No past or proposed legislative measures prescribe any securities for appropriate skill, or trustworthiness for the performance of such services. It is matter of complaint in one extensive district in the metropolis, that the duty of examining the premises is performed by young men, junior clerks to the district surveyor.
In proportion as science is securely allied to local administration is its respectability enhanced and the attainment of its objects ensured. It is dangerous to legislate in detail, for the information is not usually available for legislative preparation against all existing local difficulties, still less all future important contingencies. Where detailed regulations are prescribed arbitrarily, the danger is incurred of creating an obstacle to the work intended to be forwarded. For example, it has been proposed that Parliament shall not only provide “That every outer wall of every building shall be built of good, sound, well-burnt, bricks, or good sound stone, and set in good mortar,” but shall direct and instruct the builders, and fix, against any alteration or improvement, the mode in which good mortar shall be made, viz., “And the mortar and cement shall be well compounded in the proportion of one part of good fresh-burnt lime or cement, and three parts of clean sharp sand;” there, however, are large tracts of country where neither clean sand, nor sharp sand, nor sand of any sort is to be had, and where they use smiths’ ashes for the purpose. But the use of this material is thenceforward illegal, and no new discovery can be adopted without the sanction of an Act of Parliament. In one large parish it was lately desired to try a pavement of wood, when it was discovered that the local Act prescribed the use of granite for pavement. In the impracticability of carrying out all such detail, or from default of defining the ends and prescribing the attainment instead of the means, or stating the means generally, as that a wall shall be built “of incombustible materials,” it is in the usual course to require that important work shall be done in such manner as “shall be satisfactory to the surveyor who shall inspect the same,” or “according to the directions of the surveyor of the district;” e. g., that no chimney shall be built more than six feet high, “unless the same shall be secured by sufficient iron stays of such strength and dimensions, and to be fixed in such manner as shall be approved of by the surveyor who shall inspect the building.” The objections entertained by builders of respectability to the granting of such large powers, is founded on the certainty as to the character of the appointments of surveyors to be hereafter made if no other securities than mere general directions be taken in respect to them for the public protection. It may be a rival builder who is appointed, and it is very certain to be generally a person in trade by whom the power is exercised, whose dissatisfaction with work really fair and good may be governed by sinister considerations against which a fair builder will feel he has no defence; but the greater danger is to the public, that no dissatisfaction may be expressed with work that is cheap but unsound. The building covers bad drains, and hides rotten walls, and the effects in the calamities of spreading fires and falling houses, and calamities of sufferings, and deaths, occur in after years, when the original defect may not be detected by the closest examination, and when all concerned may have departed.
If the services of men of independent position, with the science and qualifications of engineers, were secured, their inspection of works would often be invited, and the notice they could not fail to take of unintentional and profitless errors, such as wrong levels, which detract from the convenience and value of tenements, would be of much value and be received cordially, and the exercise of discretionary authority in such hands would meet with comparatively respectful obedience.
No one can have had occasion to examine much of the business of local administration, without being aware of other evils entailed by the multiplication of badly appointed officer’s in addition to the evils of excessive cost and bad quality of the service to the ratepayers. One of the evils is the fuel they add to the flames of local parties, by which both parties are generally losers. Where special and scientific qualifications are not defined, or, if defined, not secured—where the most fatal errors, as in this instance, are shrouded by the nature of the work from detection—all the idle dependents of election committees who have time to spare, because they have failed in their own business for want of steady application, and because their time is worthless, are let in as candidates, and in proportion to the absence of security for qualifications is the extent of expectation created and disappointment ensured. The dreadful state of the labouring classes in the most important towns,—the entire neglect of existing sanitary regulations,—the apathy to repeated remonstrances that have been made by eminent medical practitioners, as by Dr. Ferrier in Manchester and by Dr. Currie of Liverpool,—the entire neglect of recommendations made by them, which, if carried out, would have protected those communities from immense burdens, from pestilence and slaughters worse than many wars, and from an enfeebled, diseased, and, by physical causes, a degraded generation of workpeople,—the resistance made from no other manifest cause than a blind jealousy of interference, to the exercise of powers that can have no other object than to prevent the like evils for the future,—all indicate the conclusion as to the nature of the arrangements to be expected from those who have by familiarity become insensible to the means of preventing the evils which fall with the greatest weight on the least protected classes.
Supposing population and new buildings for their accommodation to proceed at the rate at which they have hitherto done in the boroughs, and supposing all the new houses to be only fourth rate, the expense, at the ordinary rate of payment of surveyors’ fees, would be about 30,000l. per annum for the new houses alone. Fees of half the amount required for every new building are allowed for every alteration of an old one, and the total expense of such structures would probably be near 50,000l. in the towns alone—an expense equal to the pay of the whole corps of Royal Engineers, or 240 men of science, for Great Britain and Ireland.[[43]]
But at the rate of increase of the population, of Great Britain, which is 230,000 per annum, (i. e. equal in population to the annual addition of a new county, such as Worcester or the North Riding of Yorkshire,[[44]] and to accommodate them 59,000 new tenements are required, or a number equal to that of two new towns annually such as Manchester proper, which has 32,310 houses, and Birmingham, which has 27,268 houses,) affording, if all that have equal need receive equal care, fees to the amount of no less than from 80,000l. to 100,000l. per annum. This would afford payment equal to that of the whole corps of sappers and miners, or nearly 1000 trained men, in addition to the corps of engineers.
From a consideration of the science and skill now obtained for the public from these two corps for general service, some conception may be formed of the science and skill that might be obtained in appointments for local service, by pre-appointed securities for the possession of the like qualifications, but which are now thrown away in separate appointments at an enormous expense, where qualifications are entirely neglected.
The officers of the engineer corps have the execution and care of structural works, docks and dock-yards, fortifications, military roads, and barracks, in addition to the ordinary military duties. One captain of engineers fills the office of hydraulic engineer to the Admiralty, and to his superintendence is intrusted the construction and repairs of all the docks, buildings, and other public works.
The officers of the engineers have been distinguished for their services on some of the most important civil commissions. As collateral services which they have rendered to the public, may be mentioned the trigonometrical survey of Ireland, and that now in progress for England under the Board of Ordnance, and also the geological survey. The levelling, however, and the whole of the detail of the trigonometrical survey in England, is taken by the privates, corporals, and sergeants of the corps of sappers and miners, who have been instructed in geometry, drawing, and mensuration at the school at Chatham. The triangulation for the detail of this work is executed by the engineer officers under the direction of the superintendent of the survey, Colonel Colby. The great majority of the surveys obtained under the Parochial Survey and Valuation Act from private surveyors have been inferior to the surveys executed under superintendence by the privates and non-commissioned officers of the sappers and miners serving at a pay of from 1s. 2d. to 3s., per diem. Out of 1700 first-class maps received under the Parochial Assessment and Tithe Acts, not more than one-half displayed qualifications for the execution of public surveys without superintendence. Amongst the most satisfactory maps of the first class of parochial surveys were those executed by a retired sergeant of sappers and miners. The Commissioners for the colonization of South Australia found it difficult to proceed satisfactorily with persons of the ordinary qualifications of surveyors or civil engineers for that country; and deemed it requisite to obtain the services of an engineer officer, with a suitable number of trained men, sappers and miners, under his command.
But for the construction and care of local works, sewers, roads, and drains and houses, no qualification whatsoever is usually conceived to be requisite. The chairman of the Holborn and Finsbury Commission of Sewers, where a change of management so beneficial to the health, and so economical of the funds of the ratepayers, was obtained by placing the work under the direction of an engineer, informed me that when that commission advertised for a person to act as surveyor to the works who understood the use of the spirit level, the candidates, who were nearly all common housebuilders, were greatly surprised at the novel demand, and several of them began to learn the use of that instrument in order to qualify them for the appointment. In the canvassing letters which I have seen for parochial or local surveyorships, I never observed qualifications for skill or science even adverted to; and where a special qualification happens to be prescribed by statute, it is not regarded. For example, the Act of the 5 and 6 Wm. IV. enables the parochial vestries to appoint as surveyor a person of “skill and experience” to serve the office of surveyor of such parish. As an example of this description of appointments, I may mention one where, in an important district, the person appointed was an illiterate tinman, a leading speaker at parish meetings, who, for a service occupying a part of his time, receives a salary of 150l. per annum, i. e., as much as a lieutenant of engineers and a private, or as much as three sergeants of sappers and miners, whose whole time is devoted to the public service.