SECRETARY'S REPORT. 243 



The subject of the flowage of low lands having been intro- 

 duced, it was referred to a committee of three, consisting of 

 Messrs. Davis, Grennell and Sewall, who, having fully consid- 

 ered it, submitted the following 



REPORT: 



Your Committee respectfully report, that they have entered 

 upon the consideration of the subject submitted to them with 

 a sincere desire to do full justice to the rights of the manu- 

 facturing and agricultural interests of the Commonwealth. 

 There is no doubt that much valuable land is flowed in this 

 Commonwealth by dams erected for manufacturing purposes. 

 The original object of the laws now known as the Mill Acts, 

 "was to encourage grist and saw mills in a new country, where 

 land was of little value, and it was of paramount importance 

 to the agriculturist himself that the woods should be cleared, 

 lumber sawed, and his grain and corn ground at a neighboring 

 mill. The erection of mills has been encouraged from the 

 earliest times in England, in order that the inhabitants of 

 different sections might have free access to some mill for 

 grinding their corn. For this purpose lords of manors erected 

 mills on their domains for the public advantage, on the con- 

 dition that the inhabitants within their respective seignories 

 should grind their corn at the respective mills so erected, and 

 the commerce thus initiated was called " doing grist " to the 

 mill. 



The old statutes of Massachusetts speak of mills as greatly 

 beneficial to the subject, and the preamble of the provincial 

 statute of the twelfth year of Queen Anne, chap. 1, recites 

 that mills sometimes fall into despair, and are rendered useless 

 and unserviceable, if not totally demolished, io the hurt and 

 detriment of the public, as well as the loss to the partners who 

 are ready to rebuild. The eighth chapter speaks of " mills 

 serviceable to the public good and the benefit of the town." 

 These statutes took away the right which the land owner before 

 possessed of removing from his land a nuisance, and another 

 provincial statute of George II., gave treble damages for the tres- 

 pass of taking up or injuring any dam used for a mill. In 

 1795 the provincial Acts were revised, and it was provided that 



