6; 



or the one to which Mr. Milne Home referred, it would 

 be quite easy to discuss the point whether fish could 

 live in them some were black, some were red, and 

 some were blue, and he believed some were green; it 

 entirely depended on the particular dye which happened to 

 be in vogue at the time, and the emphatic answer which was 

 once given to him by an old woman was conclusive whether 

 the pollution was injurious or not. He asked her whether 

 she could use the water in the river for the ordinary pur- 

 poses of washing, and she said she only used it when she 

 wanted to dye her clothes. In that sense no doubt the 

 rivers were valuable, but they were not intended for any 

 such purpose. What was wanted in order to cope with 

 this great evil was the support of public opinion ; they had 

 plenty of legislation, and the resolution emphatically ex- 

 pressed the invariable opinion of all scientific men who had 

 brought their minds to bear on this subject during the last 

 30 years. There was already an Act which rendered the 

 contamination of rivers penal, but some independent 

 authority was required, not the criminal himself, as was too 

 often the case, to enforce the Act which already existed, and 

 at the back of that a thoroughly earnest Government deter- 

 mined to enforce the law. The difficulty was just this, the 

 reverend gentleman asked whether there was any right to 

 pollute rivers. Up to the year 1876 there was such a right. 

 He had told them that in certain districts in the neighbour- 

 hood of London not only had they a right, but they were 

 actually compelled to pollute them. It was considered the 

 rivers were given by God for the express purpose of carrying 

 away down to the sea the filth and refuse of the human race, 

 where it could be swallowed up and annihilated. In certain 

 rivers in England the manufacturing population had for 

 centuries claimed the exclusive right to pollute the rivers, and 



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