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comprehensive and effective system of sewerage ! ' A few years ago,' 

 says the Macclesfield Reporter, * statements such as these were 

 received with little favour, indeed, many people affected to ridicule 

 them. Now, however, such vital statistics have assumed an authority 

 which prevents even the most ignorant from questioning their real 

 value.' The President of the Social Science Association in his 

 opening address at the meeting in Bradford in 1850 said : — ' The 

 benefits of improvements of dwellings, streets, courts, alleys, — of 

 drainage, ventilation, supply of good water, removal of nuisances, 

 piggeries, lay-stalls, bone-boiling, poisonous manufactures, with the 

 whole array of noxious agencies, are now almost universally admitted. 

 Yet many pause at the preliminary expense. It will therefore be 

 a part of our inquiries to examine the pecuniary bearings of the 

 whole subject, and show that a financial outlay on works such as 

 these will be amply compensated by a financial return, in good 

 measure, pressed down and running over." 



In Tasmania, nature has furnished us with the most noble 

 water-fields. The whole island is intersected with the finest 

 water-breeders. The Southern Range,with its Mount Welling- 

 ton, has a grand and terminating bluff; then the Western 

 Tiers, the Eastern Tiers, and the mountain ranges to the N.E., 

 offering their priceless service to the Bingarooma district on 

 the one side, and the great and rich agricultural plains on the 

 N.W. on the other. Look at our own Mount Wellington, that 

 grand old warder of our city. There is a rainfall and snow- 

 fall stored there sufficient to supply the wants of a population 

 indefinitely multiplied. There need be no stint of water if 

 there were no stint of expenditure -which would amply repay 

 itself. No drain need be foul, no cistern need be empty, 

 though, if I had my w^ay, these cisterns, which are apt to 

 become putrid, should be superseded by a supply of never fail- 

 ing Walter, under high pressure, supplied by co(jks, that waste 

 would be prevented or punished by a domestic flood. No one 

 need be kept from healthy bathing, daily repeated. To public 

 baths public wash-houses should be added, as in old Eome,and 

 children saved from rheumatism, bred in the steam of soap- 

 suds, from which men and boys make their happy escape on 

 W'ashing days in the nearest public house, and learn to clrink. 

 I pass over the fact too, that drunkenness comes as often from 

 dirt as dirt from drunkenness. Each is its own parent. We 

 talk now of enlarging our reservoirs, and the experiences of 

 last summer, recorded in doctors' bills, and more sadly on 

 churchyard tombs, enforce the duty. I do not doubt, however, 

 what the old Romans w^oulcl have done in spite of their igno- 

 rance of hydrostatic laws. They would have spent the public 

 money upon excavating canals, and building aqueducts, which 

 might divert the ocean-bound stream, irrigating and fertilising 

 half-barren plains on its way to the centres of population. 

 Why, if not prepared to do this, why not, as it gushes forth 



