1920.] 



Land Drainage. 



765 



other vital principles of general application were discussed and 

 upheld by the Parliamentary Committees. The two most 

 important are the following : — 



(1) No Taxation without Benefit. — The general law does not 

 permit of the rating, for the maintenance of a river, of the whole 

 of the high lands within the watershed. Only such lands as may 

 suffer from the bad condition of some part of the river can be 

 taxed. Whether any alteration of this law is desirable or not, 

 both Committees held strongly that the establishment of Drain- 

 age Authorities is a matter which should not be delayed upon 

 any pretext. 



(2) No Benefit without Taxation. — Wherever land is benefited 

 by drainage works, it is proper that it should contribute to the 

 carriage, right down to the sea, of the water from which it is 

 freed by those works. This principle was discussed at very great 

 length before both ParHamentary Committees, and was 

 emphatically endorsed by them. The Committees also upheld 

 the contention that the benefit derived from the maintenance ot 

 main channels is not confined to *' land liable to flooding." 



Of the principles, which are embodied in the Ouse Act and 

 which were not disputed before Parliament, the most important 

 are (1) that there should be no qualification for voting at Drain- 

 age Board elections except the owning or occupying of lands in 

 the district and the payment of all rates due ; (2) that member- 

 ship of the Drainage Board should be open to all owners of not 

 less than 10 acres and to all occupiers of not less than 20 acres 

 v^ithin the district; and (3) that the Drainage Board and the 

 County Councils should be kept in close touch with one 

 another, by a small proportion of members of the Drainage 

 Board nominated by the County Councils. 



It is essential for the welfare of agriculture that in setting 

 up Drainage Authorities the river should be regarded as the 

 unit of administration, regardless of the fact that it may flow 

 through a number of counties. In many cases a river is itself 

 the boundary between counties, or is crossed and recrossed by 

 the county boundary in many places. In all such cases it is 

 obvious that the county boundary must be disregarded, and 

 the problem must be viewed as if counties, as such, did not 

 exist. Indeed, there is only one case in England — the York- 

 shire Ouse — of a great river being in one county only, and 

 even there, owing to the administrative division of the county 

 into Eidings, false issues are raised and differences of a non- 

 essential nature appear at first sight as serious difficulties. 



