370 On Drainage and Sewerage of Towns. 
Though the mode in which the proprietor of land and 
houses may choose to drain them is, in justice and reason, 
left to himself, yet the community is too deeply interested 
in the question to allow of such an exercise of individual 
privilege as might lead a man to refuse to drain altogether 5 
for by so doing he is practically injuring others, and the 
Legislature may justly interfere, and say that the rights of 
individuals must succumb when they interfere with the 
public good. 
Legislative action will then be required to compel indi- 
viduals to carry off, through the sewers, the refuse which, if 
left to accumulate and decay on their properties, might prove 
not only a nuisance, but a serious evil ; and the same enact- 
ment would prescribe certain limits both to the rights of 
individuals to resist, and the rights of the corporate body to 
enforce, certain specific modes of action. 
A more difficult question, however, is, that of the mode of 
providing the funds which would be required to carry out a 
comprehensive system of drainage; and with a few words 
upon this subject, I shall conclude a paper which I feel at 
once to be too long and too short,—too long as a mere 
sketch or outline, but far too brief if considered as an Essay 
on Drainage. 
There are three parties interested in the subject of the 
drainage of large towns :— 
Ist. The individual owners of property in the town. 
2nd. The whole body of inhabitants resident in the town. 
8rd. The community generally. 
Among these three parties must be distributed in certain 
proportions the cost of carrying out the whole of the works 
which will be required for an effective system of drainage. 
But it would be obviously unjust to charge upon the 
present generation the whole cost of an undertaking of such 
