Page:On the Pollution of the Rivers of the Kingdom.djvu/13



from the of Royal Commissions, Parliamentary Committees, Inspectors of Salmon Fisheries, Medical Officers of the Privy Council, Registrar General, &c. &c., presented or returned to Parliament between 1855 and 1868.

"Ten years ago," said Lord Robert Montagu, in his masterly speech when moving, on the 8th March, 1865, the second reading of the "River Waters Protection Bill," "the Committee on the Nuisances Removal Bill of 1855 had inquired into this subject, and had ascertained that our Rivers had become absolutely pestilential, and were, in fact, nothing but main sewers, and had "urged the Government to take steps for the removal of such disastrous influences." [Hansard, 3rd Series, vol. 177, p. 1309.]

In 1858 a Royal Commission on the sewage of towns reported (page 27) that—

"From the whole of our inquiry we have arrived at the following conclusions, one of them being:—

"That the increasing pollution of the rivers and streams of the country is an evil of national importance which urgently demands the application of remedial measures; that the discharge of sewage and the noxious refuse of factories into them is a source of nuisance and danger to health; that it acts injuriously not only on the locality where it occurs, but on the populations of the districts through which the polluted waters flow; that it poisons the water which in many cases forms the sole supply of the populations for all purposes, including drinking; and that it destroys the fish."