68 



if a miller or a dyer, or fuller, or any other manufacturer 

 were charged with the offence of polluting the stream to the 

 prejudice of his unfortunate neighbours, the answer always 

 was that they enjoyed the special privilege for twenty years, 

 and therefore had a prescriptive right to foul the river and 

 could not be interfered with. He recollected a celebrated 

 man, who afterwards became a member of Parliament for a 

 Borough in Yorkshire, who was charged by the Royal 

 Commissioners twenty -five years ago with contributing 

 more largely than anyone else to the pollution of the 

 stream which flowed through the town of which he was a 

 distinguished member. He said he was quite willing to 

 do everything he could to put a stop to the pollution, but 

 he and his firm had enjoyed the privilege for sixty 

 years, and he was not going to give way. When men 

 argued in that way the great want was more healthy 

 public opinion in order to get over that which was the 

 most deadening and difficult of all obstacles, namely, apathy 

 combined with ignorance. These prescriptive rights which 

 were ' exercised all over the country, and especially on the 

 Irwell, brought about pestilence which was commonly con- 

 sidered an evil ; but, in his opinion, pestilence, which came 

 down from Heaven at various times, had been the greatest 

 Divine benefit which could ever have been conferred on the 

 people. The cholera did more good to England than any- 

 thing which ever happened, for they all knew that it was after 

 the cholera outbreak in 1847 and 1848 that there were passed 

 in this country the first measures for the public health, 

 which had gone on steadily improving and increasing since. 

 The prescriptive pollution had risen to such a pitch that no 

 water could be had for any purpose whatever, and then 

 what was called the Rivers Pollution Act, 1866, was passed, 

 and effectually put a stop to all the nuisance about prescrip- 



