38 
Trunk Drainage. 
banked from the river. Tlie commissioners are still engaged in 
maintaining in the rivers and navigable lodes above these cuts a 
depth corresponding to tliat of the cuts, the total sum expended 
at present being about 70,000/. We ought to state that a still 
larger amount has been also spent in erecting steam-engines in 
the Soutli Level, there being at present no less than twenty-three 
engines, of a collective power of 1050 horses, erected for about 
90,000/., and working at an annual expense of 5000/. in coals 
alone. 
The Middle Level, of 140,000 acres, is divided into districts 
for internal drainage, under the charge of commissioners ap- 
pointed by various acts of Parliament, though some portions are 
similarly drained by proprietors without acts of Parliament, and 
are distinguished as Private drainages. The external drainage 
— that is, the maintenance of the rivers and watercourses — has 
been provided for principally by the Bedford Level Corporation ; 
partly by the Commissioners of the Navigation, under an act of 
the 27th of George IL, who were authorised to apply the funds 
in deepening and improving some of the rivers in this Level ; 
and partly by the Commissioners of Drainage appointed by an 
act of the 50th of George IIL Under this act the Middle Level 
rivers and chief sewers, amounting to no less than twenty-four in 
number, which had raised their own beds, by suUage and weeds, 
to the level of the lands they passed through, received aconij)lete 
deepening and enlarging, so as to adapt them to the additional 
fall furnished by the Eau-Brink Cut ; the needful funds, or 
70,000/., being raised by a shilling-tax per acre on certain of the 
lands. This tax ceased after a time, and then a tax of three-pence 
per acre was imposed for keeping up the works. Upon the 
credit of the sum raised by this latter tax, viz., 1200/., the com- 
missioners had power to borrow the sum of 3000/. — a common 
method for raising capital in drainage enterprises. Successful 
as were the results of these scourings, the inner portions of the 
Level began, after a time, to complain. Tn the year 1841 the 
damage sustained in the Middle Level by loss of crops, &c., from 
floods exceeded 150,000/. Several plans were brought under 
discussion ; two of the Bedford Level superintendents were em- 
ployed to devise one; and in 1842 the proj)rietors called in the 
assistance of Mr. Walker, whose plan was rejected at a public 
meeting held to hear his report, but who subsequently became 
engineer for a sort of composition scheme. A committee was 
appointed to introduce it into Parliament in 1844, and, in spite 
of the opposition of the Bedford Level Corporation, it was passed 
into law, giving the promoters power to raise 200,000/. by an ave- 
rage tax of Is. ^d. Under tliis act a cut of 11 miles in length, and 
more than 50 feet wide, with a capacious outfall sluice, was con- 
