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34
OFFENSIVE AND INJURIOUS TRADES.
diffused emanation; in effects, namely, which are
discoverable along their lines of drainage and ventilation,
and in the various consequences of a
highly zymotic atmosphere generally through the
entire town.
2. With regard to such trades as are considered
to be simply offensive, and where the evidence
of injury to health is indirect and uncertain, I can
hardly doubt that a wise legislation would exclude
them also from the circle of the metropolis. Tallow-melting,
whalebone-boiling, gas-making, and
various other chemical proceedings, if not absolutely
injurious to life, are nuisances at least, in the
ordinary language of the law, or are apt to become
such. It is the common right of the neighbourhood
to breathe an uncontaminated atmosphere;
and, with this common right, such nuisances must,
in their several degrees, be considered to clash.
It might be an infraction of personal liberty, to
interfere with a proprietor's right to make offensive
smells within the limits of his own tenement,
and for his own separate inhalation; but surely
it is a still greater infraction of personal liberty
when the proprietor, entitled as he is to but the
joint use of an atmosphere, which is the common
property of his neighbourhood, assumes what is
equivalent to a sole possession of it, and claims
the right of diffusing through it some nauseous
effluvium which others, equally with himself, are