iS8 5 .| 
and the A B C Process Vindicated, 
475 
men are not shareholders or officials of the Native Guano 
ompany, and have, in short, no personal ends to serve. 
-Now let us suppose the question of a nuisance brought 
before a Court of Justice. Two individuals, having had 
comparatively scanty opportunities of observation, depose 
o ie existence of a nuisance. One hundred others, many 
o whom have had better opportunities of observing than 
tne two just mentioned, and opportunities extended over a 
much longer time, depose that there is no nuisance. We 
need not waste time by saying what, in such a case, the 
decision of the Court must be. 
Now we do not pronounce the ex-Commissioners guilty of 
fi 01 \ SC ir US and deliberate .falsehood. We can readily believe 
that ulteen years ago, in the infancy of the process, and 
under, the very unfavourable circumstances existing at 
Ceammgton, an odour might have now and then been de- 
tected which to the noses of strongly prejudiced persons 
might seem “nauseous.” 
But the public has good reason to complain that the ex- 
Commissioners and their friends, in the very face of the 
overwhelming opposing testimony, still continue to repeat 
these conclusions.” What is worse, these conclusions are 
rehearsed with a most Arcadian simplicity in the Second 
Report of the “ Royal Commission on Metropolitan Sewage 
Discharge ” (§ 161). We believe that if Prof. Frankland 
had, in his private capacity, made fifteen years ago a state- 
ment concerning the efficacy of any given process, and found 
that it was continually and completely contradicted by men 
of scientific standing equal to his own, he would feel in 
honour bound to ascertain whether the circumstances of the 
case were still the same as in the year 1870. Even if he 
did not retraCt or qualify his old conclusions, other persons 
would not repeat them with unquestioning faith. But it 
seems that a statement made officially, however baseless it 
may be subsequently found, cannot be withdrawn, and must 
still pass for truth in official circles. 
It is interesting here to notice that the recent Royal Com- 
mission on Metropolitan Sewage Discharge did not take a 
step to ascertain whether Prof. Frankland’s archaic conclu- 
sions are at all applicable in our day. A journey to Ayles- 
bury would have resolved these conclusions into nothing. 
But a forty miles’ journey to see whether these things really 
are so, is, we presume, too much trouble to face in the 
interests of truth. 
It is therefore fortunate that the publication of the Report 
of this Commission has indirectly served to bring out a 
2 K 2 
