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SANITARY POWERS OF THE COMMISSION. 21
obstacle to their effective employment. You have
authority here, as with house-drainage, to order the
construction of all necessary apparatus, and to
enforce the fulfilment of your order.
Under both these heads, you possess a power
hitherto but imperfectly used, the complete and constant
exercise of which I would strongly recommend
to your Honourable Court. In all those clauses
of your Acts of Parliament, which relate to private
works of house-drainage and water-supply, there
occurs a very important phrase:—such works shall
be constructed" to the satisfaction of the Commissioners."
Now, of private works effected under the
authority of your Act, during the last three years,
a certain, not inconsiderable, share proves inoperative
and bad. The mere overflowing of a waterbutt
(and in numberless instances this is the
arrangement evasively adopted under your orders)
can never suffice for the effectual cleansing of housedrains.
I need scarcely inform you that an obstructed
drain and choked privy, wherever they
occur, are equivalent to a cesspool; shedding abroad
the same effluvia, and producing the same deadly
results. No gain is gotten to the wholesomeness of
a house, by substituting for its former cesspool an
equally offensive and inoperative drain. To my
knowledge, much of the drainage done during the
last three years is liable to this risk; and it appears