CALCAREOUS MANURKS— APPENDIX. £99 



with our country believe that hundreds of mills have been built, and that 

 most of them are still kept up, and many more new ones will probably yet 

 be added to the number, which cannot yield any clear profit, above the en- 

 tire cost, to the owners, independent of cost in property to the neighbors, 

 and the cost (whatever that may be) of health and life to the country at 

 large. Still the fact is notorious throughout lower Virginia, if it does not 

 extend through the higher middle country. The only reason that I can con- 

 ceive for so many unprofitable investments of this kind is, that many resi- 

 dents of the country build mills as many others raise race horses, more for 

 amusement and excitement and to vary the monotony of their lives, than 

 for profit. But this propensity of individuals could not have done much 

 mischief to the country at large, but for the encouragement oflTered by the 

 government. According to the law, and the long-established usage under 

 the law, any man who desires to erect a mill, and for which it is necessary to 

 pond the water on some of his neighbors' land, has nothing to do but to ap- 

 ply for an order of the county-court, by which the sheriff summons a jury 

 to meet on the spot, to judge of and assess the damages that will be sus- 

 tained by the owners of the lands designed to be covered by the pond. The 

 jury is generally composed principally of men as ignorant and unfit for such 

 investigations and estimates as the neighborhood can furnish — and they de- 

 cide by guess as to how much land will be covered, and what damage will 

 be sustained in the loss of the use of the land. There is no question enter- 

 tained as to whether a mill is at all required by the demand of the neighbors 

 for meal ; and if the question of the effect on health is even named, it is ad- 

 dressed to a body entirely unacquainted with, and regardless of the whole 

 subject. In fact the question as to health has rarely been considered in any 

 such cases — and never duly considered. If the land that will be covered by 

 a pond, though very rich, is then in the state of swamp, and totally unpro- 

 ductive, such an uninformed jury as the case is usually submitted to will be 

 very ready to decide that such land is worth nothing; and if $3 an acre is 

 given as damages for the land actually to be covered by the pond, it will 

 be deemed a liberal allowance. The court will rarely refuse to sustain the 

 verdict of the jury. 



Though the use of the land thus covered is for ever taken from the 

 owner, or, for as long as the mill-owner may choose to keep up his pond, 

 still the right of property is not changed. This small reservation of right, 

 or feeble homage to justice, serves as a still further injury to the community, 

 and is not of the least value to those to whom the right is reserved. It 

 would be far belter for all parties, if, when land was thus condemned to be co- 

 vered by a mill-pond, that the damages assessed, however low and contempti- 

 ble compared to the damages actually sustained, should have been deemed 

 the purchase-money of the land, and the absolute right of property vested in 

 the mill-owner. If this were the case now, there are many mill-ponds in 

 Virginia which would be forthwith laid dry, even though the mills should 

 necessarily go down ; because the land covered by the ponds is now known 

 to be worth more for cultivation than the mill is for toll. Hundreds of 

 other mills, of greater profit and value, also, in that case, would be better 

 supplied with water by canals than by their present ponds, by which their 

 value as mills would be increased, to the owners and to the public, and 

 the nuisances of the ponds be equally abated. But, as the law now stands, 

 if a mill, which will not bring in of net rent $50 a year, covers by its pond 

 500 acres of rich land belonging to other persons, the mill-owner has no 

 interest whatever in draining the pond, because its drained bottom would 

 belong to those persons. In any case approaching to this, and in which 

 there would be a gain to all the individuals concerned, by draining the 



