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by-laws, that I decline to be a party to a Judgment which would suppose that
we have expressed an opinion upon the merits of any particular sanitary,
engineering, building or other question. One cannot of course shut one's eyes
to what is common knowledge that there have been questions raised as to the
desirability of draining in a particular way, or building in a particular way, or
engineering in a particular way when it is a known common thing, and one
cannot be ignorant of the fact that there has been a very considerable controversy
as to whether it is desirable to have traps which themselves may
become foul below each basin, or desirable to have something which could be
readily cleaned out, but I absolutely decline to express the slightest opinion as
to which is the best. All I say is that there is much to be said on both sides.
But I come back to the point. We have had repeatedly on several occasions
to say, in construing these by-laws, that if a local authority who have the
right to do it and the duty of exercising a discretion, do wish to indicate that
the thing is to be done, they must say so in fairly plain and clear language.
I do not think that any Judgment to which I have been a party, certainly I
have never, intentionally construed these by-laws unfavourably to the Local
Authority by putting a strained construction upon them, but I have, where I
supported them and where I have thought they could not be supported,
endeavoured to point out that the language must be reasonably clear.
" Let us take this and read it without assuming the absurdity of the one
contention or the other, either 011 Mr. Macmorran's side or Mr. Avory's side.
The statement is that a person who shall erect a new building shall cause every
pipe in such building for carrying off waste water from every lavatory or sink
to a sewer to be constructed in a certain way. Now the class of pipe they are
speaking of there is a pipe which leads from the lavatory, and for this purpose
I will take that to be from a basin in a lavatory to the sewer. If they mean
by that, you must not take the water from the basin into the sewer by any
other means except a pipe, they must say so, it is nothing unreasonable to ask
them to say so, they must indicate it. Mr. Avory, who always touches the
point, said that that was the construction he sought to put upon the by-law
that this was a prohibition against taking the waste water away in any other
method. Now, that I am not putting a false construction upon this bye-law is
clear from the last paragraph of the same by-law. ' He shall cause every pipe
in such building for carrying off waste water to a sewer to be taken through
an external wall.' Therefore it is quite clear that they knew perfectly well
what they were talking about, they were talking about pipes which led to the
sewer from the lavatory, or if you like, from the basin, and while I perfectly
agree with the criticisms my brother Wills has pointed out that the ordinary
reader would take this to mean from the lavatory, and not from each basin,
yet still I think what is far more important is that even if you take it from
each basin, they have not told the people that they are not to use an open
trough, but they have told the people that if they do use a pipe to the sewer it
must be of a particular construction. Now, in this case I think to say that a
short end of pipe which runs into an open trough, which open trough leads
into a pipe, to call that a pipe leading to a sewer would be simply an abuse of
language. Of course it is a pipe which takes the waste water to the sewer in
the same sense that the housemaid may take the waste water into a sewer when
she empties the basin into the slop pail, and pours the contents of the slop pail
down a water closet or sink. No reasonable man reading that by-law would
understand he was told you are not to be allowed to use the system of having