with the large Private Bill business of the United Kingdom? We believe the best plan is to establish permanent tribunals of expropriation in each division of the kingdom as they exist in other nations, examining projects in the places where they are expected to be of service, providing, if necessary, a safeguard for paramount public interests by reserving a veto to Parliament. The Dublin Chamber of Commerce is of opinion that a fusion of the Board of Works with the Local Government Board, acting with and under the Privy Council, would supply the most ample and effective machinery to carry out these projects. It is a task no doubt requiring delicate adjustment, but it is not above the capacity of statesmanship.* There would be two great advantages accruing from the adoption of this scheme. It would increase the time at the disposal of Parliament for the transaction of its fast-increasing business. The energies of Parliament are at present overstrained by the mass of legislation now presented to it, and everybody feels that something must be done, either to reduce the quantity of work undertaken or to improve the forms of business so as to facilitate its due despatch. It may be, and, we believe, will be necessary to have recourse to both these methods of relieving the difficulty from which all have suffered. Sixteen years ago a committee got so far as to divide upon the point whether or not the Private Bill legislation should be taken out of Parliamentary jurisdiction, but the late Lord Derby carried the negative by a majority of one. We doubt whether such would be the decision of Parliament to-day. But the other advantage is that it meets an actual grievance which is more deeply felt in Ireland than elsewhere, and Mr. Gladstone himself admitted, during his Scotch campaign in last November, that some 'local relief' in regard to minor business was pre-eminently required. If some concession of this sort were made, the creation of an Irish Parliament would become less and less of a practicable policy, and less and less desirable even to Irishmen themselves, the more cordially the Imperial Parliament conceded what a really wise and patriotic Irish Parliament would establish without a moment's delay. It is not our interest to swell the ranks of Home Rulers or A Bill has been introduced into Parliament within the last few weeks by five Liberal members, which proposes to establish an Irish Private Bill Branch Office' in Dublin, for the deposit of Irish private Bills, the petitions for which will first be examined by one of the examiners appointed for that purpose by either House of Parliament. Then it is proposed that a committee, consisting of Irish members of Parliament alone, shall hold its sittings in Ireland, while Parliament is not sitting, at such places as the committee may appoint from time for that purposes, to consider all such private Bills. Separatists by any recruits from the party of order, moderation, and property; and with a Government in power capable of passing great measures, there ought not to be much dif ficulty in dealing effectively with this grievance. If reforms of the important character we have thus briefly sketched should be carried out during the next session of Parliament, the Government will have established a lasting claim on the gratitude of all classes of Irishmen. There will be ample time during the recess for the thorough study of the many questions involved in these reforms; and if the seasons do not disappoint us, the Irish people will be able to look somewhat more patiently upon their difficulties, and to esti mate more temperately the value of the various schemes of amendment proposed. The time has come for creating a strong conservative element in Irish society which the landlords themselves might be glad to welcome. M. de Tocque ville speaks of a good system of land tenure as promoting conservatism in its best sense-a love of settled order, and a dislike of restless change. If the Government are true to their principles, they will hasten the extinction of Home Rule agitation, by making every concession to justice and expediency which the state of the country demands, and thus cut the ground from under the feet of the whole hierarchy of agitators. If we are neither to govern Ireland as a conquered country nor to leave it to govern itself, we are bound to treat it like the rest of the empire, and every consideration of public advantage requires us to settle the Land Question with the least possible delay. ART. VII.-The London Water Question. 1871. (1) Royal Commission on Water Supply. 1869. FOR Some hundreds of years this metropolis, one of the oldest in Europe, managed to live without an artificial system of water supply. To the modern Londoner a like state of things seems inconceivable, and he would resent as an intolerable hardship having to seek, pail in hand, his needful household supply from the Thames or from Fleetditch, instead of merely turning on his tap in the morning. There are however cities, and of a goodly size too, wholly dependent for their water supply on the neighbouring river, and others which are only meagrely and partially supplied with water conveyed by pipes from those near which they are situated. The traveller may see any day men leading blind ponies drawing water-carts through the streets of Belgrade selling water at so much the bucket to each house, and such was the London supply long after Londoners called themselves highly civilized people. In those days much of the water was drawn from pumps, an excellent source of supply, provided the wells are deep enough and the neighbourhood free from cesspools, graveyards, and other sources of impurity, but in crowded cities the wells are rarely deep enough to be beyond the reach of contamination. The Thames was and, strange to say, is still the chief source of supply for London water, and at one time, provided the water was drawn well above the city, nothing but spring water could be better, as the sources of the Thames are unexceptionable, and the river flows mainly through chalk receiving clear chalk springs all along its course. Those days are long since gone by, for about fifty years ago a curious invention was adopted in England, which was eagerly accepted by all the better classes and its use enforced by the legislature,an invention which, completely washing away automatically from our houses the worst kind of impurity, saved an immense deal of trouble, cleansed our cities, and seemed to promise a new era of sanitary perfection. Unfortunately the new system, like other reforms, did not at first disclose its imperfections. As time went on it was found that we were only passing our nuisance from one place to another, not getting rid of it; and after a while the limpid streams of England, once full of the speckled trout, streams in which the youth could bathe, and in which the cattle slaked their thirst, became foul sewers, emitting poisonous exhalations. Their water was thenceforward totally unfit to be drunk by man or beast, and moreover they poisoned to a certain ill-defined extent the larger rivers, from which great centres of population drew their supplies of water. Many cities, notably London, found their sources of water supply dangerously polluted, and, as we shall show, a fearful amount of poisoning ensued in certain casesfor it is not to be supposed that water companies will undertake the enormous expense of changing the source of their supply until forced to do so by the most obvious and increasing mischief: and, be it remembered, when a community hands over the supply of a necessity of life to a commercial company the motive of that company is gain, not the welfare of the people; in other words, the people are made for the company, not the company for the people. As early probably as the first half of the sixteenth century, certain measures were taken for the supply of pure water to the most crowded parts of London. The names of certain streets, as Conduit Street, Lamb's Conduit, and White Conduit, would seem to indicate both the locality and the names of the early engineers; and we know that in 1581 Peter Morys, a Dutchman, obtained what would now be termed the 'concession' of a most important work, that of erecting a water-wheel under one of the arches of London Bridge, which being turned by the tidal river set in motion several forcing-pumps, which impelled the water through the leaden or wooden pipes laid in the streets, and thus the main part of London was supplied for about 200 years. In those days the citizens had to send for their water to certain points where the taps were placed, and here arose chances of gossiping such as are still afforded by the fountains in many continental towns. A curious print of such a trysting-place is to be found in the British Museum, with the following quaint rhyme attached At the conduit striving for their turn The quarrel it grows great, That up in arms they are at last There were also a number of water-carriers, like the famous Sakkals or Bheesties of Eastern countries, who carried enormous wooden tankards holding from two to three gallons; prints of these are also to be seen in the British Museum. The water of the Thames in 1581, and for a long time afterwards, must have been comparatively pure; indeed, men still living remember fishing in places where twenty-five years ago, before the great intercepting sewers were made, no living organism could exist. But even in 1581 the river must have been made to do more or less the duty of a sewer, for we all know how easy it is to get rid of a dead cat or dog, or various other abominations, by simply throwing them into a running stream. Moreover, London has always, within the historic period, been a large city which must have had tan-yards and other factories fouling the stream to a greater or less degree, but not enough to render the water obviously unfit to drink. Still, in all cities, population keeps ahead of the supplies both of food and water, and thus about the year 1606 an Act of Parliament had been obtained to convey a stream of clear, pure water from certain springs of extraordinary abundance at Chadwell or Amwell, near Ware. This fact seems to indicate that the citizens of London even then were not quite satisfied with the purity of the Thames water, though it was better than nothing. Great hesitation was felt, however, in commencing so formidable an undertaking, until an enterprizing citizen-one Hugh Middleton-offered to do the work single-handed, and he did it. The difficulties he encountered and overcame were enormous; the landowners through whose fields the conduit was carried raised an alarming outcry, declaring that in rainy weather the water would overflow and turn their fields into a quagmire. Middleton sought the powerful aid of King James the First and had to purchase it, for James advanced money and gave his powerful protection only on condition of sharing half the profits. The pipes used for the conveyance of the water to streets and houses from the main channel were of wood, mainly the stems of elm trees cut to lengths, drilled and tapered so as to fit into each other, and these were carried over a space of about four hundred miles. The water of the New River,' as it was called, was highly valued, and used to be sold at the rate of a penny a pailful, the cry of the carriers often being 'Any New River water here! Fresh and fair New River water! None of your pipe sludge.' These pipes often burst in frost, often gave way and flooded their neighbourhood, and were gradually superseded by cast iron, but the old pipes of Sir Hugh Middleton's time have been within a few years ago occasionally exhumed during repairs. During the whole of the seventeenth century, the New River and London Bridge Works, aided of course by pumps, kept the metropolis well supplied with water. The chalk springs of the New River were supplemented by tapping the river Lea, thereby increasing the quantity at the expense of the quality; and in 1691 a company called the York Buildings Waterworks Company was formed for supplying Westminster with water, pumped from a point in the river near Charing Cross. In 1829 these works were abolished. In 1723 the Chelsea Waterworks were established, first at Millbank, whence they were afterwards removed to a spot near the foot of the present Victoria Railway Bridge. It is difficult to conceive how the water even then could be potable, flowing as it did through a highly-populated district. In 1785 the Lambeth Waterworks were established, which also pumped water from the Thames opposite Charing Cross. |