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HOUSE-DRAINAGE. 15
drainage, with effective water supply, are the only
remedies which can avail; and it is only during
the present year, that authority to enforce these
measures has been vested by the Legislature in
any public bodies whatsoever.
Before the month of January last (when your
increased jurisdiction was established), it appears
to me that, for the existence of cesspools in the
City, you had no more responsibility than for the
original site of the metropolis, or for the architecture
of Westminster Abbey.
During the last ten months, however, the care
of effective house-drainage has rested solely and
entirely with your Honourable Court; for two of
those ten months, I thought it desirable, on account
of the epidemic, that no considerable disturbance
of the soil should take place in the construction
of new works; in the remaining eight
months, two miles of new sewer were formed, and
900 houses were drained for the first time.
If the house-drainage of the City had depended
for its completion, even since that time, solely on
the labours of this Commission, no doubt it would
have proceeded at a far quicker pace. How effectively
your Honourable Court had prepared for the
best application of your increased powers, is sufficiently
evinced in the 45 miles of sewerage, ramifying
through all the districts of your jurisdiction,
ready at every point to receive the streams of private
drainage, and leaving to the owners of house-