron, so that we should have nothing to give them in exchange for their corn. What, he asked would be the result? Why a state of things which it was fearful to contemplate; and it behaved a Government to make provision against such a calamity falling upon the people. For a dearth of bread was worse than a dearth of cotton. The great value of sewage manure on the other hand consisted in its increasing with the population; and thereby they were enabled to keep up the fertility of the land, as there were more mouths to consume the produce. It was a manure that was suitable for all crops. One witness stated before the Committee that he had grown corn seven successive years on the same land by the application of the sewage obtained from his labourers cottages. Each year the crop was better and heavier than the previous one, and the last crop was two or three times greater than the first crop. With regard to grass, Mr. Lawes stated that he could with case obtain by means of sewage 1,500 gallons of milk per acre. The land at Croydon had only fetched £2 per acre. There they were obliged to utilize their sewage in consequence of the Vice Chancellor's injunction. The land in the vicinity immediately went up to £4 per acre. They took eventually 250 acres at £4; and Mr. Marriage offered them £5 per acre for the 250 acres, provided he was supplied with all the sewage for a certain period. His offer was accepted, and the town thus made a profit of £250 a year by the transaction, besides the sale of deposit at 1s. 6d. per ton. They had previously lost £40,000 in lawsuits and experiments under the old system. Mr. Marriage now got four crops of grass a year from the land, the first crop being a month earlier than any grass in the neighbourhood. The amount of grass in each crop was 14 tons per acre, which sold for £8 an acre. Thus, without any expenditure, he every year cleared £32 per acre. The people of Croydon saw now that they ought to be paid at least £15 an acre for the land. The sewage of Croydon was inferior to that of London, the water supply at Croydon being 50 gallons per head per day, and that of London being only 33 gallons per head per day; and if the sewage of Croydon produced such magnificent results, how much more valuable must be that of London? The application of the sewage to land he need not remind the House would greatly enhance the value of the land. The increased value of the land at Croydon, he had already shown. The land at Edinburgh, which at one time fetched only 2s. 6d. per acre, now, by the application of sewage to it, had increased in value to £35 or £40 per acre. The commercial value of sewage was a disputed point. In Flanders it was calculated at between 25s. and 30s. per head of the population; the Government Eeferees, however, placed it at 10s. 10d., and Messrs. Napier and Hope stated it to be only 6s. per head. But then it must be remembered that they wanted to purchase. They all knew the proverb of Solomon, "What says the buyer, it is nought, it is nought," and so Messrs. Napier and Hope said with respect to sewage. He would, however, not urge this disputed point. At all events, enough had been stated with regard to its value to show the enormous loss which was now sustained every year. Sewage had moreover a fictitious value. For artificial manures were always adulterated; sewage would always be pure. The quantity of artificial manures was also "miserably insufficient." Professor Way stated, in his evidence before the Committee, that— There is no doubt in the world that the supply of manure is miserably insufficient for an improved state of agriculture; that is to say, suppose that ninety-nine farmers were to farm as the hundredth does at this moment, there would be a scramble for manures. He had stated also that the sources of guano would be exhausted in less than twenty years. It was therefore necessary that some other good and efficient manure should be provided, or else in a short time there would be, as Professor Way had said, a scramble for manures. He had shown the enormity of the abuse, and the evils that sprung from it from the pollution of the waters, the expense the country was consequently put to in procuring a proper water supply, the depressed condition of the people, the defective drainage of the land, and the loss of revenue by the destruction of fish and cattle. He had also shown the wealth which must accrue from the utilization of sewage. By utilizing the sewage they would be creating yearly twenty millions of capital, which was now utterly lost. This would benefit not only the farmer and the landowner, but also the labourer from its giving the increased means for the employment of labour. The sale of town sewage would lighten or remove the burdens of the ratepayers. The landowner would see the value of his land multiplied twenty times. The economist would rejoice that the capital now expended in procuring guano and foreign corn would employ labour at home. The statesman would be at rest when he saw us independent of other nations for our supply of food. Let not the House however ride off on a fallacy; he believed in the value of sewage, but he rested his case on the necessity of protecting the waters. It must be done, and we shall be rewarded for doing it. This, no doubt, was a sweeping Bill; but it was rendered necessary in consequence of the indolence or incompetence of the Government who had allowed the evil to grow to such an extent, and the law to be broken year after year till a sweeping measure became necessary to check it. If the Bill was a sweeping measure, the fault was not his, but that of the Government in not listen- ing to the reports of Commissioners and Committees when they urged on them to devise or adopt a remedy; but rather than endanger their elections they had listened to a few manufacturers, and had allowed our water supply to be still contaminated, and the health of the people to be thereby endangered. His right hon. Friend (Mr. Adderley) had done something; but private individuals in general did not like to incur the odium and expense. They said it was no business of theirs; why should they bestir themselves and take so much trouble to promote the good of others? Local Boards would not put the law in motion, for they were interested in committing the injury. Each grumbled at the towns above and injured those below. The town of Salford once applied to the town of Manchester, and said, "We are willing to spend £80,000 if you will join us in turning the sewage of the two towns on to the meadows." But Manchester replied, "We would willingly do so if the towns above would join instead of sending us down their polluted matter." There must, in fact, be unity of action in each watershed. Without such unity London might spend £6,000,000 in draining, but it would receive injury from those above. The remedy for existing evils was a Board to preside over the entire watershed area. This had been recommended by the Fishery Commissioners— The scheme of local management which we would recommend is that which has been approved by experience in Ireland, and is founded on recognised constitutional principles. It is that a Board of Conservators to be elected by and to represent the various interests along the whole course of the river or rivers placed under the management of the Board, including both the proprietors of land on the banks, the owners of several fisheries and the fishermen who exercised their vocation in the tidal or navigable waters. All these parties would be called upon to contribute to the expense of protection, and all should accordingly be represented at the Board by such persons as they may elect for the purpose. The scheme would be, in its general features, similar to that laid down for Ireland by the 11 AMP; 12 Vict, c. 92. With regard to the construction of that Board he had deferred to the recorded wisdom of Parliament. In London there were various large parishes and various small parishes. For the purposes of the Metropolitan Board of Works the small parishes were grouped together into districts which selected representatives to the Board; while the large parishes each sent a representative. This Board exercised a su- pervision over the Local Boards of each separate parish. He would apply this principle to the election of a Board to manage the watershed of each valley. The watershed would be like the metropolitan area, only that the constituent districts would not be contiguous but far distant, and would be connected only by being on the same waters. Meetings should be held to consider the conditions of representation and so forth; an Inspector sent down for the purpose from the Home Office should hear all that could be said, see what good could be done, what works could be carried out, what compensation would be asked for. His Report, after being circulated freely, would be subject to appeal. The Secretary of State would then issue a provisional order, which any one might dispute at the Home Office. If it passed the Home Office, it would then come before Parliament, and run the same gauntlet as a private Bill. Consequently, no rights could be infringed without ample means of defence and compensation. The matter was brought before the Government ten years ago; it had been urged upon them repeatedly since; Lord Shaftesbury and Lord Ebury had called attention to the subject; but the Government had done nothing. Had they taken up the matter, he should not have come forward as he was doing on the present occasion. But it must be remembered that although the law was definite, our present legal tribunals were costly, slow, and practically inoperative. The expense of indictment is the security of the nuisance monger. With such enormous evils staring us in the face, with such abuses thrust on our attention, could they make up their minds to delay? could they consent to stand idly gazing at the loss of our wealth, at the pollution of our rivers, at the deterioration of the people,? The Assyrian Empire dwindled because a system of irrigation by which it had multiplied food had been suffered to fall into decay. And now woe to the Government which stands with folded arms and looks undisturbed at a starving people, at contaminated waters, at taints of disease in the atmosphere. Woe to the Government which stood like apes around a fire in the woods, that had been deserted by travellers; they stand around blinking at the light, but not knowing how to feed its flames, and fearing helplessly for the frost which soon will nip them. Woe to the Government who have a remedy put before them, but cannot make up their minds to improve it and pass it into law, and yet fear for the time when the keen winds of a stormy election shall nip them, and the curses of an angry and aggrieved population shall fall heavily on their heads.

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read a second time."—(Lord Robert Montagu.)

SIR GEORGE GREY

said, that the noble Lord in the speech which they had heard had mixed up various subjects, and had departed from the immediate object of the Bill, which was the protection of the waters of rivers from pollution. The noble Lord had said a great deal about the utilization of sewage, which was the subject of another Bill which he had prepared, and had spent a great deal of time very unnecessarily in showing that great evils arose not only from sewage, but also from the refuse of mines, manufactures, and other matters being poured into rivers and streams, but he had failed in showing that he had presented to the House a measure which could have any practical effect in accomplishing the object which he had in view. They were not there to pass a Resolution as to the purification of rivers, but to consider whether the scheme submitted to them, in order to carry out that object, was one which might rightly be adopted. Upon that point he had come to a decided opinion that it would be unwise to adopt the principle of the Bill by agreeing to its second reading. He did not mean to 3ay that it was not desirable to vest larger powers in the local authorities to deal with sewage, but that was a point which came under the second Bill of the noble Lord. But what did the noble Lord propose to do? The noble Lord had, in his opinion, exaggerated the evils which existed, and had drawn a melancholy picture of this country being reduced almost to a wilderness from the rapid decrease in the fertility of the soil. He (Sir George Grey), however, had been under a very different impression; he believed that the fertility of the soil of England, so far from decreasing, was increasing, and therefore he thought the picture drawn by the noble Lord did not very faithfully represent the real state of things. There was no doubt, however, that an evil did exist, and the question was, how was it to be dealt with? Now, the difficulty about dealing with the sewage had not arisen from any action of the Go- vernment, but from the action of the Legislature. It was Parliament which, with a view to promote the health of towns, prohibited the system of cesspools which before prevailed, and the necessary consequence was that the sewage was carried away into the rivers and streams. That was no doubt an evil, but he could produce evidence which the noble Lord would not dispute—that of Mr. Rawlinson—to the effect that the abolition of cesspools had been conducive to the public health. Now, the moment that people should be convinced that sewage was a valuable article the whole difficulty of dealing with it would vanish, for they would be only too glad to get it for their land, and with the increased powers for the purpose of the outfall which might be usefully given to the local authorities the evil might be met in a very different manner from that proposed by the noble Lord in his Bill. And now a few words with regard to the provisions of the Bill. He objected to the Bill in the first place, because it placed unlimited powers in the hands of Inspectors appointed by the Secretary of State and of what were called Protection Boards—powers greater than he was disposed to think Parliament would give them, and which were of such magnitude that they would subvert almost all the authority held by local bodies throughout the country. In the next place he objected to those Boards because they would be unmanageable from the extent of the area from which they would have to be drawn, and from the numbers of which they would be composed. The noble Lord had said that he had adopted the recommendation of the Committee, but that was hardly the case. The Committee, indeed, had cited the opinion of Dr. Acland and other witnesses to this effect— That rivers can be effectually freed from pollution only by extending the Local Government Act to entire watersheds, or rather by establishing Boards somewhat similar to the present Local Boards of towns, which should extend over the whole area of each catchment basin, instead of being restricted to the precepts of each town. But the Committee then said— We recommend that the important object of completely freeing the entire basins of rivers from pollution should be rendered possible by general legislative enactment, enabling the inhabitants of such entire districts to adopt some controlling power for that purpose; but it should include a provision for compelling Local Boards to render the sewage of their districts innocuous by application to the land for agricultural purposes. This was a far more vague and general recommendation. Mr. Taylor who had been quoted by the noble Lord was decidedly of opinion that this Bill could not work.

LORD ROBERT MONTAGU

inquired whether the right hon. Gentleman had formed that opinion from the evidence of Mr. Taylor?

SIR GEORGE GREY

said, it was from personal communication with Mr. Taylor, who had given him his opinion of the Bill. He (Sir George Grey) was unwilling to say anything that should be disparaging to the noble Lord's exertions with reference to this subject. He had undoubtedly given much attention to it, and was entitled to great credit; but there were grave objections to the Bill. He had already referred to the enorrnous power to the Inspectors to be appointed by the Secretary of State and to the Protection Boards. The districts were to consist of the watershed area of the rivers; but the noble Lord had not told the House what the extent of those areas might be except in the case of the Severn, and it could easily be inferred from that how very large the extent of the Thames watershed would be. If hon. Members would only look at the sixteen different heads under which the Inspectors were to report they would have some idea of the magnitude of the task imposed upon them, and the difficulties with which they would have to contend. The Inspectors were to report as to the boundaries of the districts, in reference to representation and taxation; they were to name the first members of the Protection Boards; they were to report what works they thought necessary all over those immense areas; they were to examine into the rights and interests of corporations, navigation, and other companies, owners of fisheries, harbours, docks, ? they were to report as to the mode of raising money, and their report was to be embodied in a provisional order to be confirmed by Parliament. This provisional order which would embrace a great variety of subjects of the most complicated character, was to be laid before Parliament for confirmation. And what would be the effect of that? Why, that almost every corporate body and every individual in the country who had water rights, might be brought before a Committee of that House, constituted as a Private Bill Committee. He would ask the House to consider the consequences, the expense, and the difficulties attendant upon the process proposed by the noble Lord. He would say nothing as to the number of the Members that would be placed on the Protection Boards, but he understood that every Local Board within the catchment area was to be represented. There were other authorities also which would have to be represented, so that the number attending those Boards would be immense, if they could attend them, but that would be impossible. And then let the House consider for a moment what powers the Protection Boards were to have. They were to decide upon all the works that were to be undertaken, to have power to divert rivers, take down bridges, break up roads, take up gas and water pipes, pull down telegraphs, and so on—in short, their powers would be almost unlimited. Then there were provisions in the Bill which involved a totally new incidence of rating, distinguishing as to liability between one class of owners and another, which would supersede existing law, and substitute an entirely new system. These were powers which the House would hesitate to give either to Inspectors in the first place or to those Protection Boards in the next without much more investigation than had as yet taken place. The noble Lord said the Government had done nothing, though the facts of the case had been ascertained long ago, and asked the House to agree to the Bill because the case was perfectly ripe for legislation. But that could hardly be his real opinion, because there was on the notice paper of the House for the 14th of this month a notice in the name of the noble Lord for a Select Committee— To inquire into plans for utilizing sewage, and their relations to the water economy of the country, and to consider the best means for remedying and preventing the pollution of streams. With regard to the provisions of the Bill for securing the purity of streams they were very incomplete. They were not to apply to any body having a legal right to pour refuse into a river; but such rights would be constantly set up, and would be a great source of litigation. Then there were borrowing powers without any limit except the control of the Secretary of State. Again, the 161st, the last section, would actually repeal all local Acts which might be inconsistent with the provisions of the Bill. He thought that more inquiry would be necessary before proceeding to legislate in so sweeping and comprehensive a manner, interfering with almost every local Act throughout the country. He hoped the noble Lord would not press the Bill to a second reading. The noble Lord proposed to hare the Bill read a second time, and then refer to a Select Committee. If the House were prepared to sanction the principle of the Bill he should not object to that course, but he thought the House was not prepared to sanction it. The House ought not to consent to send the Bill to a Select Committee unless it saw its way to making it a practical measure. He could not see any prospect of carrying the provisions of the Bill into effect, and therefore he could not assent to its second reading.

MR. KENDALL

opposed the second reading on the ground that the Bill, if passed, would prove the destruction of half the coal and copper mines in England and Wales. He knew three streams in Cornwall in which there had been trout, though at present there were none, but not £5 worth of trout had been ever taken in them; whereas in one year more than £100,000 was divided as the profits of the three mines which polluted those streams. When, therefore, the noble Lord talked of the loss of fish as the loss of capital, what did he imagine would be the loss to England from the closing of her mines? This Bill would stop every mine and clay work in Cornwall. He was glad that the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State intended to oppose the Bill, which would be one that would be most destructive in its effects.

MR. JACKSON

said, that he objected to the Bill being withdrawn. If it passed, the President of the Board of Trade would have but sorry returns of imports and exports to make for the future. A more mischievous measure had never been introduced. A similar measure had been proposed by Lord R. Grosvenor, but the opinion of the House was so strong against it that it was withdrawn. He greatly regretted that the Bill was allowed to be withdrawn without coming to a division upon it. On behalf of the great money interest he would say if Clauses 46 and 64 of this Bill came into operation some hundreds of thousands of men now employed in factories and mines, with their families, would be thrown out of employment, and all the capital connected with their working would be lost. As he thought it desirable that the opinion of the House should be taken upon the measure, he would move that the Bill be read a second time that day six months.

MR. BRIGHT

seconded the Amendment which had been moved by his hon. Friend. He had sat on the Committee, by whose Report it was said the Bill was suggested, of the noble Lord last year. He thought the question very difficult when he went into that Committee, but he thought it still more difficult when he came out. He did not think that the evidence laid before that Committee or that its Report, impartially considered, gave any countenance to the measure which the noble Lord had brought in. In regard to the particular clauses to which his hon. Friend had referred—the 46th and 64th—clauses of a more sweeping or unjust nature were never perhaps introduced into a Bill before Parliament. The noble Lord had referred to a mine in Wales with which he (Mr. Bright) had some connection and about which he knew a good deal. He could assure the noble Lord that the extract which he read from the Fishery Commissioners was almost altogether an untrue and very unfair statement of everything that had taken place with regard to that mine. They found that half a dozen Gentlemen, who were fond of salmon fishing, did not appear to consider it of the slightest importance that 300 or 400 men and their families obtained a good living by their honest industry in a mine in the Welsh mountains; and unless the mine-owners were willing to do all kinds of impracticable things, which he believed would have no result, they were charged by the Fishery Commissioners with caring nothing for the purity of the river Dovey. He knew that the directors were most anxious to do everything that could be done, but there were mines in such a position that scarcely anything could be done without shutting up the mines altogether. The owners would only he too glad to expend the £500 to which the noble Lord referred to put an end to a grievance which he believed was grossly exaggerated, but they had abstained from doing so because they were never able to determine that the expenditure of the money would be of the slightest advantage. He might say, without any exaggeration, that during the last three years the fishing on the river had been better than it had been for twenty years before, although the mine had been yielding double and treble the quantity of ore that it used to do. The increased productiveness of the mine had not damaged the fish in the river. The noble Lord he was sure was not well acquainted with the state of matters throughout the country. He remembered a Swiss coming down to Manchester to be teacher of French, in which he was happy to say he succeeded very well. He was very fond of fishing, to which he was accustomed in the rivers of Switzerland; and the first morning after he came down he got up early in order to fish in the stream that ran through the town. With his line, his rod, and his fly he went out, and expected to have a good basket of trout to take home before breakfast. Of course he was very much mistaken—the river was no doubt as black as ink, and the noble Lord would be horrified if he stood on the banks of it. But there were interests concerned in this Bill ten thousand times greater than the interests of the fisheries and the sentiments which the noble Lord represented. If this Bill were to pass the House in its present shape, or anything like its present shape, or if its principle were sanctioned, it would be tantamount to creating a stoppage throughout the country, and would probably end in a revolution of some kind—a revolution from which the noble Lord would not derive either profit or reputation. He (Mr. Bright) thought he would best consult the object he had in view by withdrawing the Bill; for he was sure that the House would never pass a Bill involving such extraordinary remedies as the noble Lord proposed for a grievance the existence of which to a certain extent they were all prepared to admit.

Amendment proposed, to leave out the word "now," and at the end of the Question to add the words "upon this day six months."—(Mr. Jackson.)

Question proposed, "That the word 'now' stand part of the Question."

MR. SELWYN

said, few persons in the House had spent more of their time upon and in the Thames than he had done, and, therefore, he was anxious to say a few words on the subject of that much injured river which the noble Lord described as a natural disgrace. His principal object was to urge upon the Government, who were opposed to this Bill, to introduce some measure which would not be open to the same objections. The evils to which the rivers of the country, and the Thames in particular, for which he desired to speak, were exposed arose from two sources—namely, pollution, in consequence of the abolition of cesspools, and diminution, in conse- quence, of their waters being carried off elsewhere. From the latter evil the Thames particularly suffered. Both evils were continually increasing, and both were matters for which that House was directly responsible. Upon the first he would not dwell, but with regard to the second he would say that it was in consequence of the legislation of that House that the water companies took their supplies from above Teddington Lock, and at present five large pipes were continually employed in its abstraction. Every new house that was built, and every new sanitary improvement in which water was employed, tended to increase that abstraction, and to diminish the volume of water in the Thames. It had been suggested by an eminent naturalist that compensation to the Thames should be made by bringing water from Bala Lake, in Wales. Whether such a scheme was practicable he (Mr. Selwyn) did not presume to say, but in the meantime the improvements in drainage also tended to increase the evil by bringing the rain water into the river all at once, instead of gradually and by percolation through soils of different degrees of tenacity. Several years ago, owing to a quasi judicial position which he held with respect to the sports on the Thames, his attention was drawn to the matter, and he had employed some watermen to make observations. It was found that there had been a sensible diminution in the supply of water, and in proportion as the downward flow diminished the upward flow increased it, and the brackish water, which used to come up only as high as Blackwall, had come up to Wandsworth, and even seaweed had come up as far as London Bridge. Taking the difference in time between high water at London Bridge and Richmond, it would be found that there had been an alteration of more than one-third. The impure matter which was poured into the river, instead of being carried down to the sea by the downfall of the river, was now held in suspense. He was glad to say that the attention of Parliament had at last been roused. It was only the other day when it was proposed to take away the waters from the sources of the Thames for the supply of Cheltenham, that the House rejected the Bill. With regard to the measure before the House, the right hon. Gentleman (Sir George Grey) had raised many objections to it, and he was in hopes that the Government would have something to suggest. The right hon. Baronet said that further inquiry was necessary, but they had been inquiring for the last ten years. Let any person go between Battersea and Teddington Lock, and see the state of the Thames at low water, and then let him say whether a single Session ought to be allowed to pass without applying a remedy. Even if they were to go on inquiring they ought to do something in the meantime. He would suggest that without creating new Boards or arming them with new powers which might be thought objectionable, it would be possible to pass some measure—affecting only the Thames, if that were thought advisable—which would interfere with no mines or manufactures and establish no new system of taxation, but would give powers to local bodies at present existing, such powers to be exercised under the direction of the Secretary of State. A measure of this kind would obviate many of the objections which had been raised, and at the same time would get rid of a great many of the evils which were now justly complained of. With regard to the Thames, Richmond, with which he had some connection, was one of the great polluters of the river; but he was sure that the local authorities there, if they had the necessary powers, would at once undertake to remedy the evil as far as they were concerned. In any scheme, however, for preventing the pollution of the river, provision should be made for securing the consent of the authorities who represented the Crown, which had extensive possessions on the river banks. This consent was absolutely necessary, for if the Acts of the Crown were to be interposed many of the projected improvements would become inpracticable; another essential provision was to give to local authorities the power of borrowing money for the object in view. A short Bill might be passed enabling existing local bodies along the banks of the river to borrow money and erect the necessary works under the sanction of the Government Inspector, and in such a manner as not to interfere in any large scheme which might hereafter be introduced. It would then be seen whether the pollution of the river by sewage was not prevented, and if it were found that the local authorities neglected to take the necessary steps, some more stringent measure might be resorted to. The forms of the House, and the obstacles which independent Members always had to encounter, rendered doubtful the success of any attempt at private legislation; but the subject was of pressing importance, and ought to be dealt with by the Government without delay.

MR. HIBBERT

said, that though his name was on the back of the Bill he fully admitted that its provisions were rather too sweeping. At the same time, as a Member of the Committee of last year, he could not shut his eyes to the fact that it was high time that something should be done to put a stop to river pollution; and he hoped that manufacturers and persons connected with mines would be willing to view this question calmly and dispassionately. He himself was connected with the manufacturing districts, and he thought that as manufacturers and miners they ought to view the question not only as it affected themselves, but as it affected the health of the great populations who lived on the banks of these rivers. He could bear witness to the great objections that were raised in consequence of the state of the river at Manchester. Though he had not seen the Medlock at, Manchester, in the state described by Mr. Rawlinson, he knew that the nuisance was very great at Manchester, and as the Bridgwater Canal took its water from the Medlock, the nuisance was carried some miles further into the country. So greatly was this felt, that he had even received communication from parties in Cheshire, some miles from Manchester, pressing him to try and place canals under the same restrictions as this Bill sought to impose upon rivers. It had been said that if this Bill passed the mines in many parts of the country, particularly Wales, would be closed at once, but Mr. Ffennell, in his evidence before the Committee, said it was perfectly feasible to prevent a considerable proportion of the impurities which flowed from mines into rivers, without interfering with the proper working of mines, and he gave instances in which, at his suggestion, mine-owners had made filtering beds and had carried out plans with this view, recouping themselves by the value of the refuse thus saved, while the streams remained pure and the fish were no longer poisoned. This evidence showed that much could be done by mine-owners and manufacturers to mitigate the existing evils. It was not to be expected that rivers in the manufacturing districts could be as pure and as placid as some streams now were in purely rural districts. Where industrial processes were largely carried on our rivers must suffer, but there must be some limit to this, and some remedial measure was absolutely necessary. If the noble Lord pressed his Bill he should support the second reading, with the view of referring the measure to a Select Committee; but he would recommend the noble Lord not to press the measure, and having brought prominently under their notice the crying evils which now existed, to leave the responsibility of legislation with the Government.

MR. ADDERLEY

said, he did not think that the House had as yet taken up that subject with a vigour and an earnestness proportioned to its importance. The most conclusive evidence had been adduced to show that the pollution of our rivers had a deteriorating effect on the health of our population, that it was rendering our meadows deleterious to cattle, and that it entailed no inconsiderable loss by the destruction of fish. He was glad to find that the hon. Member for Birmingham, yielding to the love of sport which was common to the Anglo-Saxon race, had given due weight to this point, though he quite agreed with him that it must yield precedence to more important considerations. The Prince Consort once expressed the opinion that, after a few years, it would be deemed incredible that a practical nation like this should have allowed that which was so essential for the restoration of the land, and which was of the utmost fertilizing value to the soil to pass down our rivers into the sea, to be eaten by sea birds, deposited by them upon rocks, and fetched back as manure at a cost of £10 per ton. He thought the noble Lord was quite right in introducing this question to the attention of the House, with a view to legislation on the subject, and he considered that the noble Lord deserved the thanks of the country for the way in which he had grappled with a subject, which excited great and growing interest throughout the country. Some persons had taken it up with a view of obtaining considerable pecuniary advantage, but the noble Lord had not moved in the business from any merely selfish interest, but had dealt with it on public grounds as affecting great interests of the country. He had made the question his own, and it must have cost him no little time and money to produce the Bill before the House. At the same time he (Mr. Adderley) must say that when he came to view the details of the Bill he was inclined to ask the noble Lord to allow this Bill to be withdrawn, resting contented with the way in which he had opened the subject, and so compelled the Government to introduce a measure which might prove more practical. All parties agreed that something must be done—first, for the utilization of this great national property which was now being wasted, and secondly, for the prevention of the pollution of streams. The only existing Act on the subject was the Local Government Act, which he had himself passed when in office in 1858, and which was imperfect, as dealing with extensive operations outside towns, and was only in advance of the Local Health Act of 1848. What was now wanted was an extension of the Act of 1858. Power should be given to all towns of a certain magnitude to carry large sewage drains to a distant outfall. The statute law was ineffective against the nuisance, and the only remedy in this matter was at common law. He had himself obtained an injunction against the town of Birmingham for polluting a stream in which he was interested, but it was not to be expected either that individuals or even that a corporation should take upon themselves the trouble of dealing with all such cases. If they were willing to do so another difficulty arose, because a river or stream was in all probability polluted not by one but by many towns, so that proceedings would be necessary against a nuisance arising in several parts of an extensive area. What was wanted was a simple Bill empowering the local authorities of towns situated upon any river to unite for preventing the pollution of the river over the whole district with which they were connected. In that way the extensive machinery proposed by this Bill would be avoided, together with the cost of working it, and under the Board of Health Act there would be in each case a local body ready to hand. They had the opinion of Mr. Tom Taylor, of Mr. Rawlinson, and of Dr. Acland, the Regius Professor of Medicine at Oxford, that such an immediate remedy ought to and could easily be applied. He should be glad to see a Bill introduced by the Government, simple in its provisions, and direct in its operation. A body would thus be created the constituents of which would always be at hand, and under which action could be taken without great cost. Every town and village had some local authority under the Board of Health Act, and the then existing power would only have to be brought into co-operation. He thought the present Bill was objectionable on account of the machinery which it proposed to create in places where it was not, as well as where it was wanted, and because it would impose an entirely new kind of taxation, the collection of which would be most unequal and uncertain. He could not give his vote for the second reading, though he should be glad to see another Bill introduced. The only argument for delay was that there was not yet unanimous consent as to the best mode of utilizing sewage. He thought, however, that if the noble Lord accepted the offer made by the Home Secretary to withdraw his first Bill in order that his second might be adopted, he would, in that second Bill, gain a great step, and the time devoted by him to the subject would not have been wasted.

MR. LEVESON GOWER

instanced the case of certain institutions in the town of Reigate, with which he was connected, being greatly inconvenienced by the pollution of the river on which they were dependent for their supplies of water. He, therefore, thought it was of the utmost importance that immediate steps should be taken in the way of legislation upon this matter. Prom day to day this evil was increasing, injuring health and seriously interfering with the rights of property; and if the noble Lord opposite should determine upon going to a division he (Mr. Leveson Gower) would vote with him, although he did not agree in all the details of his measure.

COLONEL EDWARDS

said, when he saw the Bill upon the paper of the House he came down with the intention of supporting it. That intention was much strengthened by the very able and eloquent speech of the noble Lord; indeed, a more eloquent speech he (Colonel Edwards) had not heard for some time. Nevertheless, from the tone of the House, it was clear that if the noble Lord proceeded with his Bill he would have no chance of passing it in its present state. He would, therefore, entreat of the noble Lord to withdraw his first Bill, and trust to the pledge given by the Government that they would introduce a measure on the subject at no distant period. On coming down to the House this morning he was under the impression that this Bill related solely to the utilization of the sewage, but he found that the noble Lord asked for very much larger powers than the House was disposed to grant. This was a matter that was of great interest to him and his constituents. The staple trade of Beverley principally consisted of tanneries, and there was a great difficulty in obtaining an outfall for the re- fuse of those tanneries. The only way in which it could be obtained at present was by means of a canal having connection with the Humber. The question involved not only the interests of agriculturists, but also those of manufacturers. It was, however, stated that it would be impossible to impose the provisions of this Bill upon the country, as they would have the effect of stopping up all the mills of Yorkshire and Lancashire. Although very favourable to any measure that would purify the rivers from their present state of pollution from the filth discharged from the manufactories in these counties, any legislation coming suddenly into operation might be attended with great inconvenience to the millowners, and, in fact, stop the mills altogether for a time. He confessed he could not support the Bill in its present shape.

COLONEL SYKES

said, it was evident that something must be done to remedy a fearful evil that was accumulating in its magnitude every day. Were they to consider the health of the whole population or the manufacturing and industrial interests of certain classes? It was only the other day there was a Bill before the House by which the people of Cheltenham asked for power to divert the source of the Thames down to them, because they could no longer obtain wholesome water from their own river. As regarded the present measure, he had seen a paper which had been sent from the mining districts, in which it was stated that if this Bill passed it would have the effect of destroying the mining interests of the country. It would not do to allow this, as we were greatly indebted to our mining interests. Some of the clauses of the Bill, however, were extremely valuable, and ought to be taken either by the Government or some private individual. He recommended the noble Lord to accept the proposition of the right hon. Baronet the Home Secretary; but if he should determine upon dividing; he (Colonel Sykes) would divide with him.

MR. FERRAND

said, as his name was on the back of the Bill he wished to make a few remarks. Like the hon. Member for Oldham (Mr. Hibbert) he had served diligently on the Committee of last year, and he was certain that no Member of it could hear the evidence before it without being convinced that it was the duty of the Government to take some steps immediately to put a stop to the fearful state of things that existed in the pollution of our rivers. He was not before aware of the very stringent character of some of the clauses of the Bill, and he joined with some of the hon. Members who had recently spoken in thinking that the noble Lord would act wisely in withdrawing this Bill, and trust to Her Majesty's Government introducing an effective measure, either in this or the next Session, to remedy the evils complained of. He could assure the House that the manufacturing interests were as anxious for the passing of some such measure as the agriculturists. In his own neighbourhood he was surrounded by manufacturers, all of whom were desirous of some stringent measure to stop the pollution of our rivers. Amongst the witnesses who gave evidence on this subject was a gentleman of the name of Craven, one of the principal manufacturers of Keighley, who was opposed to him (Mr. Ferrand) in politics. That gentleman mentioned a curious fact, that the Worth, the river of the town, was much polluted and interfered with in its course by the quantity of ashes and other refuse poured into it by persons connected with the local Board of Health. The consequence was a very offensive stench in the town, particularly during the hot weather. The witness further stated that the bed of the river had risen four or five feet within the last four years, and the medical men in the town had declared that such a practice was highly injurious to the health of the inhabitants. It was also given in evidence that a large manufacturer having taken steps to stop the pollution of this stream was accosted by the Chairman of the local Board of Health, who, on legal proceedings being threatened if the nuisance was continued, pitched a large tub of ashes into the river, saying, "You may now go to law if you like." Unless steps were speedily taken by Parliament to stop the pollution of rivers and streams some epidemic, he felt certain, would break out in Yorkshire and the other manufacturing districts, which would sweep off great numbers, sparing neither rich nor poor in its devastation. The town of Leeds had their water from the valley of the Wharfe, and, besides other pollutions, four churchyards drained into the river, and the House might judge what was the effect of that upon the health of the inhabitants. Steps ought to be taken, and that immediately, for putting a stop to the drainage of churchyards into rivers. Sewage was very valuable for agricultural purposes. Two large villages in his neighbourhood had used it to great advantage, and he could assure the House there was not the slightest smell from it in the hottest weather. Formerly wool-combers carefully preserved the soapsuds, instead of allowing them to run to waste into streams. A drain was made, which conveyed the soapsuds to the manure heap, and they were in that way used for agricultural purposes. But of late years a different system had prevailed. The manufacturers had discovered the means of extracting the soapsuds by means of vitriol, and the consequence was that they were collected in large pits or ponds, and they became so putrid that when the process of extraction was going on the stench was so horrible that it was frequently smelt a mile off. The same practice was being adopted in towns, and it was high time that some means should be taken of putting an end to the practice. In many of the streams fish could not live, and the cattle would not drink the water. The water which was the source of the river which supplied the town of Leeds had lately been conveyed to the town of Bradford, a distance of thirty-two miles, to provide the inhabitants with pure water, the river which ought to supply the latter town being polluted by the manufacturers. He agreed with the noble Lord that it was high time that steps should be taken to stop the pollution of rivers and streams, in order to prevent serious con-sequences arising prejudicially to the health of the people.

MR. LOCKE

expressed his thanks to the noble Lord for bringing in the Bill. It was obvious that but for this Bill the House would have heard nothing of a Government Bill. During the last Session the Government did make a small attempt in the right direction, and that was with regard to the River Thames. He was on the Committee on the Thames Conservancy Bill; and into that Bill was introduced a clause by which it was proposed to enact that for the future no increased quantity of sewage should be emptied into the Thames. On that occasion the hon. Member for East Surrey proposed an Amendment, excepting Kingston-upon-Thames from the operation of that clause. He (Mr. Locke) entered the House just as the Amendment was about to be carried, because hon. Members did not seem to be aware of the obnoxious nature of the exception. He opposed it; and the House, taking his view of the question, rejected it. But the Bill went to "another place;" and there it was found out that, according to some rules, or regulations, or standing orders, the clause was one that ought not to pass, but that it should be embodied in some measure for general legislation. Parliament has sanctioned the expenditure of £4,000,000 of money to purify the Thames from London sewage, but did not object to all the sewage of towns in the upper part of the river being emptied into the stream with impunity. If the clause to which he had alluded had been passed any increase of the filth emptied into the Thames would have been prevented. The Government did not introduce the measure for general legislation, into which it was proposed to introduce the clause. But the Thames Conservancy moved in the Court of Chancery for an injunction against the local Board of Health of Kingston to prevent their carrying out those works, and emptying their sewage into the Thames. What was the result he did not know, for the case was to have been argued in Michaelmas Term, and he did not know whether the argument had come off. The right hon. Member for North Staffordshire suggested that greater power should be given to local Boards of Health; but any provision for that purpose would only be a perfect mockery, unless accompanied by another provision compelling them to use the power. Much had been said by the manufacturers of the north as to their being ruined by Acts of Parliament. He would say a little on that point. The manufacturers in the north had prevented a Smoke Bill being passed for the north, though they were willing enough to have the experiment tried in corpore vili, namely, in the metropolis. And certainly in their own districts they were smoked to their heart's content. He would take Wakefield, a town notorious enough in every respect. There was a question lately as to whether the assizes should be held at Wakefield or Leeds. From what he had heard to-day it did not appear that there was much to choose between them in point of salubrity. So smoky was the atmosphere that two or three miles from the town a peach became a speckled peach, and a blade of grass polluted the hand that pulled it. And such a state of things was to be submitted to in order that the manufacturers of the north might not be ruined. Had the metropolitan manufacturers been ruined? Had they not rather profited by having been compelled to consume their own smoke? No doubt there might be some inconvenience at first, but nolens volens they were obliged to submit to it. The metropolis always appeared to be the place selected for experiments because, he supposed, the influence of its example was irresistible. Of the inconvenience arising from the liquid portion of the refuse of manufactories no one who had spent any time in the north of England could doubt. Now, the manufacturers in the north state that they would be mined if they were prevented polluting the running waters throughout the country. The hon. Member for Birmingham (Mr. Bright), who represented a very smoky and a very water-polluting place, and the hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyne (Mr. Jackson), said that if this Bill passed it would be ruin to a class—a class that was the backbone and sinew of the nation. The honourable Member behind him (Mr. Hibbert) had shown that a Bill going in the same direction would have the same effect on manufacturers in the north that the Smoke Act had had in the metropolis, namely, that they would be gainers by it. This Bill, however, would not be likely to pass, as everybody objected to it. The arguments against it had not convinced him. If it did pass, the noble Lord would confer on a vast number of manufacturers a benefit in spite of themselves. He sincerely hoped that, if the Bill did not go to a Committee, the Government would give their immediate attention to the question. As far as the Thames was concerned, he emphatically called upon them to legislate this Session in the direction in which they had attempted to legislate last Session in the Bill for the Thames Conservancy, and, at all events, to free the largest river in this country from that pollution to which it had so long been subjected.

MR. W. E. FORSTER

acknowledged that the noble Lord who brought in the Bill had shown by his eloquent speech that he had completely mastered the subject, and had exhibited to view a great evil, of which they were all perhaps aware previously, but not so well aware. The noble Lord came forward with a Bill, the main provision of which had for its purpose to divide England into several new districts and boards, and that provision was not approved by any one except the noble Lord himself. It was disapproved even by the hon. Member for Oldham (Mr. Hibbert), and the hon. Member for Devonport (Mr. Ferrand), who approved the object of the Bill. It might be said that the noble Lord should have brought forward a better Bill, but he did not blame the noble Lord on that account, but the difficulty of the subject. It could only properly be dealt with by the Government. The evil arose from two causes—the vast increase of the population and the throwing of manufacturing refuse into the streams. The noble Lord, he thought, would admit that the first was the larger source of the evil. But the evils which the noble Lord had described as arising from the intermixture of sewage and the refuse of manufactories with rivers might be made worse by hasty legislation. Did not, for instance, the worst, probably, of the evils now complained of result from hasty legislation in the prohibition of the use of cesspools? He was as anxious as any one for the adoption of every means for preventing smoke in towns and the pollution of streams that could be adopted without putting a stop to the industry of the districts, and no doubt much could be done. The hon. Member who last spoke compared manufacturing towns with London, forgetting the great difference in the nature and price of coal used in the respective places, the coal in the manufacturing districts being more smoky and cheaper. It was all a question of money, of how much cost could be imposed on trades injurious to the beauty and health of the country without stopping them. Perhaps the present discussion might enlighten them as to the principles on which some measure on this subject must be framed in future, for he acknowledged that matters could not be allowed to go on as before, but that they had come to a point when something must be done. The debate on the present occasion had not been carried on as a dispute between anglers and the manufacturers, but as a discussion in reference to the health of towns, and upon that principle he thought they might, having due regard to vested interests, lay down this rule—that the evils referred to ought to be removed when they could be prevented by manufacturers at such a reasonable cost as would not put it out of their power to compete with foreign countries and would not stop their trade. If the House went further than that, it might stop the trade of the country by restrictions. The people in the northern manufacturing towns might be uncomfortable, but it should be recollected that were it not for manufactures there would be no people there at all. If it were not for the smoke of Leeds and Bradford the present population of those places would not be in existence. If they gave the local Boards of Health such powers as would enable them to act as private individuals could, and compelling them in certain cases to act, he thought that would be sufficient. At all events that was the direction in which they ought to act, and to look for a remedy. As to the mode of carrying out that principle, he did not think that in a discussion like the present they could point to more than general provisions. It was useless to attempt to divide the country into new districts. The old districts must be taken, and more power might be given to the present local Boards and town councils, if they had not sufficient already. He thought that would be quite sufficient for the purpose. He believed the result of the discussion would be that the Government would feel that that matter could not remain as it was, but must be taken up by them.

MR. LIDDELL

was afraid that if the Bill were absolutely rejected the erroneous impression would be created that the House was appalled by the extent of the difficulties and the magnitude of the cost incident to the carrying out of the object of the measure, and was unable to grapple with the question. He (Mr. Liddell) quite appreciated the magnitude of the difficulties by which the subject was surrounded, and admitted that the measure contained a gigantic scheme of local taxation to the extent of which sufficient importance had not been attached. He was quite alive to the objections taken to the construction of districts, and to the difficulty of managing large districts by elected Boards, for that had been clearly shown under the Highway Act. Formidable as those difficulties no doubt were, he believed they might be overcome with perseverance; and he would, therefore, urge his noble Friend not now to press his Motion to a division, but to continue his praiseworthy efforts in the direction he had taken, and follow them up by further inquiries. True, they had a vast amount of evidence before them as to the pollution of rivers, but it was chiefly confined to the subject of sewage and its utilization, and he doubted whether they could settle the great question of the purification of rivers with the evidence they possessed. Great advantage would arise from the appointment of a Committee on that subject. Some of our rivers were polluted at their very sources by deleterious elements; and by the system of artificial land drainage which had been going on with such success and benefit to the country at large for many years the natural sources of our wells had been diminished and destroyed. In his own county there were large districts which by the system of mining, and by artificial land drainage, were now deprived of their water. He lived in the vicinity of a town which had spent large sums of money in bringing water from a distance, and whose supply was inadequate with a river flowing through it. They might talk of the pecuniary interests at stake in this question, but surely these were not to be weighed in the scale against the sanitary considerations it involved. The question of water supply had been pressing itself strongly upon their attention lately, and it was necessary that the water of our rivers should be freed from pollution, in order that it might be rendered useful to the population located on their banks. Rivers were never intended to be sewers, and health ought not to be secondary to utility. The health of man ought not to be made subservient to the cupidity of man, and therefore he held that the first object of the Government should be to preserve for the people an adequate supply of such a necessary element as pure water. He was not disposed to blame the Government for not dealing with the subject before, because the difficulties were great, but he thought the time was now come when something must be done. A right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Henley) said the other night he thanked God there was no tax upon water; but they could not impose a heavier tax on the people than by poisoning that which was essential to their existence. With regard to the evil of smoke, there were two kinds of smoke—wholesome and unwholesome—and efforts had been made, even by the manufacturers themselves, to relieve the people from the latter. The manufacturers were beginning to find out that by better processes for consuming fuel a public nuisance was prevented and a saving to themselves effected. He could not join his noble Friend in his rather hard attack on the Government for not dealing with the subject of his Bill. Not one, but all Governments had hitherto been deterred by its difficulties, and advantage might, moreover, be gained by not dealing with it too rapidly. The interests involved were so gigantic that it was only with the greatest caution they should venture in the desired direction. In the mining districts which he represented, the proprietors, he believed, to a large extent would be disposed to assist every reasonable effort made for that object. With respect to what had been said about fishing, there was no more correct barometer of the condition of a river than fish; and if a fish was unable to live in a river, they might depend upon it the water must be deleterious to man. In conclusion, he hoped the Mover of the Amendment (Mr. Jackson) would not press it to a division, as by that course he would not gain his own object and would create a false impression out of doors.

SIR FRANCIS GOLDSMID

admitted the existence of the evil against which the Bill was directed, but thought that in describing it the noble Lord had somewhat over-coloured the picture. While believing that the evil was capable of remedy, he was yet convinced that a remedy was not even approached by that measure. It was wrong in principle, because it superseded and ignored almost every right of property for the purpose of purifying rivers; and with the enormous powers proposed to be given to the new Boards, those bodies would better deserve the name of oppressing than that of "protecting Boards." By the 35th clause they would be enabled to divert the course of streams and arbitrarily to alter the aspect of the property on their banks; while under the 38th clause—without the consent of landowners—they might enter lands and deposit refuse of any kind to lie on the banks, so as to create nuisances when their proper function should be to remove them. Thus the banks of rivers might be rendered even less inhabitable than the worst parts were now. Instead of having Boards wandering all over the country armed with powers infinitely more stringent than those given to railway companies, and invading the land of every one who had the misfortune to have a stream flowing through it, the true remedy would be to enforce and perhaps in some instances to improve and enlarge the existing legal rights, the exercise of which might tend to the greater purification of rivers.

SIR GEORGE BOWYER

said, that if the present attempt at legislation was not successful its failure would be due, not to any lack of industry or ability on the part of the noble Lord—who was entitled to the thanks of the country for having proposed something—but to the inherent difficulty of the subject. They constantly heard of inquiries and investigations before Commissions and Select Committees, but what did they generally produce except immense Blue-books, which nobody read? But now they had a Bill before them, which had at least produced a very important and valuable practical discussion. The powers given by the measure were, no doubt, very extensive and perhaps greater than the House should assent to, and it might be that the noble Lord would do well to withdraw the Bill, leaving the matter for future consideration. But one of the greatest difficulties of the question was that, while everybody acknowledged the evil, nobody, whether miner, manufacturer, or any one else, chose to be interfered with in the attempt to remedy it. The hon. Member for Birmingham (Mr. Bright) even went as far as to maintain that a river must be allowed to become as black as ink, exhaling a pestilential smell, because any cure for that state of things would inconvenience the manufacturer. A remedy might surely be hit upon which would not interfere with the manufacturer more than ought to be done. The hon. Member for Birmingham was rather hard upon the fishing element, and seemed to think that was a question between the fisherman and the manufacturer. He was told that that hon. Gentleman had attempted to catch a salmon, but had tumbled into the water, and instead of his catching the salmon the salmon was very nearly catching him. Whether that had had any influence in making the hon. Member take an unfavourable view of the interests of fisherman and fish, he did not know; but that was a great question not merely affecting the productiveness of rivers in fish—a very important point—but effecting the health of the people. Our rivers ought to be protected from becoming no longer an ornament and a source of wealth and comfort to the country, but a nuisance. The subject might, he thought, be dealt with in a more manageable form. The remedy that suggested itself to him need not be attended with any considerable delay. A Bill might be passed forbidding the governing bodies of all towns upon navigable rivers, or on certain rivers mentioned in the Bill—which would naturally be those that were public and most important—from emptying their sewage into those rivers. That could not be objected to, because it was a prohibition of the common law of the land, for he apprehended it was at common law a nuisance to empty any filth or refuse into a public river. But the Attorney General ought also to have power, and it ought to be his duty, to proceed against the corporate bodies of these towns for committing that nuisance; and the Bill should take effect, not immediately, of course, but from a certain date. Those corporate bodies would then be obliged to look about for some other means of disposing of their sewage—a thing of no great difficulty, since sewage was valuable—and would put themselves into immediate communication with the neighbouring laud-lords in order to have it used for agricultural purposes. That would not do away with all the evils against which the noble Lord's Bill was aimed, but it would be a step towards it. He should be sorry to see that great question delayed in all its parts by further inquiries. They now knew about as much of it as they ever would know. Indeed, the difficulty was that they knew too much; and if they waited for more of those ponderous Blue-books, which no man looked into, they would find themselves precisely where they were. He therefore wished to impress on the Government the necessity of taking some practical action for remedying even a portion of the existing evils; and he agreed with the hon. and learned Member for the University of Cambridge (Mr. Selwyn) that the Thames—our principal river—deserved the special attention of Parliament and should be selected first, not on the principle"Experimentum fiat in corpore vili," but because it was the most important case in which the experiment could be tried. The state of the Thames required an immediate remedy, and he trusted that the Home Secretary would bring in a Bill for that purpose. By taking that course, and also introducing another Bill to enforce the principles of the common law, the Government would entitle themselves to the gratitude of the country; and he hoped the House would have an assurance from them on those points before the discussion closed.

MR. AYRTON

had read the Report of the Committee which sat two years ago on the subject of town sewage, and trusted it would not be concluded that if it rejected that Bill the House did not intend to do anything in that matter. He hoped the House would do all it could do under present circumstances, and he thought it would be proceeding safely if it adopted the course proposed by the Home Secretary. The Committee came to the conclusion that the real difficulty in dealing with the sewage of towns was this:—That the local authorities had all the power to carry on their internal arrangements and to deliver the sewage to an outfall, but that when it got to that outfall their powers ended, and consequently they endeavoured to get rid of it by discharging it into the river; that when they tried to dispose of it elsewhere they found themselves in the presence of landowners who were not bound to take it, and who were inclined to think that if they did take it they would be conferring a boon on the local authorities rather than securing something valuable for themselves, for which they ought to pay. The first step, therefore, towards progress in this matter was to afford towns some means or other of applying their sewage to the lands adjoining, with the concurrence of the landowner, if he would agree to it; but if he would not agree, then in spite of his opposition. He hoped the noble Lord Would withdraw this Bill, and allow the House to proceed with his other measure, which was of a really practical character, on that subject. The effect of the present Bill would be that occupiers of property would be at liberty to incur any amount of charge which they pleased, and the owner, who would have no voice in the matter, would have to pay. He trusted the House would not entertain such views by even reading the Bill the second time, but would proceed to the accomplishment of objects connected with the health of towns and the application of sewage to agricultural purposes by passing to the second Bill of the noble Lord on those subjects.

SIR FITZROY KELLY

considered that they were deeply indebted to his noble Friend for having submitted this Bill to the House, and thus bringing under the consideration of the country one of the most important measures which had been before them for very many years. It appeared there were now large quantities of land entirely unproductive, which would be rendered fertile by sewage being used upon them. If this was established, upon this ground alone a case had been made out. But if to this there were superadded the fact that they would purify the rivers of the country, and that a large sum, estimated at many millions, could be realized, the importance of something being done could not be exaggerated. He concurred in recommending the withdrawal of the Bill for the present, and for his noble Friend to content himself with submitting to the House the next Bill of which he had given notice. If that Bill were followed by a Select Committee he hoped that the question would be advanced as far as possible towards a settlement in the present Session. If the noble Lord were supported, as he could not doubt that he would be, by the Government and the House in his further efforts, a reasonable hope might be entertained that with in some two or three years at most they would have in operation a series of measures for the purification of their rivers, the utilization of their sewage, and the cultivation of vast quantities of land now lying entirely waste.

MR. HENLEY

tendered his thanks to the noble Lord for bringing the question forward, and for the time, pains, care, and ability which he had bestowed upon the subject; and he did this with the more pleasure because he believed that he had been instrumental in inducing the noble Lord to go deeply into the matter by getting the House to pass an Instruction to the noble Lord's Committee directing it to inquire into the pollution of streams. He thought they were indebted to the noble Lord for the courage he had displayed in laying a Bill upon the table of that House so as to get a good discussion upon it, by which not only the pulse of the House but the pulse of the country might be felt. They had to ask themselves, in the first place—Is it necessary to do anything? The discussion showed that the universal opinion was that there was a necessity to act. The next and most important question was—Is this to be done by compulsory legislation or by enabling legislation? That the Government would have to decide. He did not join in throwing blame upon the Government. He considered the subject a vast and difficult one, and he did not think with the hon. Member for Dundalk (Sir George Bowyer) that inquiry was exhausted upon it. Another very important matter before the House would throw great light on this question—the fact that the sewage of the metropolis was, he might almost say, being fought for; and in the discussion thus provoked they might expect much fresh information. It was plain that the noble Lord, who had paid more attention to the question than any one, did not think it exhausted, because he had given notice to move the renewal of inquiry this year. The sewage of the metropolis was now being, in a manner, fought for. Its value had been estimated by one body at something like £1,500,000 annually, and by another at a comparatively few thousands; and after the discussion which the matter underwent at the hands of those bodies some sparks of light might be struck out in the Committee which would make the whole question clearer. If it should turn out that there was a money value in this article, then the hon. Member for the Tower Hamlets (Mr. Ayrton) need be under no apprehension upon that point, because if there were a money value to sell there was also a money value to buy. Not many years ago it was the opinion of chemists generally that everything put into the land for the purpose of enriching it should be in the shape of solids. The deodorisation system was consequently tried upon the sewage, but the residuum turned out to be utterly worthless for agricultural purposes. It was now found out that sewage was just as valuable in a liquid state as in any other, and that the earth took the best part of it to itself without the assistance of chemists or any other person. In conclusion, whilst again thanking the noble Lord for the course he had taken in this matter, he trusted that he would take the advice of the House generally, and withdraw his first measure. If his noble Friend should find it necessary to re-introduce it, he (Mr. Henley) thought that he ought not to seek to pledge the House to the compulsory principle, but would leave that point open for further discussion. The subject was one of the deepest importance. He did not think that the hon. Member for Bradford (Mr. W. E. Forster) had laid down quite a good principle. He (Mr. Henley) thought that the old common law principle was the right one, namely, let every man so use his own individual rights as not to injure the property or interests of his neighbour. If, for example, a man discharged his sewage in the earth he would not injure his neighbour in any way; but in order to get rid of a nuisance to himself he should not throw his sewage into a river to the serious detriment and inconvenience of other.

LORD ROBERT MONTAGU

, in reply, must express the great satisfaction he felt with the course of the debate. He could not refuse to follow the advice which had been given him by hon. Gentlemen on both Bides of the House, but he desired to make a very few observations with reference to two or three objections which had been urged against the Bill. The right hon. Baronet the Home Secretary had censured him for taking up so much time in quoting evidence to show the extent of the evil complained of, because, he said, all the facts had been ascertained long ago. On this point the right hon. Gentleman enlarged considerably, and rested the main part of his argument on the first half of his speech; and yet, towards the close of his speech, the right hon. Gentleman said that much more inquiry was necessary, and supported by arguments drawn from this assumption all the latter portion of his speech. He could not help thinking the right hon. Baronet was thus pointing to the course he intended to pursue—namely, appointing a Commission. This would have the effect of shelying the subject for the next ten or twelve years; while, on the contrary, a Commission, in order to report within a short period, would occasion enormous expense in the large staff of clerks, surveyors, and others necessary to complete the work in so short a period. The Committee had already fully considered the whole question; and, although he had himself given notice of a Motion to revive the Committee, he had privately explained to the right hon. Baronet that there was only one minor point on which he wished for further evidence. He understood from eminent chemists that a very easy and cheap process had been discovered by which water might be purified from the refuse of manufactories and mines, and he thought it would be a great pity if the nation were not put in possession of these facts. He had also learned that Baron Liebig was very anxious to be examined, and he could not help feeling that it would be very desirable to have the evidence of so great an authority on this subject. The right hon. Baronet had objected to some of the provisions of the Bill, as much too stringent in their character; he said this Bill would make it penal to throw a stone into a river; but the Home Secretary was himself to blame on this score, for some of these clauses were taken from Bills for which he was himself responsible—such as the Rivers Pollution (Scotland) Bill of last year, and the Mersey and Irwell Protection Act of 1862. The Home Secretary had very unfairly endeavoured to change the issue, and had asserted that the case rested entirely on the value of sewage, which was much disputed. But he (Lord Robert Montagu) had argued the whole case, not so much on the value of sewage as on the absolute and urgent necessity of purifying our streams and rivers. The Home Secretary had also tried to frighten the House with a bughear in repeating so often the phrase "enormous power of the Inspectors." The powers proposed to be given to the Inspectors under this Bill were not greater than those possessed under the Poor Law Amendment Act, 1834, the Health of Towns Act of 1848, the Local Government Act, and the Land Inclosure Act. It had been said by his right hon. Friend the Member for South Staffordshire (Mr. Adderley) that the proper remedy would be to give greater power to existing local Boards, rather than to Watershed Boards; but those local Boards had no united action, which the Committee had found to be absolutely necessary. Under this Bill united action would be attained; besides, those local Boards were themselves the culprits, and therefore would afford us no protection against the injury. His hon. and learned Friend the Member for the University of Cambridge (Mr. Selwyn) had suggested that before such a Bill as this was passed the experiment should be tried on the valley of the Thames alone. In 1862 the experiment was tried in the case of a single river. When the Mersey and Irwell Bill was brought forward they were told it was unjust to introduce partial measures; there ought to be a general Act. It was opposed, because it applied to one river that which they said would be most beneficial if extended to the whole kingdom. As stated by his right hon. Friend the Member for Oxfordshire (Mr. Henley), there was an absolute necessity for some legislation on this subject. He had endeavoured throughout the winter to persuade the Government to do something, and it was only after he found that impossible that he had determined to move in the matter himself. He did so, not because he thought he should be able to carry this Bill, but because he thought that was the only way to force the Government to do anything. However, he quite accepted the right hon. Baronet's proposal that this Bill should be allowed to drop, on condition that the Sewage Utilization Bill was read a second time.

He should, therefore, on that condition, with the permission of the House, withdraw this Bill.

Amendment, and Motion, by leave withdrawn.

Bill withdrawn.