That the burden of public authorities and the pollution of rivers would be very much lessened by the recognition of the well-doer, there can be no doubt.

In considering the rating of a house for sewerage works it is clear that every sink, W.C., bath or gully discharging its contents into a public sewer ought to be charged, and such charge should be progressive; thus, if 5s. were paid for one such discharge hole, 7s. 6d. should be paid for the second, 10s. for the third, 12s. 6d. for the fourth, and so on. In this way a cottage with one kitchen sink only would pay 5s., but a mansion with, say, 10 sinks, baths, and W.C., would pay 8l. 2s. 6d. Such charges are analogous to the charges made by water companies, which are higher for the better class of house. If this or something like this were done, the fixed charges on the house would produce a considerable sum, which would go far towards paying the municipal bills for scavenging and sewering. The balance would have to be raised by a rate on the buildings themselves, which rate should be in proportion to the cubic contents of the buildings, without reference to their curtilage, because large curtilage tends to improve the public health more than all the clauses of all the sanitary Acts that ever were devised.

The cubic contents should alone be considered in making assessments for rates. If a man spend money in making his house more wholesome without increasing its size, and thereby increases its value, it is clearly not in the interests of the public health that he should be fined by the sanitary authority for so doing. Nevertheless this is done daily.

That a man should pay for so much water as he uses and for no more, and that he should pay the municipality for personal services directly in proportion to those services, seem to be two propositions so simple and so equitable, and so absolutely fundamental for all just dealing, that one cannot be surprised at the trouble which follows the neglect of them.

Great as are the sanitary evils connected with overcrowding, it is probable that the moral and social harm which results from it is infinitely more important; and yet we find that our modern socialistic legislation does everything to encourage and nothing to discourage this greatest of sanitary and social ills.

It is strange that the cubic contents of a building should be a factor which is rigorously excluded from consideration when rating and building regulations are being considered. It seems to the writer to be obvious that it is by far the most important factor, and one which cannot be neglected if our municipal regulations are to have any permanence. The Metropolitan Building Act we have seen puts a premium on large buildings, by abolishing all restrictions as to curtilage, provided the building runs from street to street or from street to 'open space,' and never considers the enormous dangers of these large buildings in relation to epidemic disease and fire.

Every country place would do well to enact that—

In the second paragraph I have chosen 50 for my divisor, because the average width of a street and the average height of the four-storeyed house are not far from 50 feet.