Chamberss Edinburgh Journal, No. 435 | Page 2

add the value of the extra
produce arising from the land, we shall have some idea of the
advantage derived by this company from having been put under a little
compulsion.
An instance, perhaps even more striking, was supplied a few years ago
by certain chemical works which vented fumes noxious to a whole
neighbourhood. Being prosecuted for the nuisance, the proprietors were
forced to make flues of great length, through which the fumes might be
conducted to a considerable distance. The consequence was surprising.
A new kind of deposit was formed in the interior of the flues, and from

this a large profit was derived. The sweeping of a chimney would
sometimes produce several thousand pounds. At the same time, nothing
can be more certain than that this material, but for the threat of
prosecution, would have been allowed to continue poisoning the
neighbourhood, and, consequently, not yielding one penny to the
proprietors of the works.[1]
It has pleased Providence to order that from all the forms of organic life
there shall arise a refuse which is offensive to our senses, and injurious
to health, but calculated, under certain circumstances, to prove highly
beneficial to us. The offensiveness and noxiousness look very much
like a direct command from the Author of Nature, to do that which
shall turn the refuse to a good account--namely, to bury it in the earth.
Yet, from sloth and negligence, it is often allowed to cumber the
surface, and there do its evil work instead. An important principle is
thus instanced--the essential identity of Nuisance and Waste. Nearly all
the physical annoyances we are subjected to, and nearly all the
influences that are operating actively for our hurt, are simply the
exponents of some chemical solecism, which we are, through ignorance
or indifference, committing or permitting. There is here a double evil--a
positive and a negative. When the Londoner groans at the smokiness of
his streets, and the particles of soot he finds spread over his shirt, his
toilet-table, and every nice article of furniture he possesses, he has the
additional vexation of knowing, that the smoke and soot should have
been serving a useful purpose as fuel. When he passes by a railway
over the tops of the houses in some mean suburb, and looks down with
horror and disgust on the pools and heaps of filth which are allowed to
encumber the yards, courts, and narrow streets of these localities, to the
destruction of the health of the inhabitants, he has a second
consideration before him, that all these matters ought to be in the care
of some easy-acting system, by which, removed to the fields, they
should be helping to create the means of life, instead of death. We
never can look upon a great factory chimney pouring forth its thick
column of smoke, without a twin grief--for the disgust it creates, and
the good that is lost by it. Properly, that volatile fuel should be doing
duty in the furnace, and effecting a saving to the manufacturer, instead
of rendering him and his concerns a nuisance to all within five miles.

Troublesome as these nuisances are, there is such an inaptitude to new
plans, that they might go on for ever, if an interference should not come
in from some external quarter. It matters little whence the interference
comes, so that the end be effected. We cannot, however, view the
proceedings of a Board of Health in ordering cleanly arrangements, or
those of a municipal council putting down factory smoke, without great
interest, for we think we there see part, and an important one too, of the
great battle of Civilisation against Barbarism. And this interest is
deepened when we observe the benefits which Barbarism usually
derives from its own defeats. The factory-owner, for instance, will find
that, in applying an apparatus by which smoke may be prevented, he
will not merely be sparing his neighbours a great annoyance, but
economising fuel to an extent which must more than repay the outlay.
By repressing nuisance, he will be in the same measure repressing
waste.[2] Were there, in like manner, a general measure for enforcing
the removal of refuse from the neighbourhood of human habitations,
the rate-payers would in due time see blessed effects from the
compulsion to which they had been subjected. Their groans would be
succeeded by gladness, and they would thank the legislators who had
slighted their remonstrances. When the cholera approached in 1849, our
British Board of Health ordered a general cleaning out of stables, and a
daily persistence in the practice. It was complained of as a great
hardship; but the Board ascertained that owners of valuable race-horses
cause their stables to be thoroughly cleaned daily, as a practice
necessary for the health of the animals; the Board,