able report on Richmond, by one of the
Metropolitan Commissioners' surveyors, was
directed to be made some time since, and
its condition was found to be very bad indeed.
I have said that among many other populous
towns and districts, the chief engineer's plans,
now before us, provide no new sewers for
Richmond. This is true enough; but the
Metropolitan Commissioners have determined
on providing "special" works for their favoured
town; and the able surveyor who made the
preliminary examination and report, has been,
and is at this time, located there with a
branch office and staff to institute all the
necessary operations, and to see them carried
into effect. But I—poor dirty Fulham—why
is nothing of this kind done for me ? Why
should I and all my fellows in dirt be made
dependent on the whole drainage of the
Metropolis? All of us might have been
thoroughly drained and put in good order by
this time without touching the Metropolis.
As free and independent towns and villages,
we are quite capable of getting rid of our own
filth in our own free and independent manner,
without being obliged to wait till it is carried
away with the gigantic offals of the "Great
Wen," as Cobbett called London.

Compare the unsewered and undrained
neighbourhood of the palace of the Bishop of
London, with all the improvements now going
on around the sylvan retreat of the Premier
at Richmond; and then, if you have a heart
above ground, or a pipe beneath your
pavement, ask yourselves what I must feel!
Have the neighbours of Lord John at
Richmond, who got their drainage made in silent
contempt of the underground delays of the
Londoners—have they a finer nose than Dr.
Bloomfield? a keener eye, a more refined
taste, a nicer sense of the fitness of things?
—or have they a clearer conviction that
the work of the pickaxe, the spade, and
the materials of construction, have now
become of vital importance?—of infinitely
greater importance than all the endless
details of that Commission; one half of whose
inharmonious energies have long been devoted
to the employment of able assistant-surveyors
in petty details, instead of comprehensive
works, the other half being now
comprised in the reckless clerk-driving of a
frivolous and vexatious law-office. The
whole subject of sewerage is so obstructed
with frivolous and vexatious law forms at
the instigation of certain law-loving officials,
that literally none of the intended
improvements of the Act can be carried out;
and all sorts of error and mischief are the
consequence.

By way of some kind of excuse for omitting
me, and other towns and districts almost as
dirty as myself, the chief engineer favours me
in his report with the remark—that the
Counter's Creek, and the Fulham and
Hammersmith Districts, the area of which is about
sixteen square miles, are not much built
upon; in fact, he says, that "a very small
portion is at present built upon." Surely
the chief engineer cannot have been there of
late years, or he would have seen and written
differently. Perhaps he has not visited the
spot since he was a boy! It was then a wild
desert. He says that there will be no need
to provide for the means of drainage of more
than eight square miles, or half the district,
because he is of opinion that this "will
include an area that may not be built upon
and populated for the next half century."
If this opinion were correct, it would not
justify such an assertion; but seeing the
rapidity with which houses, and people to fill
them, spring up all round London, it is, to say
the best of it, a very short-sighted view.
The "additional reason" the chief engineer
gives for not providing drainage for this large
area, is by no means a good reason. He does
not wish to interfere with the works of the
Sewerage Manure Company. The Sewerage
Manure Company is doing good, and has
probably been the means of getting drainage
executed, which would not otherwise have
been done; but, is it right that a great
National Work should be hindered in its
operations, in order not to trench upon the
borders of a Joint Stock Company?

The estimates given by the chief engineer are
startling. I do not start at their magnitude,
for I know very well that so great a national
work as this ought to be, must involve an
enormous outlay—but I do start, and tremble
to the bottom of my deepest cesspool, at the
huge gaps for additional expenses which are
visible in the broad and straggling language
used by the chief engineer. He estimates the
expense for the north side of the Thames at
one million and eighty thousand pounds, and
then coolly tells us, "this estimate does not
include the means required for the purchase of
land and houses, which may be needed for the
site of the pumping engine-house," (and for
nothing else?) "and compensation for certain
portions of the line of sewer." The estimate
is, nevertheless, about two-thirds more than
the drainage could be much more efficiently
carried out for. This has been shown to
them, and admitted; but there has been some
very underhanded bad influences at work on
this point. The computation of expense
for the south side of the river amounts to two
hundred and forty-one thousand pounds. "In,
this estimate," mildly continues the chief
engineer, "I have neither included compensation
for passing through or under private
property" (which he says will be "comparatively
trifling! ") "nor the cost of the detailed drainage
(i.e., the innumerable ramifications which
take up all the house-drains!)—to estimate
which will be a work of much time and lengthened
inquiry!" Not a word about the enormous
increase this will be to the "estimate;"
but a promise—which, after all we have
endured in the way of delays, must really be
astonishingly comforting—of the expenditure