518 JOURNAL OF THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION. 
— must be the measure of special censure in the latter. If we 
regard his connection with the measure as simply that of a member 
of Parliament in his ordinary duty of dealing with a batch of 
local bills, we are relieved of this difficulty. Bat his honour is 
saved at the expense of his influence. If he was powerful enough 
to push the Water Act through, he certainly should have been able 
to get a measure rejected which concerned his own interests more 
nearly than those of anyone else. The exterior evidence is quite 
as strong in favour of his promotion of the one bill as of the other ; 
and this on any ordinary reasoning should show the absurdity of 
either hypothesis. No public man of modern days who valued his 
reputation one iota would, however, in any case consent for one 
moment to occupy such a doubtful position as that which Drake 
occupied towards this proposal, and the only excuse is that these 
were times par excellence of monopolies and State interference. 
It is very unfortunate that we cannot trace the causes which led 
to the abandonment of this second bill. Just at this juncture one 
of the private diary sources used by d' Ewes failed, and he had to 
fall back wholly upon the original journal of the Commons. Six 
bills were brought up from the House of Commons to the House 
of Lords on the 2nd of April, of which the second was the Stone- 
house Water Act.* Four of the others are named among the 
MSS. of the House of Lords in the Third Eeport of the Historical 
Manuscripts Commission, but the name of the sixth is not given. 
According to the endorsement, March 20 would seem to have been 
the date at which the draft of the Mills Removal Act reached the 
Lords. But then how is this to be reconciled with the fact (which 
shows the importance attached to the measure) of the re-appoint- 
ment of a Special Committee by the Commons on the 26th of 
March, and its enlargement on the 29 th 1 There would seem to be 
some error in the dates (20 for 301), unless the Bill was withdrawn 
from the Lords and recommitted, in which case its final stage and 
disappearance may have been in the House of Commons after all. 
We can very well understand why the Attorney of the Duchy of 
Cornwall was added to the Committee, because Sutton Pool, which 
the water of the leat was intended to scour, was then as now parb 
of the Duchy property. 
To these facts, which are susceptible of sundry explanatory 
hypotheses, but not of any certain interpretation, I have only to 
* Op. cit. Lords Journals, p. 463. 
