SEWERAGE OF COUNTRY TOWNS. 133 
health, of course. As I have often pointed out, universal experi- 
ence shows that pollution with excremental wastes of soil, subsoil 
and the waters held in the latter is a cause of the local prevalence 
or persistence of the more fatal zymotic diseases. It is also one 
of the most important causes of lowered vitality, in that indirect 
way giving opportunity to some acute and fatal diseases which 
either do not fall, or as yet are not recognised as falling, within 
the zymotic class. But the matters which would be collected and 
safely removed by pails are far from comprising the whole of the 
wastes which require removal in a careful, speedy, way on the 
same grounds. Much other organic matter capable of putrefac- 
tion and of causing injury to health is not excrementitious, and 
the pails would remove none of it. The pail-system would be but 
a partial improvement, therefore, and the need of sewerage to 
remove all wastes together would not really be much diminished 
by its adoption. Now, in seeking sewerage people are dominated 
by considerations of cost ; and consequent upon the very great 
expense of all schemes of which they have ever heard, the people 
of moderate towns generally balance their desire for it by the 
instant reflection that to them, with their small means, it is un- 
attainable. Something, however, they are able and willing to 
pay towards improvement ; and it isa fair subject for discussion, 
after ascertaining how much they are willing to pay—say for a 
pail service in place of cess-pits—whether the sum is not enough 
to provide them with more than they expect for it ; whether it 
be not enough, in point of fact, to provide the complete water- 
carriage sewerage, which all agree is the desideratum. 
It will be convenient, I think, to take the case I have referred 
to as a basis of discussion, but I can supply scarcely any other 
data than the sum of money likely to be available. You know we 
have here no Local Government Board as they have in England, 
within which, in one or other sense, the Board of Health should 
be ; so that I cannot furnish even a sketch of those conditions 
which so largely affect the cost of schemes of sewerage. All that 
I can say—and all, I believe, that it is absolutely necessary to 
