THE WATER SUPPLY OF LONDON.
THE Daily News arraigns, in strong terms, the conduct of Government on this question. We have discussed at large the merits of the question on former occasions : at present we confine ourselves to the allegations of undue and vexatious delay advanced against Government and its Board of Health.
London derives, and from the days of Sir Hugh Middleton has derived, its supply of water from private companies incorporated by act of Parliament. Improvements have been made in the system from time to time, as occasion offered, by the application of existing companies for enlarged powers, or of new companies for acts of incorporation. Of late, however, the knot of sanatory reformers associated under Government auspices, first as a Health of Towns Commission and afterwards as a Board of Health, have recommended the substitution of a Government board for the agency of private companies in supplying the Metropolis with water.
Ever since this view was adopted and promulgated by these gentlemen, they have offered a strenuous opposition to all bills for extending the powers of the existing Water Companies in London or for creating new ones. This opposition has been extended tO
• similar applications from large provincial towns—as, for example, Bristol. But last session a more decided step was taken. A report was made bythe Board of Health recommending, inter aim, that the interests of all the London Water Companies should be bought up, and the introduction and distribution of water to the Metropolis intrusted to a Government board. A. public warning was subsequently given by the Home Secretary to all existing or projected enter oompanies, that Goternm.ent wtael not allow any of their private bills to pass until it had made up its mind on the proposals of the Board of Health.
Having thus interfered to obstruct all improvements of the established system of water-supply, Government was bound in common fairness to take measures immediately, either to substitute the new system of management recommended by the Board of Health, or to allow the established system to resume its activity. Government, however, did nothing from the middle of last session,.till the end of last week, when an entirely new Commission, to inquire into the averments of the Board of Health, was annoimard.
London asks in vain for any improvement in the _quantity Or
quality of its water-supply, because Geeerrunent, which either cannot or will not take any steps to that end, will not allow any
other persons to do so. any after year new commiesions of inquiry are appointed, in order that inaction may be excused under the pretext that information is waited for. -The London public is to be kept on a short allowance of indifferent water, because the Government water-cart stops the way.
The operation of Government Commissions, paid or unpaid, in
matters of this kind, is extremely questionable. Parliamentary Committees are not the most reliable tribunals, but in them at least all parties having private or representing public interests have opportunities of watehing the progress of the inquiry and obtaining the cross-examination of -witnesses. But the proceedings of Government Commissions are seeret ; their members set to work under the influence, of preconceived theories ; they in general examine only such witnesses, and put only such questions to them, as serve to strengthen themselves in the views they have already adopted. Even when they are disposed to conduct their investigations less under the influence of their own prepossessions, they not untenently find their handstied by the nature of their
instructions: The Daily News tells an illustrative anecdote
" The competency ca' the gentlemen who form the new Commission to inquire into the qualities of water' is unquestionable. They ate able and trustworthy analysts. But the public ought to insist upon knowing what i
-range of inquiry s prescribed to them. Profes i
sor Graham n particular has a trick of confining himself literally to the question that may be asked of him, without taking any precaution to guard against deceptive inferences thatmay be drawn from his answer. In 1841 the Board of Health transmitted to him for -analysis certain bottles of the water proposed to be supplied by the Manchester Corporation Works. Professor Graham analyzed the water, and reported the results skilfully and faithfully. But there was a circumstance connected with the specimens. to which be did not call attention, and which relit dered the results of his examination utterly worthless as a test of the fitness of the water for a town supply. The apemmena were collected in the month of February, _during a hard frost, anii when the ground was Coveredv4L31 snow. The quantity of organic matter in them was at its minimum scarcely • apparent. 'Water taken from the same sources at,Ididsummer of-ergamic matter, and the presence of organio matter it is that mainly °minibutes to tender water unwholesome. Professor Graham never once hinted that it would be neeesKiry to examine the character of water taken from those saunas in summer as well as. in winter before its fitness for town s ply and domestic uses could be ascertained. The consequence was, that water analyzed by him was pronounced unexceptionable, although in point of fact it is duringthe summer months execrably bad."
The article from which we quote -touches upon some other curi ous characteristic traits of these Government Commissions. One of the most exceptionable of them is their habit of what is called "working the press." A great object with the publishers of the more respectable class of cheap periodicals is to obtain new and excludiVe information. It has been a practice with reeent Government Commissions (from that on the Poor-law downwards) to allow their retainers to furnish sueh publications with papers containing information collected by them at the publie expense, before it has been communicated to the public generally, sometimes even before ithasbeen reported to Government. By this means, publications that are established favourites are made the means of giving currency to crude or erroneous notions, of which it is often found extremely diffil. cult to disabuse the public ; and this without the Commission incurring any respousibility. The Daily News instances a report by Mr. Riunraell on the Farnham gathering-grounds, which has not yet reeeived the sanction of the Board, and has nevertheless been cornasonicated to a writer in Chambers's Papers for the People. It might have been added that an article in a late number of the Quarterly Review on Metropolitan Water Supply: bears strong marks of access to the yet unpublished inquiries of the Board of Health. The writer in the Daily News hints that these confidences may be meant to enable the retainers of the Commission to remunerate themselves for their services by advantageous bargains with publishers. There is certainly' something very suspicious about the taeties of the Board of Health ; an effort to prepossess the public by fragmentary and unacknowledged publication of doubtful results, and to compel the adoption of its projects by preventing any other parties from acting.
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