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THE FARMER'S MAGAZINE. 



the establishment of a board of national drainers, whose 

 duty shall be to go round the kingdom and put right 

 whatever water-courses they may find amiss, and make the 

 district or the general public pay " the piper." There 

 certainly are some things which the Government Execu- 

 tive can do for us better than we could do it by private 

 agency or by companies. For instance, I never heard 

 anybody say that a private firm or a public company, 

 with the usual description of directors and shareholders, 

 would make a much better job of the national letter- 

 carrying and money-order transference than is now done 

 by Government. And some people think that Govern- 

 ment would have constructed railways and carried goods 

 and passengers at wonderfully less total cost than our 

 diverse and conflicting railway companies have managed 

 to draw out of the popular pocket. But however this 

 may be, it is equally certain that in many labours of 

 national concern Government agency utterly fails in 

 comparison with the management and achievements of 

 private manufacturers, commercial houses, or public or 

 joint-stock companies. We English do not believe in 

 Government tailoring. Government manufacturing, Go- 

 vernment newspaper publishing. Government hospitals. 

 Government road-making. Government town-draining, 

 unless in exceptional cases, or for special purposes. 

 The general Act I wish for would be intended, therefore, 

 neither to dictate and oblige districts to put their waters 

 in order, and force them, against their own inclination, 

 to make the best of their water-power and the most of 

 their low-lying lands, nor yet to over-ride local rights, 

 and proceed to execute works which Government engi- 

 neers may fancy to be necessary, and saddle a grumbling 

 country with a tax for the outlay. I want a law estab- 

 lishing a central authority, after the fashion of the In- 

 closure Commissioners, with rules of action laid down, 

 jurisdiction defined, and so on, with a staff of engineers, 

 inspectors, &c. ; so that any district desirous (with a 

 sufficient majority of the interests concerned) to improve 

 itself, could do so by appealing to this constituted au- 

 thority, without the intolerable expense of repeated Par- 

 liamentary contests, and without the victimising 

 squabbles of rival schemers and swindling speculators. 

 For in local drainages, as well as railway projects, such 

 characters freqently take care to play off one interest 

 against another, and line the pockets of city "stags," 

 of engineers, solicitors, and contractors with the clip- 

 pings of whole parishes and confiding shareholders 

 whom they have diddled and fleeced. Before I conclude, 

 I will try to convey an idea of the difference in expense 

 involved by the two methods of draining, under a ge- 

 neral and under a local Act ; but just now look at one or 

 two objections. Engineers and others likely to be 

 placed on the Government staff, for their scientific at- 

 tainments and eminence in their profession, are most 

 likely to be inspired with ideas in advance of their age : 

 they would want a mean hydraulic depth in the rivers 

 greater than the country to be drained has any appre- 

 ciation of: they would recommend extreme measures, 

 calculated to make the very completest and most perfect 

 systematic drainage-works ever seen, regardless of the 

 required outlay, or expecting that suflScient improve- 



ments must immediately follow in the agriculture of the 

 district, and raise the value of the land more than 

 enough to warrant the expenditure. This was the ex- 

 perience over and over again in Ireland : a grand im- 

 provement was made, and an increase of crops, &c., 

 soon demonstrated the value and ample profit of the 

 works ; but still it was found that people, benefited 

 against their will, or put in possession of facilities for 

 money-making beyond their understanding and appre- 

 ciation, repudiated the boon, and quarrelled with the 

 men of genius, who would not let them muddle on in 

 the old way when vast advances were practicable. But 

 I cannot see why the dread of getting too good a drain- 

 age need militate against a general Act. We have the 

 lessons of all the Irish arterial drainage blue-books 

 before us, as well as the experience of innumerable re- 

 clamations and river-works in England itself; and surely 

 provisions might be framed by which English local "in- 

 terests" (so different, be it remembered, in their habits of 

 self-reliance, independence, and respect of vested rights to 

 corresponding interests in the sister island might be en- 

 abled to work out their own notions, and go no further than 

 necessary for the satisfaction of all parties. We do not 

 hear loud complaints of the proceedings of the enclosure 

 authorities, or complaints from parishes about allot- 

 ments of common, because no separate local Act has 

 compelled and arranged the apportionment ; and why 

 cannot larger operations be conducted on similar prin- 

 ciples ? 



Again, I am aware that there are notable examples 

 of river improvement already atteraptc^ or carried out, 

 calculated to caution us against meddling with large 

 streams, trusting to the representations of engineers, or 

 placing faith in the equity of compensations awarded to 

 proprietors in such undertakings. Districts have at 

 great expense obtained a most beautiful drainage, ac- 

 cording to published reports ; whereas in reality the 

 floods are still inflicting injury, and while a heavy 

 drainage-tax is levied on unfortunate owners and tenants, 

 the proprietor of some water-mill has been lavishly paid 

 by the scheme which he promoted. The Nene Valley 

 project, while effecting certain improvements in the. 

 harbour of Wisbech, and in the state of the lands lying 

 along the river, has ended in saddling the district and 

 various interests with enormous expenses, without a 

 commensurate equivalent in better drainage or naviga- 

 tion, leaving the remodelling of that river to be com- 

 pleted by some future unlucky generation. But pro- 

 perly such cases tell against the present system of local 

 Acts of Parliament, instead of reasonably deterring us 

 from works of river reform under a general Act. It is 

 just because districts are left to fight their own battles 

 against adventurers and schemers, to struggle with non- 

 consenting or opposing interests, to agitate, survey, 

 choose plans, pay lawyer after lawyer, and carry on an 

 enormously burdensome parliamentary contest, before a 

 sod can be turned or a sixpence raised from the lands 

 proposed to be benefited — it is because this unaided, 

 roundabout, costly procedure is imposed upon who- 

 soever dares to move in the cause of improved outfalls, 

 that such scandalous cases have arisen, and that such 



