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THE FARMER'S MAGAZINE. 



swer the purpose, we cannot for a moment believe, 

 seeing that navigations continue to pen-up our streams, 

 to float barges over shoals, bridges contract their chan- 

 nels, lUiJ mills dam back our drain-water, in spite of 

 Bcwers ' presentmmts" of the evils, or of their decrees 

 fixing the legal " heads" and falls. They cannot touch 

 half the small drains which unneighbourly neighbours will 

 not cleanse for us ; still less provide the additional water- 

 way demanded by annually augmentingdelivery ; and still 

 less could they deal with mill-dams or ancient canals. The 

 power of a local act of parliammt is the authority upon 

 which all our modern fen drainages, our harbour and 

 outfall works, our internal river improvements, and 

 many enclosures of salt-marsh from the sea are at present 

 effected. IJut so many difficulties are connected with 

 the procuring of local acts, that, if this is to remain the 

 only course open tp us, it is pretty certain that hundreds 

 of flooded valleys will continue in a hopeless plight. The 

 voluntary initiation of relief measures, the getting up of 

 an agitation, and the carrying of an act of parliament for 

 a larger or smaller district, when no organization and 

 no court of appeal previously exists, requires a boldness 

 and independence of mind, a degree of enterprise, and a 

 harassing and expensive series of preliminary proceed- 

 ings, which not only deter proprietors from attempting 

 to combine, but place the subject of river-improvement 

 beyond their thought as chimerical or incapable of real- 

 ization ; and the expense is often enormous. I cannot 

 ascertain what has been the united cost of the acts of 

 pftliament for our numerous Fen-draiuings, but I have 

 no doubt that, if we could add together the sums 

 expended in the mere obtaining of the acts 

 for all the piece-meal estuary works, embanking, sluice- 

 building, digging new cuts, or scouring and enlarging 

 old ones, we should find an amount wasted that might 

 Lave completed a large portion of fhfi work. In the 

 case of the Eau-brink cut, on the Ouse above Lynn, the 

 first act, in 1795, contemplated an outlay of £■'40,000 ; 

 yet, owing to a heavy and obstinate contest, tLe pro- 

 moters alone had to spend £12,000 in merely carrying 

 the bill. In the estimated cost of the Nene Valley drain- 

 age, which was to come to .£275,000 altogether, the 

 expense of the act of parliament was set down as 

 £10,000 to begin with. But, as in the Bedford Level 

 and other lowland tracts, vast works comprehending 

 very extensi7e districts have been carried out, main- 

 tained, and improved by companies and corporate bodies 

 acting under parliamentary authority, so I believe one 

 general Act embracing the whole kingdom may cnnble 

 river-reform to be instituted on a great scale without 

 any necessity for a local act in each separate case. We 

 have a grand example in the late arterial drainages of 

 Ireland. I have not time to describe them ; but they 

 exhibit a boldness of conception and vigour of execution 

 which place them arcong the most extraordinary series 

 of engineering works ever undertaken. Independently of 

 the surveys and reports made of 452 districts, works were 

 carried out in 122 districts, extending into nearly every 

 county in Ireland; relieving the lands of 3,100 pro- 

 prietors, opening up and improving very extensive lines 

 of inland naNigation, increasing mill-power, and ame- 

 liorating the climate and sanitary condition of large tracts 

 of country. They include nearly 1,800 miles of river- 

 course opened and new cuts excavated, at an average cost 

 of only £800 per mile; besides the construction of 

 weirs, locks, sluices, removing mills, blasting rocks, 

 embanking salt marshes, tapping bogs, ^cc. ; the total 

 outlay being about £2,000,000. About 192,000 acres, 

 including some of the finest alluvial lands, were relieved 

 of floods ; while most important works have been exe- 

 cuted towards the improved drainage of 140,000 acres 

 more ; carrying off the waters from catchment basins 

 haviug an area of 7,000,000 acres, or 11, 0(»0 square 

 miles ; more than one-third of the entire surface of Ire- 



land. This is a scale of operations (I may say, in the 

 words of a competent witness) " without a parallel 

 in Europe; having been effected, for the most pHrt, in 

 the short space of ten years, and mainly by the energy 

 of one individual," Mr. Mulvany, the drainage com- 

 missioner. The chief of the works were undertaken to 

 find employment for the wretched population during 

 the famine ; both their design and execution pro- 

 ceeded from the board and its engineers ; and the 

 blue-books contain abundant testimony to the ctTt-c- 

 tual and valuable character of the improvements; 

 though, of course, out-fall works are not followed 

 in every case by immediate results, but are proiit- 

 able from the facilities supplied for better husbandry. 

 Now, observe that these undertakings were not bur- 

 dened with the expense of local acts — the jiarliamentary 

 authority consisting of Government acts ; so that the 

 law-costs, even during the progress of the operations, 

 such as juries, suits, arbitrations, registry, and expenses 

 of that kind (whicli in public works in our own country 

 swallow up so much money), scarcely exceeded £1,000 

 for the whole 122 drainages ; because the direct legal 

 business of all kinds was done by the solicitor of 

 the Board of Works, and his clerks, for their salary, 

 without additional charge ; while the central estab- 

 lishment, consisting of the commissioner, secre- 

 tary, accountant, clerks, draughtsmen, and com- 

 puters, were jjaid by the Government and not 

 charged to the works. If eaih district had been 

 obligeii to procure aa act for itself, of which the laA-costs ftlone 

 would have beeu, say £500 each, there would have been mauy 

 tens of thousands of p:i«nds added to the total outlay. It is a 

 difficult matter to obtain data ou which to ground an accurate 

 comparison between the cost of passing local acts iu Englaud, 

 and of the preliminary proceedings taken uuder the powers of 

 general a:t9, such as the existing Inclosiire, Exchange, and 

 Improvement of Land Acts, or a proposed General Draiuage 

 Act ; for the facts as to tl-.e expense of local acts are withm 

 the knowledge of parties who may not feel disposed to give 

 the informatioii. But the difference must be considerable, aa 

 a very slight acquaintance with parliamentary proceedings will 

 suffice to inform us that £800 to £1,000 is a very aaiall sum 

 to expend in carrying a private bill through parliament, even 

 if uuoppored ; whereas the proceedings of the luclosure Com- 

 mission furnish us with an agreeable contrast of expeuaes 

 uuder a general act. By the Annual Eeport of the Com- 

 missioners, presented to the Secretary of State for the Konie 

 Department on the Slst of Janusry. 1853, I find that the cost 

 ol the prcliiii'aary proceedings in the twenty-two cases of iu- 

 closures therein recommended for the authorisation of the 

 legis'ature, amonnted to £365 7s. 8d., being an average of 

 only £16 12s. 2d. for each inclosure; yet there was an average 

 of 277 acres each case, or 6,092 acres altogether. Tne act of 

 pnrliameut authorising these twenty-two inclosiires (an auuual 

 act being passed for giving the necessary authoritv), is obtained 

 entirely without charge to the parties luterested iii the in- 

 cloBures to which it relates, and is a curiosity to some of us 

 from its containing no unnecessary verbiage, the enactment, 

 following a short preamble, being merely in these words : 

 "That the said several proposed inclosures meutioned in the 

 schedule to this act be proceeded with." The prelimmary 

 proeeeiiiiigs under a general drainage act, such as I shall pre- 

 sently refer to, would beof the same nature as those under the lu- 

 closure Acts ; the expenses a little exceeding those above quoted. 

 Cousirler how the facilities provided by the machinery of a 

 general act might hasten our long-deferred river-iaiprovemeul. 

 After all, the real reason why our valleys are over-watered and 

 unhealthy is to he found in the low state of drainage-opinion 

 throui;hout the country : indeed, those of us who are familiar 

 with level districts naturally possessing " a fall" of many feet, 

 and yet careless about the state of internal ditches, so long as 

 the water keeps below the open grips which gridiron the sur- 

 face across ridge and water-furrow, do not wonder at the 

 amazing decree of resignation mati/estcd by the flooded in- 

 habitants of our inland river-valleys. As the clay-land farmer 

 will still plough his four-inch furrow, either unconscious of the 

 wealthy subsoil beneath, or not daring to speculate in an ex- 

 pensive deep-culture without security of tenure to ensure him 



