i88i.j Offensive Manufactures . 135 
ago. The greatly improved means of communication have 
to some extent levelled the cost of fuel over many parts of 
the kingdom, and have rendered it possible to establish 
manufactures and to introduce nuisances where it would 
once have been simply impracticable. If caprice should 
induce anyone to erect alkali-works in the Isle of Wight, or 
on the banks of Derwentwater, there is nothing to prevent 
him, and the laws concerning nuisances — gaseous, liquid, or 
solid — would not press more severely upon him than at 
St. Helens or Widnes. There is no authority to say to him 
“ So long as there is abundance of available land where 
there is nothing to spoil, you shall not come to any place 
characterised by its beauty or its fertility or, returning to 
the illustration we used above, to bid him put his refuse in 
the dust-bin, and not in the drawing-room. 
The honour of first distinctly enunciating the principle 
that sanitary laws must be modified according to the existing 
character of the district belongs unquestionably to Mr. W. 
Crookes, F.R.S. When giving evidence on the Rivers’ 
Pollution question, before a Committee of the House of 
Lords, he opposed the notion of a uniform standard of purity 
for drainage flowing into a river, and contended that the 
river itself should furnish the standard, nothing worse than 
itself being allowed to enter. This proposal would render it 
absolutely impracticable to establish manufactures, e.g., in 
the Lake District, or along the clear streams of Wales and 
the North of Scotland, whilst in South Lancashire and 
certain parts of the West Riding it would allow, for the 
time being, very considerable latitude. What I have to 
propose is merely an extended application of the same prin- 
ciple. Let England be divided into two classes of land, A 
and B. In A let manufacturers, if existing at all, be placed 
under the most stringent regulations as regards the pollution 
of the air or the water, or the piling up solid refuse of any 
kind. Thus the emission of any recognisable amount of 
hydrochloric acid gas, or of above a certain quantity of sul- 
phurous acid, whether produced by the combustion of coal 
or otherwise, would be prohibited. The emission of dye, 
tan, or bleach liquids, &c., of spent dye woods or pulverulent 
refuse of any kind, riddlings or siftings of coal or other 
minerals, would have to cease. In districts B, on the con- 
trary, rivers — provided they passed into the sea without 
flowing through any A district — might legally receive any 
industrial refuse, provided it neither gave off emanations 
injurious to human health, or choked up the bed of the 
stream and tended to cause floods. Smoke consumption 
