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75
OFFENSIVE OR INJURIOUS TRADES.
If the smoke of London were inseparably identified
with its commercial greatness, one might willingly
resign oneself to the inconvenience; but to
every other reason against its continuance must be
added as a last one (on the evidence of innumerable
competent and disinterested witnesses) that the nuisance,
where habitual, is, for the greater part or
entirely, voluntary and preventable; that it indicates
mismanagement and waste; that the adoption
of measures for the universal consumption of smoke
(while relieving the metropolis and its population
from injury) would conduce to the immediate interest
of the individual consumer, as well as to indirect
and general economy; for all the smoke that
hangs over us is wasted fuel.
The consumption of smoke in private houses is
unfortunately a matter to which hitherto little attention
has been given; and it would be vain to
hope that the reform should begin with those, whose
individual contributions to the public stock of nuisance
are comparatively trifling. With the progress
of knowledge on these subjects, a time will undoubtedly
arrive, and at no distant period, when
chimneys will cease to convey to the atmosphere
their present immense freight of fuel that has not
been burnt, and of heat that has not been utilised;
when each entire house will be uniformly warmed
with less expenditure of material than now suffices
to its one kitchen fire; and our successors will
wonder at the ludicrous ingenuity with which we