MODERN IDEAS OF SANITABY ECOKOMY. 



87 



means good as a general policy. This town has sometimes 

 done this certainly, but there has been no efficient mode of 

 finding out the truth : and with the most laudable desire of 

 doing right, the guilty have not suffered much more than the 

 guiltless. 



The great works of the town — the mills and foundries — 

 must be preserved in it ; that is an axiom. We could not 

 remove them ; but some are oiFensive to pass, and some are 

 not so^ — each should be kept up to its standard. Their 

 lowest proportion of nuisance may therefore be called the 

 standard amount which is tolerable; all others, therefore, have 

 the same right to the same amount at least, and cannot justly 

 be removed until they exceed this. 



If works are removed, I think that even then, if at all in the 

 district, or in any well-inhabited district, they should still be 

 obliged to keep up to some standard of cleanness, interfering 

 with liberty as little as possible. But to prevent the district 

 around us from becoming unpleasant, it is necessary not to 

 send all the nuisances outside of us, as the better policy, I 

 believe, is to encourage by all means the growth of country 

 houses, and the dispersion or diffusion, in opposition to the 

 concentration of the population. 



On account of the length to which this paper has grown, I 

 leave many subjects of importance untouched. Individual 

 nuisances might be spoken of if it were a paper on the sani- 

 tary condition of Manchester. At present, when speaking of 

 the town, I confine myself chiefly to the proposal of a com- 

 plete and united system of draining the district, with all its 

 towns, villages, hamlets, works, and isolated houses, carrying 

 away with it the necessary refuse of every house, making an 

 entire reform in that important part of all streets, the back 

 part of the houses, removing the obstructions to drying and 

 ventilating, and making it look at least not disagreeable ; and 

 to calling attention to the mode of building smaller houses, 



