Page:On the Pollution of the Rivers of the Kingdom.djvu/53



Statement of the efforts made between 1855 and 1868 to obtain from Parliament a general and effectual Law against the Pollution of Streams.

In 1855, when the "Nuisances Removal Bill" of Sir Benjamin Hall (the late Lord Llanover) was passing through Committee, Mr. Adderley, Mr. Henley, and Lord Robert Grosvenor attempted, but unsuccessfully, to get Clause 24 (which imposed a penalty of £ 200 for the discharge of gas refuse into the rivers) extended, so as to include all manufacturing refuse of a foul, and poisonous nature.

Early in 1861 a number of noblemen and gentlemen associated themselves together under the name of the "Fisheries Preservation Association," for the purpose (among other objects they had in view) of obtaining an enactment against the "poisoning and polluting of rivers."

In the Session of this year (1861), through the instrumentality in a great measure of this Association, the Salmon Fishery Act for England and Wales (24 and 25 Vic, cap. 109) was obtained, and it contained a clause (Section 5) which at the time it was hoped would prove effectual in preventing the pollution of rivers.

Experience having shown, however, that the Act (a most valuable and effective one in other respects) was inoperative as regarded such pollutions, in August, 1863, a