FUTURE SALMON LEGISLATION. 209 



When a river, near its mouth, runs through a great town, 

 as most rivers do, all the polluting and noxious matter, 

 liquid and solid, sent out from the dwelling-houses and 

 manufactories of the country above, comes past the doors 

 of tens or hundreds of thousands of people, who probably 

 are successfully labouring to protect themselves from 

 themselves, but find it difficult or impossible, as it is cer- 

 tainly very hard, to protect themselves from their neigh- 

 bours. In at least one view, there is even a greater 

 injustice in this case than in the other ; a populous in- 

 land town may be said to have more natural right to 

 send its nuisances through thinly populated rural dis- 

 tricts, than thinly populated rural districts have to take 

 the same improper liberty with a great sea-coast town. 

 In illustration of this, as of the other form of the evil, 

 take an actual instance. The great towns of Edinburgh 

 and Leith, having the same small river running through 

 both, lately agreed upon costly measures to keep the 

 open water-course free from the town sewage. It was 

 found, however, that, owing to the presence of villages 

 and manufactories farther up the stream, the water 

 came into the precincts of the city in an impure and 

 noisome condition. Consequently, or naturally, it was 

 proposed that the few people above, or at least the 

 manufacturers, should take measures to the same end 

 as the many people below ; that, when 200,000 people 

 were subjecting themselves to trouble and taxation to 

 rescue a river from the condition of a nuisance caused 

 by the multifarious occupations of two large towns, 

 those efforts and sacrifices should not be neutralized by 

 the neglect of a dozen or two of people beyond the 

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