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193
at present, at the cost of tlie overburdened and injured ratepayer.
"Democratic communities," it is shewn, are willing to entrust
exceedingly autocratic powers to the sanitary officers, and will
not suffer the owner of unhealthy houses to profit by the misery
of the classes whose poverty allows them little choice in the
selection of a dwelling-place. Instances are cited of power
possessed for closing and even for destroying premises without
compensation, failing attention to orders and notices (pp. 69-70).
As regards the Nuisances Removal Acts, under which tens of
thousands of nuisances are abated every year in London, they
afford abundant opportunities for obstruction to a litigious owner
of house property, there being no speedy means for compelling the
abatement of a nuisance under any existing law, and no punishment
for the person by whose default the nuisance has arisen.
The Commissioners recommend that there should be such a
punishment, viz., by the infliction of a penalty, at the discretion
of the Justices, and to a certain extent this recommendation,
if carried into effect, would, through the influence of a wholesome
fear, tend to bring about the abatement of nuisance by the person
on whom the Vestry's notice is served.
The Commissioners have taken note of the Sanitary
Authority's "powers," but have underrated or overlooked the
"difficulties" which often prevent those bodies from putting the
law into effective motion. The difficulties, as I have shewn, are
partly inherent in the law itself, and partly incident to its method
of administration, when once this has passed out of the hands
of the Local Authority into those of the Judicial Authority.
The tendency is to regard the "Nuisance Authority" as all
powerful, but apathetic, and blame is often lavished on
authority and officials alike, when there is failure to abate a
nuisance upon discovery or report. But it may be truly said that
the law is at once too leisurely in its movements, and
too considerate for the "rights of property," to allow this
to be done. The chief offenders, owners of tenement houses,
know by experience that they incur little risk by disregarding for a
considerable period the requirements of the Nuisance Authority.