§ 229. The claims of families who have purchased the privilege of interment in private vaults are not, that I find, maintained to any extent by the possessors, but are rather suggested as obstacles by others. That which at the time of purchase was deemed a privilege is now proved to be an injury to the community at large, not to speak of the very families by whom the right of interment in the church which they attend is exercised. When the fact is known of the deleterious character of the miasma which arises wherever bodies waste away, it were inconsistent with all religious feeling to maintain, as a privilege, the right of endangering the health of their families, friends, or neighbours. The same observation is applicable to grave-yards attached to chapels belonging to Dissenting congregations. Burial there is an injury to the congregations themselves, and the removal of interments a benefit to them; and although any one may choose to put up with the injury, or refuse to admit the evidence of it, they can scarcely claim to continue the injury at the expense of others, or against the conviction of the majority of the community and the opinions and customs of all civilized nations by whom the practice of interments in towns is prohibited. The overwhelming evidence that what is deemed a privilege is really an injury, precludes all claim to compensation as for a loss. No claim is set forth by any congregation for compensation as for the loss of a gainful trade of burial. Setting aside, then, the question of right, it may be submitted in respect to the owners of private vaults in parochial burial grounds, whether claimants, within a given time, may not be allowed an equal space in the national cemeteries, and be allowed to transfer the remains of their ancestors thither, and erect suitable monuments to them. It may also be submitted that the sites occupied as burial grounds may be re-purchased from the congregations on liberal terms of compensation, to be kept as open spaces for the public use, and that those congregations may have equivalent spaces allotted to them at a distance from town in the new cemeteries. The authorities carrying out the change, should be enabled, on the like terms, to re-purchase from private companies such cemeteries as may be deemed eligible for the public, and engage their officers in the public service, or otherwise compensate them. The success of national cemeteries, would doubtlessly occasion loss to those who have subscribed capital in what was at the time a public improvement, and it is further submitted for consideration, whether the power of re-purchase for the public, from the proceeds of a reduced burial expenditure, might not be extended to the re-purchase of such sites even where they would not be found eligible for national cemeteries.