Mr. Simon, medical officer of the Privy Council, has made
a very clever suggestion. Why, he says, should not Jones, poisoned by malfeasance of, say, the Windermere Water Company, have an action for damages against them, as he would have against the London and Windermere Railway Company ? Why, for example, should not an inhabitant of Terling, whose wife has been killed by drinking water which ought to have been condemned by an
official specially appointed to condemn it, have an action against that official ? or we may add, a man whose eyes are destroyed by bad gas have an action against his gas company ? The "sanitary rights of the public," says Mr. Simon, "are very ill protected." Mr. Simon will have to be put down. He is always putting revolutionary propositions of a philanthropic kind into practical form, is, we fear, nearly the most dangerous person now in official employ in England. Nobody, it is true, ever acts on his recotn- mendations, but then nobody answers him, and his ideas filter into the public mind. Note, that whenever able men want really severe legislation against corporations, they fall back upon the ancient system of fines. Under that word we get nothing but a trumpery imposition, but "damages," which are thinly disguised fines, may be made very effective.
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