CALCAREOUS MANURES-APPENDIX. 307 



preventing them, by dikes, from overflowing tlie salt-marshes, though a kind 

 of work requiring public money as well as legal authority, still may be 

 hoped for, when the necessity of the measure shall have been made evident. 



But there is no such prospect of success as to the most important reform 

 needed, in the putting down of all fever-breeding mill-ponds; and he who 

 will venture to advocate this general measure will be regarded, by most of 

 those whom he aims to serve, as more an enemy than a friend to their inte- 

 rests, and more deserving to be treated as a lunatic, than to be respected as 

 a judicious advocate for valuable public improvements. It is not in the vain 

 hope of now enforcing my views by extended argument, but to offer expla- 

 nations, and thereby prevent misconstrucfion, on some particular points, 

 that some further remarks will now be oifered. 



Even if the public mind had been prepared for a full legal reforr.;iation of 

 the policy of mill-ponds, and for the laying dry all such as are nuisances to 

 health, there would be no accompanying necessity for injuring the private 

 interests of mill-owners, nor of causing material loss or inconvenience to 

 the customers of the mills. In the first place, in justice to the vested rights 

 of the millers, (however unjust to others, and injurious to the public may 

 have been the original creation of their rights,) I would advocate full com- 

 pensation being made for every sacrifice of value in their ponds, which 

 should be required and compelled for the general benefit. But not more 

 than full compensation for all value thus destroyed should be granted ; and 

 many of the fever-breeding ponds are really of no pecuniary value to their 

 owners or to the public ; and most others may, to greater advantage, be 

 supplied with water by canals, instead of by ponds. Even if one-third of 

 all the mills should be thus put down entirely, these would be such as now 

 always fail in dry seasons; and the more permanent and regular supplies of 

 water, which all the remaining mills would receive from the canals substi- 

 tuted for ponds, would render them able to furnish the whole country with 

 meal, with regularity, certainty, and in abundance, and therefore more suit- 

 ably and conveniently to the consumers, than all the mills, good and bad, 

 now in operation. By an important innovation in the law in regard to 

 mills, (enacted March 2d, 1826,) every owner of a m.iil is authorized to cut 

 a canal through the lands of other persons, if required by the nature of the 

 locality, so as to substitute the pond by a canal. Before this amendment of 

 the old law, no mill-owner could effect any such improvement, iinless in the 

 rare case of his own land extending under the whole course of the desired 

 canal. The privileges offered by this new provision have already been 

 availed of in many cases, in Charlotte and the neighboring counties, and to 

 great advantage in regard to health as well as to increased power to the 

 mills, and with great value gained in the rich drained bottoms of the ponds 

 being put under cultivation. Slowly as such lessons are usually learned, and 

 slowly as new agricultural improvements are brought into extended use, 

 this highly beneficial and profitable improvement cannot fail to be adopted 

 generally in the course of time.* The main obstacle to the early and gene- 

 ral substitution of canals for ponds, wherever the change is practicable, is the 

 absurd legal distribution of rights in the mill-ponds and the land which they 

 cover, as stated on a preceding page ; one person being vested with the 

 perpetual right to keep the land overflowed and worthless, while others 

 have the right of property in that land, to be exercised only in the never- 

 expected event of the owner of the pond drawing it off and draining the 

 rich bottom, and that for the gain of others more than himself. Now I 



• See facts and statements on this subject at p. 231, vol. v., Farmers' Register, pp. 1 

 to 3. ; p. 579, vol. ii. ; p. 374, vol, iv. 



