64 THE SALMON FISHERIES. 
If the policy be repudiated of casting on individuals the 
duty of removing, in the public interest, the nuisances 
which individuals have been allowed to create, then a 
competent public body should be armed with authority to 
deal with the question. Such a body should be formed 
for each watershed, or group of watersheds. It should 
have power to levy a rate on all property within its juris- 
diction ; to divert all existing pollutions of any kind, if the 
owners of the offending works did not undertake to do so at 
their own costs within a specified time (new pollutions 
being, of course, absolutely prohibited) ; to retain the right 
to deal with all waste substances thus thrown on its hands, 
however profitable they might eventually prove to be; to 
retain all profits arising therefrom ; to dispose of the right 
to deal with such refuse, and generally to do all works 
necessary to secure the purity of our streams. Such a 
body should act in unison, if not be identical, with Boards 
of Fishery Conservators, and should have power to levy a 
rate on all private fisheries that might be created or 
improved by its action. This, with the enhanced value of 
riverain property following upon the purification of the 
streams, the increasing prosperity of the public fisheries, 
and the consequent revenue in licence duties, would enable 
the burden of taxation to be shared by at least one interest, 
in proportion to the special advantages it would derive 
from the operations of the Board. The Board could not 
levy a rate on the improved health of the neighbourhood, 
but in the services it would render to sanitation the 
public generally would receive a return for the taxation 
imposed upon it. 
In the meantime the offending factories, the first cause of 
the levy of the new rate, and no inconsiderable gainers from 
the supply of pure water they would receive, might be 
