Page:On the Pollution of the Rivers of the Kingdom.djvu/54

48 joint deputation from the Sanitary Associations of Great Britain and the Fisheries Preservation Association went up to Lord Palmerston, and urged his Lordship to introduce a Government measure to put an effectual stop to the nuisance.

On the 4th March, 1864, the same Associations, by their Presidents and Vice-Presidents, Lords Ebury and Shaftesbury, and Lords Saltoun and Llanover, addressed to Lord Palmerston a joint letter (from which extracts have been made at pp. 12—14 ante), "entreating his Lordship to lose no time in proposing such measures as might seem best adapted to prevent the spread of this enormous evil."

In the same year (1864) and beginning of 1865, the boroughs of Nottingham, Sheffield, Birmingham, Manchester, Preston, Coventry, Derby, Wolverhampton, Bath, Huddersfield, York, Stockport, Cheltenham, and Oxford, and the Rotherham and Kimberworth Board of Health, all memorialised (as set forth at pp. 16-20) the Home Secretary to carry out the recommendation (before given at p. 16) of the Committee of the House of Commons of 1864, viz., "that the important object of freeing the entire basins of rivers from pollution should be rendered possible by general legislative enactment."

In this year (1865) also petitions against the pollution of rivers, most numerously signed, were presented to Parliament by the late Lord Llanover, then President of the Fisheries Preservation Association, in the one House, and by Mr. Martin Tucker Smith in the other, from Shrewsbury, Richmond, Twickenham, Machynlleth, &c., &c.

On the 24th February, 1865, the Earl of Longford, in the House of Lords, called the attention of Government to the beforementioned recommendation of the Commons' Select Committee of 1864, and enquired whether it was the intention of Government to carry into effect that