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out notice to anybody, upon a public footway so as to deprive the public of that free
and convenient passage along it to which they were by law entitled.
If it had been the intention of the Legislature to confer such a right, or to legalise
what otherwise would be a public indictable nuisance, I should have expected such
intention to have been expressed in clear, uninistakeable language.
I do not feel it necessary at length to refer to other sections in either of the Acts
to which 1 have referred, but I do desire generally, in a few words, to call attention
to the objects these Acts had in view.
The Metropolitan Local Management Act was intended to vest in the appointed
bodies authority over sewers, to enable them to compel sanitary arrangements, to
have control over the public streets with a view to secure proper paving, lighting and
cleansing, and to prevent nuisances thereon, and to compel uniformity of appearance
in the street. In Tear v. Freebody, 4 C.B., N.S. 259, Orowder, J., referring particularly
to Section 143, said: "The object of this part of the Act evidently was the
maintaining an appearance that should be ornamentaland;" Willes, J., said (page 263)
the regular line of building substantially meant such a "line as shall preserve uniformity
of appearance."
The Building Act had other objects for its aim, namely, the making provision for
the safety and security of the buildings which might be erected, not only with a view
to the interests of the public at large, but having regard to the interests of adjoining
owners: thus it regulated the size and height of buildings, the construction, the
materials to be used and the demolition of dangerous structures, &c., &c. But neither
in the one Act nor in the other is a syllable to be found conferring upon a private
individual a right to invade, at his own mere will and pleasure, either a public or a
private right: even a hoarding for the purpose of building or for effecting necessary
repairs cannot be erected without a licence from the Vestry or District Board.
In the course of the argument several cases were cited, neither of them in my
judgment bearing upon the point before us, though in one of them, The Queen v.
Inyham, 17 Q.Li., 886, one or two expressions are to be found which fortify me in
the opinion I have formed. In that case a rule had beeu granted calling upon
Mr. Ingham, one of the police magistrates, to shew cause why he should not
adjudicate upon an information laid by the Surveyor of Pavements under the 72nd
Section of the above-mentioned statute, 57th George III., chapter 29, against one
Mclntyre, who was the occupier of a house within a district of the Paving Commissioners,
who had from time to time paved and repaved the street up to the walls
of the said house. Mclntyre, being desirous of rebuilding his house, pulled down
and rebuilt part of the external wall, and it being then found that certain pilasters, &c.,
forming part of the new work projected over the public footway and pavement and
beyond the line of the old wall to the extent of 8 inches, the Commissioners gave
him notice to remove so much of the "wooden shop-front and so much of the pilasters,
framing, or other projections of or from the said shop-front as projects over the footway
of the last-mentioned street." This notice not having been complied with the
information was lodged. When this information came on to be heard, it was, among
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