of sinking artesian wells in remote hills, on the chance of deriving therefrom chemically irreproachable sources of supply. The efforts spontaneously made by the New River, East Kent, and Chelsea companies at different times and in different ways to vindicate their respective positions as purveyors of a great necessary of life were not the mere result of stringent terms imposed upon them by the legislature, or suggested by the sheer expectation of any immediate gain. Hundreds of thousands of pounds have recently been laid out by these and other companies, not with a view of supplanting or injuring one another, but in an honourable spirit of provoking one another to jealousy by good deeds done. It is admitted on all hands that much of this expenditure realized no additional profit in rates, but must be set down to the tentative improvements of the condition and character of each undertaking. What is this but the highest and best species of competition—that sort of competition which, untrammelled by any centralized yoke, has been the spirit and nerve and life of all the great self-reliant enterprises that have made England what she is? Crush out this spirit, buy up competition, trust to royal commissions to discover new fountains, and deputy inspectors to find out flaws in old pipes; sell off reserves of land, and make one filter bed do the work of two (as if it would not get dirty in half the time); make a show, or at least a fuss, about economy to justify expropriation and central monopoly, and we may not have very long to wait for a fresh outbreak of sanitary reproach and protest, that having gone farther we have only fared worse. Daily journalism will wax eloquent and indignant meetings grow stormy; and the Water Trust office will rejoice that the day of reaction has come. Public opinion, out of temper, will be readily taken at its word; unforeseen necessities will remain the excuse for unprecedented expenditure, the burthen will fall exclusively on the Ten Cities of the Thames, and a provisional order to authorize the borrowing of a sum not exceeding so many millions will be carried in a House the bulk of whose members care for none of these things. Opposition will be futile on the second reading, and in committee protesting citizens will be told that locus standi they have none. Responsibility to Parliament in a body without equal competitor or rival under such circumstances will prove to be the merest
