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46
WATER-SUPPLY.
tages, and constitutes a restriction on your power
of doing good.
As respects the evils to which I have just adverted,
unquestionably they admit of abatement by
devoting separate water-receptacles to the very different
uses of diet and drainage. But the expense of
additional cisternage in tenements so poor cannot
be considered trifling; and I believe that your Honourable
Court would hesitate, even if you have
the power, to enforce this double burthen on the
owners of house-property, at a time when one may
reasonably hope that the necessity for cisterns will
be superseded.
There can be no doubt on the extreme degree
in which it is desirable for the poor of the City of
London, that water should be delivered to their
houses on the principle of constant supply, and that
they should thus be relieved from the expensive
and unwholesome necessity of storing it in small
quantities and in improper receptacles. That it is
desirable is a certainty within my official knowledge,
and on which therefore I can give an opinion of my
own. That it is practicable, is not within my official
knowledge; for in this part of the question are
involved various considerations of hydraulic engineering,
on which I am incompetent to offer an
opinion. But I cannot ignore the fact that, in many
parts of England and Scotland, the practicability of
a constant supply has been evinced by the very
conclusive evidence of its success. To some such