and the Storage of Water. 
5 
cannot use it to the detriment of his neighbours, nor can he be 
molested in his right with impunity. Thus, a miller cannot 
lavvl'ullj take too much water from the original channel, or pen 
up and throw back too great a quantity upon the machinery of 
another mill. The right to use water from a stream may be 
acquired by grant or custom.* The right of a proprietor to 
water only extends to that flowing on the surface. Water per- 
colating under ground is not the subject of any prescriptive right, 
but, like the air above, is free to all. Any owner of land may 
sink a well and take as much as he likes from beneath his own 
land, notwithstanding that by so doing he dries up his neigh- 
bour's wells or mill-streams. (Chasemore v. Richards, House of 
Lords, 1859.) 
The duty of keeping a stream or water-course in order and 
maintaining the embankments, where they exist, is with the 
riparian proprietor, under the common law of the land. The 
remedy of the owner who is damaged by his neighbour's neglect 
is to bring an action, and, provided he can prove a prescriptive 
liability of the person permitting damage to cleanse or maintain 
the stream and banks, he can get damages. It has, however, 
been lately settled in the case of Hudson v. Tabor, that a riparian 
proprietor is not primarily liable to maintain the embankments 
on his own land, notwithstanding that the result of his neglect 
may be to flood the land of his neighbours. 
Courts of Sewers. — The evil arising from the Avant of combined 
control over rivers, water-courses, and embankments, has been 
felt from very early times. The first attempt at legislative inter- 
ference was by the issue, as far back as the reign of Richard II., 
of royal commissions appointed by the Crown to inquire into 
any exceptional case of flooding and damage, with power to 
order such works to be done as they deemed necessary. " These 
commissions being granted when the sea-walls were broken, or 
when the sewers and gutters were, in need of repair, so that the 
Iresh waters could have their courses ; and that the commissions 
in question issued because the King was bound of right so to 
keep his kingdom against the sea as that it were not drowned 
or wasted, and also to provide that his subjects should pass 
through the kingdom with safety." — (Woolrych, 'Law of 
Sewers.') In Henry VIII.'s reign the Commissions, which up 
to that time had only been issued as occasion required, were 
permanently established, and the Act 23 Hen. VIII. cap. 5, 
although amended in VVilliam IV.'s and in the present reign 
(3 & 4 Will. IV. cap. 22 ; 4 & 5 Vict. cap. 45 ; 12 & 13 Vict, 
cap. 50), still continues the chief structure on which the powers 
* ' Law of Waters and Sewers.' By Woolrycli. 
