THE WATER SUPPLY OF LONDON.

[The North British Review, No. XXIX.]

THE law of Laissez-faire, held by some of the earlier political economists to be absolute and inviolable, is gradually receiving its due limitations, without losing its ground as a law founded on the right, or rather on the duty, of every man, to be selfenergizing and self-developed. "Laissez-faire," in its extreme meaning of "no human government whatsoever," is in fact the ideal state of mankind, the realization in society of Augustin's "Ama, et fac quicquid vis;" and in proportion as men are men, and their humanity on all points whatever is developed and perfected, they may be safely left to the suggestions of their own hearts and reason.

But "Ama, et fac quicquid vis," is by no means identical with" Ama teipsum, et fac quicquid vis; and a state of society in which self-interest is the ruling motive of action, is not to be treated as one in which a one divine inspiration, a one reason, a one purpose, rule all alike. And how far we are

1. The Principles of Political Economy. By J. S. MILL. Second Edition. London, 1850. 2. Memorial to Lord John Russell and Sir George Grey from the Metropolitan Sanitary Association. London, 1851. 3. General Report of the Sanitary State of the Laborers of Great Britain. London, 1842. 4. Report of the General Board of Health on the Supply of Water to the Metropolis. App. I. Returns to the Queries addressed to the Water Companies. II. Engineering Reports and Evidence. III. Medical, Chemical, and Geological Evidence. London, 1850. 5. Report of Do. on the Epidemic Cholera of 1848-9. Appendix (B) to Do. Report by Mr. GRAINGER. London, 1850. 6. A Microscopic Examination of the Water supplied to the Inhabitants of London. With Colored Plates. By Dr. ARTHUR HASSALL. London, 1850.

from this latter ideal state, how near to that former bestial one, we all know but too well. We are in an abnormal, in what Scripture in words which will after all prove to be the most terse, deep, and scientific-calls a "fallen" state; we have deflected from our ideal; we have been untrue in every age and clime to the laws and constitution of our species. Overlooking this fact, the earlier political economists were too apt to look at the present accidents of human society as if they were its constitutional and ideal phenomena. They often mistook the tendencies of fallen man for eternal laws, and commanded that he should be left to live an ideal life of free self-government, while he was, de facto, a slave to his own lusts and passions, and a tyrant to those weaker than himself; and among the vulgar, there have been always selfish, lazy, or lawless hearts, ready to raise in response a cuckoo-cry of "Leave us to ourselves, it is the law of the universe;" ignoring the fact, that to leave them to themselves, means to leave those weaker than them to be their prey.

The truth is, that in proportion as any man, or nation, or class, are fallen; in proportion as they are beasts, savages, or children; thus unconditionally to apply laissez-faire to them is as gross cruelty, in the form of justice, as it would be to leave a kennel of mad dogs to bite each other; a tribe of savages to be decimated by smallpox, because there was no demand for vaccination among them; a child to run naked in the woods to shift for itself, and, if not poisoned by wild berries or eaten by wolves, develop its individuality freely into a "Peter the wild boy."

At "the other pole of the antinomy," as the Germans would say, stand the advocates of paternal government. These, too, have a truth upon their side; but these, like those advocates of laissez-faire

already referred to, have turned their truth into a falsehood and a tyranny, simply by urging it unreservedly. It is true that all government should be paternal; but then the word paternal must be defined, and defined in accordance with the duties of a father. It should, doubtless, help and guide all those who are unable to help and guide themselves. It should coerce those who are blind to the interests of their neighbors and the commonweal. In short, if any class be beasts, they must have tamers; if savages, they must have tutors; if children, they must have parents. But for what purpose? To keep them what they are? Surely not; but to raise them to that which they are not, to make the beasts men; the savages civilized; the children adult and self-dependent sons, in short, to restore them to that very ideal from whence they have fallen. ternal governments," so called, have ignored this; they have ignored the fact of there being a possible ideal of man, a redemption ready for fallen man, a kingdom of God on earth, and therefore it happens, significantly enough, that those governments which have been the most doggedly quasi-paternal, have been either utterly godless, or else Romish,that is, belonging to the religion which denies individual responsibility, the right to individual development, and a really human, not a merely ascetic and saintly, ideal of man. The most complete paternal government of our own times, that of Austria, has an explicit combination of both these elements, - a mixture of sheer Atheism and sheer superstition, both in governors and governed.

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The office of all government, paternal or other, is, as the Bible sets forth, self-sacrifice, and not selfish advantage; and the perfect method of fulfilling that self-sacrifice, is gradually to render its own office unnecessary; to teach its subjects, not merely to obey it, but to do without it; to be, in short, truly pater

nal, by educating its children into sons, who may go forth and labor freely for themselves, and on their own responsibility, according to the laws which have been taught them, and with that sense of a common brotherhood, a common family interest, which they have acquired under their father's teaching.

The advocates of either method, then, properly limited and explained, seem to have a truth on their side. There is surely some one mesothetic truth, deeper and wider than either, which underlies and explains both, and to act on which is to act on both at once without violating either. The discovery — or resuscitation - of such a truth seems to be the chief problem of social government; and to be especially needed, and therefore perhaps especially easy to discover, in this present age.

But, in the mean time, there are practical canons enough already laid down to guide us safely in our mode of dealing with particular cases. One such is given in the following passage from the second volume of Mr. John Stuart Mill's "Political Economy" (page 521):

§7. We have observed that, as a general rule, the business of life is better performed when those who have an immediate interest in it are left to take their own course, uncontrolled either by the mandate of the law or the meddling of any public functionary. The persons, or some of the persons, who do the work, are likely to be better judges than the government of the means of attaining the particular end at which they aim. Were we to suppose, what is not very probable, that the government has possessed itself of the best knowledge which had been acquired up to a given time by the persons most skilled in the occupation, even then the individual agent has so much stronger and more direct an interest in the result, that the means are far more likely to be improved and perfected if left to his uncontrolled choice. But if the workman is generally the best selector of means, can it be affirmed, with the same universality, that the consumer, or person served, is the most competent judge of the end? Is the buyer always qualified to judge of the commodity? If not, the presumption in favor of the competition of the market does not apply to the case; and if the commodity be one in the quality of which society has much at

stake, the balance of advantages may be in favor of some mode or degree of intervention, by the authorized representatives of the collective interest of the State.

§ 8. Now, the proposition that the consumer is a competent judge of the commodity, can be admitted only with numerous abatements and exceptions. He is generally the best judge (though even this is not true universally) of the material objects produced for his use. These are destined to supply some physical want, or gratify some taste or inclination, respecting which wants or inclinations there is no appeal from the person who feels them; or they are the means and appliances of some occupation for the use of the persons engaged in it, who may be presumed to be judges of the things required in their own habitual employment. But there are other things of the worth of which the demand of the market is by no means a test; things of which the utility does not consist in ministering to inclinations, nor in serving the daily uses of life, and the want of which is least felt where the need is greatest. This is peculiarly true of those things which are chiefly used as tending to raise the character of human beings. The uncultivated cannot be competent judges of cultivation. Those who most need to be made wiser and better usually desire it least, and if they desired it, would be incapable of finding the way to it by their own lights. It will continually happen, on the voluntary system, that the end not being desired, the means will not be provided at all, or that the persons requiring improvement having an imperfect or altogether erroneous conception of what they want, the supply called forth by the demand of the market will be anything but what is really required.

Now these observations, like those which precede them, apply directly to the Water Supply of large towns. Here the end proposed is pure and wholesome water. That the consumer is not the best judge of this, is sufficiently proved by the facts, — that people are often content for years to drink, under the name of water, fluids which physicians know well, and indeed often warn them in vain, to be mere diluted poison, that the substances which make water unwholesome are generally impalpable except to microscopic examination or chemical tests, -that the diseases produced or aggravated by them, such as calculous disorders, dyspepsia, cholera, &c., are not suspected by the mass of water consumers