W. Wkitaher — Water Supply from Wells. 113 



litigants spreading the grounds for such an action over a distance of 

 60 miles. Though to a lawyer this may seem an inconvenient 

 prospect, I think that sanitarians may be inclined to look on it with 

 no disfavour. 



The result of such a judgment amounts of course to saying that 

 no underground water-supply is safe from contamination, even if 

 wilfully brought about. Should your neighbour have a well with 

 a good supply, and you wish to spite him, or to spoil his business, 

 all that is needful would be to put down a bore to the source of 

 supply, and to pour some poison down it ! This mattei*, I believe, 

 was noticed by one of the Plaintiff's counsel. Perhaps, however, in 

 in such a case, or in one where sewage containing typhoid, or chole- 

 raic, evacuations was knowingly poured into a well, so as to foul 

 a neighbouring one, the offender might be convicted of manslaughter, 

 in a criminal case, though (under Mr. Justice Pearson's judgment) 

 he would get the best of a merely civil action ! This would certainly 

 be a somewhat anomalous state of things, even as regards English 

 law! 



So many towns, institutions, and manufactories now get their 

 water-supply by wells in the Chalk, and in other great water-bearing 

 beds, that the result of such a judgment passing unchallenged would 

 have been most serious. It would possibly indeed have been a great 

 check to enterprise in that direction, as water thus got, perhaps at 

 great expense, might at any time be made worse than that got from 

 streams which are more or less contaminated. 



The Plaintiff, however, was advised to take the case to the Court 

 of Appeal, and all folk interested in the getting of pure water should 

 thank the Master of the Polls, and the Lords Justices Cotton and 

 Lindley, for unanimously over-ruling the judgment of the Court 

 below, as they did in February, 1885. 



The Master of the Rolls holds that "although nobody has any 

 property in the common reservoir or source [of underground water], 

 yet everybody has a right to appropriate it in its natural state, and 

 no one of those who have a right to appropriate it has a right 

 to contaminate that natural source so as to prevent his neighbour 

 from having the full value of his right of appropriation ; " and he 

 goes on to say, in answer to an objection that the water is got by 

 artificial means (pumping), that "however he [the Plaintiff] may 

 appropriate the water from the common source, he has a right to 

 have that common source uncontaminated by any act of any other 

 person." With regard too, to the question of distance, his judgment 

 is equally satisfactory ; for he says that " the question does not 

 depend upon the parties being what is called contiguous neighbours. 

 If it can be shown in fact that the Defendant has .... fouled . . . 

 the common source, it signifies not how far the Plaintiff is from him." 



Lord Justice Cotton draws attention to the fact that the Defendant 

 was not using the water from his well, but only putting filth down 

 the well, which does not amount to using a natural right, and by so 

 doing, he " interferes with the exercise by the Plaintiff of a natural 

 right incident to the ownership of his own land." 



DECADE III. VOL. III. — NO. III. 8 



