About a mile and a half distant, from one of the towns in Scotland, there is a moss about seven miles long, with a small stream running through it, with a fall of about 25 feet. At the outlet of this stream there is an old corn-mill, which yields a rental of about 25l. per annum. By the water being dammed up to turn this mill, the whole run is impeded; and the consequent sluggishness of the stream occasions it to be choked up with weeds. Whenever a fall of rain takes place, the banks are overflowed, and not only is every improvement rendered impracticable, but on several harvests as much as 500l. worth of hay has been destroyed at a time when a heavy fall of rain has occurred and occasioned an overflow.
It so happens that the proprietor of the mill would himself clearly gain more than the value of the mill from the drainage that would be effected on his own lands by the removal of the dam. The other proprietors, however, offered to him for its removal the full rental that he now derives from the mill. The property is in the hands of a factor, who is ignorant and obstinate, and the offer was refused. Now the land which would be affected beneficially by the removal of the dam, is a tract of seven or eight miles long, with an average width of two miles and a half. The expense of an Act of Parliament, if it were resisted, as it most probably would be, renders an appeal to the legislature valueless. Thus one individual is enabled to exercise a despotic caprice against the health and prosperity of the surrounding population, to inflict an extensive loss of labour and wages on the working man, the loss of produce and profit to the occupiers, the loss of rent to the other owners, and at the same time to inflict on all who may live on the spot, or come within reach of the marsh, the ill health and hazards of disease from the miasma which it emits!
The like despotic powers are found in every district in the way of the public health, as well as of the private advantage.
The passenger who enters Birmingham from the London railway may perceive, just before the terminus, a black sluggish stream, which is the river Rea, made the receptacle of the sewers of the town. Mr. Hodgson, and the committee of physicians of that town, state, in their sanitary report, that—
“The stream is sluggish, and the quantity of water which it supplies is not sufficient to dilute and wash away the refuse which it receives in passing through the town, and that in hot weather it is consequently very offensive, and in some situations in these seasons is covered with a thick scum of decomposing matters; and this filthy condition of the river near the railway station is a subject of constant and merited animadversions, and that it requires especial attention lest it should become a source of disease,” &c.
The fatally dangerous sluggishness of this river is occasioned by the diversion and abstraction of its water to turn a mill, “a fact which will amply account for the deficiency and sluggishness of the current in the very places where the contrary condition is the most wanted.” Captain Vetch, who has been engaged in engineering operations in that part of the country which have led him to observe the spot, states that—
“The remedy is as easy as the evil is great; all obstruction being removed from the course of the brook, and the water restored to its original bed, the object would be effected; as to the value of the mill-power which would thus be subverted, it cannot be a matter of much amount, in a place where coals and steam-engines are so cheap, and where the constant and regular work of the mill must be an object of some importance.”
After describing the means of the removal, he states—
“In this manner, and by reserving the whole body of the water of the Rea for cleansing its own bed, I have no doubt that this main sewer of Birmingham would become as conspicuous for its wholesome and efficient action as it now is for the contrary.”
Birmingham presents an example such as indeed is common in most towns, of the stoppage of a main current of air by a private building carried across one end of a main street. The effects likely to result from the obstruction to the invisible current are not dissimilar to those which result from the obstruction to the stream of water, and the cost and difficulty of relief from them are perhaps much greater. Captain Vetch refers, as another example of the condition of many of the towns in respect to these chief streams, as described in the sanitary reports, to the case of Haddington.