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36
CONCLUSION.
a constant source of nuisance, or disease or death;
when you woudd force one person to refrain from
tainting the general atmosphere with results of
an offensive occupation ; when you would oblige
another to see that his tenantry are better housed
than cattle, and that, while he takes rent for lodging,
he shall not give fever as the equivalent;—amid
these proceedings, you will be reminded of the
"rights of property," and of "an Englishman's
inviolable claim to do as he will with his own."
Permit me, gentlemen, to remind you that your
law makes full recognition of these principles, and
that the cases in which sophistical appeal will
oftenest be made to them, are exactly those which
are most completely condemned by a full and fair
application of the principles adverted to. With
private affairs you interfere, only when they become
of public import; with private liberty, only when
it becomes a public encroachment. The factory
chimney that eclipses the light of heaven with
unbroken clouds of smoke, the melting-house that
nauseates an entire parish, the slaughter-house that
forms round itself a circle of dangerous disease—
these surely are not private, but public affairs. And
how much more justly may the neighbour appeal to
y ou against each such nuisance, as an interference
with his privacy; against the smoke, the stink, the
fever, that bursts through each inlet of his dwelling,
intrudes on him at every hour, disturbs the enjoyment
and shortens the duration of his life. And