1885.] 
The New Rivers' Pollution Bill. 
85 
estimate, to the modest sum of from £750 to £1000 per acre. 
Every one knows that such estimates fall far short of the 
adtual cost of engineering schemes when reduced to practice. 
But let us take a town with a population of 300,000 persons 
— say Leeds. At 1500 persons per acre, we require then 
200 acres of land, to be prepared at a first cost of £200,000 ! 
Nor is this all : Professor Robinson is of opinion that the 
larger particles in the sewage should first be removed by a 
process of ascending filtration and dug into low-lying land. 
Thus even if we assume that the acres stated will go on 
for ever purifying an unlimited quantity of sewage we must 
see that a very considerable annual extent will be incurred. 
Nor must it be forgotten that the plots of land thus “ pre- 
pared ” will be thereby converted into deserts, which neither 
art nor nature will be able to reclaim. 
But I must hasten on to my main subject — the New 
Rivers’ Pollution Bill. It may doubtless seem strange that 
the Adt of 1876 should be repealed before it has had a fair 
trial and a new measure introduced in its stead. The old 
Adt has not been successful, because the authorities have 
been remiss in putting its provisions into execution. Is 
there any reason to suppose that the enadtment of a fresh 
law even every year would render them more zealous ? 
The new Bill has for its godfathers or godmothers Earl 
Percy, Colonel Walrond, and Mr. Hastings. Who are its 
parents is, of course, a secret, if an open one. Perhaps its 
appearance furnishes the key to the mystery why Ur. P. 
Frankland, last April, had the hardihood to disinter the 
peculiar views of the late Royal Rivers’ Pollution Commis- 
sion. It may easily be guessed who, and who only, must 
have felt uneasy at the omission of a certain notorious set 
of “ Recommendations” from the Adt of 1876. 
To tell the truth, however, that Adt is characterised by 
two grave omissions. It did not at all attempt to codify the 
law on the pollution of rivers. It was what lawyers, I 
believe, style a “ cumulative ” measure, that is, a law which 
provides new penalties and new procedures for certain omis- 
sions and commissions, but leaves all old statutes, laws, or 
customs bearing upon the particular subjedt still valid. A 
riparian proprietor who knows or fancies that a manufacturer 
or a municipal authority is polluting a river has still a choice 
of procedures. He may take adtion under the statute of 
1876, or he may, I suppose, apply to the Chancery Division 
of the High Court of Justice for an injunction. 
Now this power of option may be very convenient to a 
litigious person ; or it may suit the purposes of certain 
