2 APRIL 1864, Page 2

The tendency to rely on Government supervision as a check

upon avarice seems to grow stronger every day. The coroner's jury which " sat " on the Bradfield reservoir and its victims re- commended strict official supervision, and Sir George Grey is carrying the idea out, an engineer employed by the Home Office having visited the Agden works, and induced the company to suspend them. Where human life is in question the law has some right to interfere ; but we believe heavy damages to be the best preventive against stinginess. The tendency of this kind of super- vision is to extinguish originality, the official insisting always on his stereotyped mode of construction. No Government engineer would have suffered Stephenson to try to carry hundreds at forty miles an hour across Chat Moss.