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126
powering the Company to supply at a rent and on conditions
to be agreed between the Company and the householder,
but in the event of the two parties being unable
to come to an agreement no machinery is provided for
obtaining an agreement, and no alternative proposed,
or umpire appointed.
Section 39 is the Section to which our attention is
particularly directed.
Your Committee will at once perceive that the question
is of very great importance, and affects the Company and
all persons using or requiring supplies for the purposes
mentioned in Section 39.
The first point which calls for remark is that this Act
has been drafted with culpable vagueness, and passed with
carelessness of the great interests involved. The language
is loose where strict accuracy is required, and there are no
definitions of the meaning of the words used, while in many
cases the most important words have enlarged or contracted
meanings, and the rights and powers conferred will be quite
different according to the meaning which may be decided to
be the true one.
The next point is that the state of things existing at
the passing of the Act is separated by an immense interval
from the state of things existing at present. Houses by
the 37th Section are divided into two classes:— those without
water-closets, and those which have water-closets, and
the former class is regarded as the most numerous, as we
also know to have been the fact, whereas now by the 37th
Section of the Public Health (London) Act, 1891, reenacting
certain provisions in the Sewers Acts, the building