THE FARMER'S MAGAZINE. 



21 



egregious blunders hare been perpetrated in the name 

 of arterial drainage. I am no advocate for having even 

 the best project forced upon a locality that is vpilling to 

 improve. As long as liberty reigns within our sea-girt 

 isle, every man or every voluntarily- associated com- 

 munity of men have a right to select the goods which 

 they will buy with their own money. Every district 

 ought to choose its own drainage scheme, possess the 

 command of its own purse, to invest in any scheme, or 

 none, if such be its pleasure. Only, out of regard to 

 public interest and the national well-being, there should 

 be some authority constituted, in a position to 

 prevent one district from injuring another district by a 

 foolish undertaking, or by refusing to apply any remedy 

 at all. A General Drainage Commission should sanction 

 all projects before they can be executed. And, of 

 course, in each district a majority of interests (defined 

 by the Act) should outweigh and bind the minority in 

 that district. What could be easier than to subdivide 

 Great Britain, or the more watery portions of it, into 

 drainage districts ? Take your pencil, and trace a line 

 round the heads or sources of streams and tributary 

 brooks marked on the Ordnance map, so as to include 

 within a single boundary any one main river with all its 

 feeders — that will be a drainage district from the sur- 

 rounding watershed to the river embouchure. All the 

 waters in England might be similarly grouped together, 

 forming districts, each with its own outlet to the sea ; 

 and where the lower portions of a river may be already 

 under management and controlled by artificial works, 

 the upper portions must, of course, be improved in 

 relation to the state of the channel below, and specia 

 provisions be made in the general Act, empowering that 

 upper district to negociate or amalgamate with the 

 interests below. The process by which any drainage 

 district might commence the work of improvement 

 would be very simple — perhaps something like this : 

 Any one or more persons interested would memorialize 

 the Drainage Commission, engaging to defray the cost 

 of preliminary proceedings if the work did not go on. 

 The Commissioners would then make an inquiry, 

 survey, and report, which would be submitted fully and 

 sufficiently to the landowners and all other parties con- 

 cerned. If the majority of interests agreed to the 

 advisability of arterial works, a committee of works 

 and trustees would be elected, to select from plans sug- 

 gested by the Drainage Commissioners, or by land 

 drainage companies, or the proposals of private engineers 

 invited to assist. This board or committee would con- 

 duct the whole business of the undertaking, and raise 

 funds by assessing every interest in proportion to the 

 benefit likely to be derived. The district would thus be 

 able to devise, support, or decline any scheme, as at 

 present ; but it would possess the vast advantage of an 

 organization ready-formed, and wanting only the appeal 

 of a reliable proprietor in order to submit proposals at 

 once to the approval or rejection of all parties whatever 

 who might be concerned, and possessing the requisite 

 Parliamentary power for authorizing the works agreed 

 upon. In the great Irish drainages, works were carried out 

 in 122 districts, extending into nearly every county in 



Ireland, on the lands of 3,100 proprietors, and surveys 

 and engineering reports were made of 452 districts 

 more. According to our English system of local Acts 

 of Parliament, the law-costs alone would have been 

 enormous, to say nothing of the inevitable suits, juries, 

 arbitrations, &c., during the progress of the works— 

 £800 or £1,000 being a very small sum to expend in 

 merely carrying a bill through Parliament. But as 

 general Acts formed the Parliamentary authority 

 under which the works were executed, it is a 

 fact that the law-costs, including the suits, juries, 

 &c., scarcely exceeded £1,000 for the whole of 

 the 122 drainages. Our own Inclosure Commission 

 gives us a similar example. The general Acts under 

 which it operates cost the district nothing at all ; and 

 the expense of preliminary proceedings is under £20 for 

 each district. Government underdrainage, again, costs 

 £5 per acre; yet the administration of the Drainage 

 Commission amounts to only two shillings per acre. 

 Now turn to the system of local and private Acts. 

 What is the gross amount of money wasted in carrying 

 Acts for all the fen-drainage and estuary works cannot 

 be ascertained ; but the sum would no doubt appear 

 fabulous, and large indeed, in comparison with the cash 

 actually expended in constructing the improvements. 

 The first Act for making the Eau Brink Cut, on the 

 Ouse, above Lynn, cost £12,000 to the promoters 

 alone, while the bill only proposed to lay out £40,000 

 in the work. The Nene Valley Drainage was to cost 

 £275,000 ; yet, as Mr. Bailey Denton said in this 

 paper last month, the Acts of Parliament have cost over 

 £30,000 — or not far short of £2 per acre — for law-costs 

 alone. And he tells us, again, that the Norfolk Estuary 

 Acts cost more than £40,000; while Messrs. Peto and 

 Betts' contract for the works was but £142,000. 



Yet the question of a general Act has been before us 

 for years ; and reformers have been agitating and urging 

 an immovable public — which soon sinks again into stolid 

 quiescence — until they are sick with labouring for a 

 cause that every man slights. It is ever so : John Bull 

 will always begin a reasonable system in public affairs 

 about a century after it has been proved to be advis- 

 able ; he will always let recklessness and stupidity 

 filch and squander his abundance — because he is too 

 stout and good-humoured to interfere. 



Nobody wants to compel the drying of meadows 

 which now yield good hay. If it is a fact that they are 

 more valuable in their present aquatic condition than if 

 well drained and ploughed, the district in which they lie 

 must surely know this, and can reject any scheme for 

 the purpose, Nobody wants to deprive a mill of power, 

 or cut off the supply of water to a factory, or subvert 

 a navigation, if no balance of advantages would be 

 gained by such a course. The drainage district must 

 alone be its own judge of its necessities. Only we, the 

 drainers, are determined that their case shall be intro- 

 duced to their own notice, and remedial measures be 

 submitted to their judgment — this we shall accomplish 

 by a general Act. And it is very clear that general 

 rules for regulating compensations, compositions, pur- 

 chases, &c., could be easily framed ; because our rivers 



