Chamberss Edinburgh Journal, No. 435 | Page 2

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, therefore, very properly insisted on forcing this benefit upon the proprietors of horses generally. Can we doubt that