It were easy to show, were it worth while--1st. How the persons to whom I here allude suffered to be withdrawn from the Thames nearly a half of its natural waters before reaching London; 2nd. How next they converted the healthy surface drains of London and of its environs into odious sewers, ignoring the distinction between drain and sewer, a distinction which the most ignorant of day labourers perfectly understands, and heretofore had uniformly respected; 3rd. How they refused to suffer the suicidal act to proceed gradually and slowly, whereby the river, out of its own natural resources, might and would in time have accomplished its own depuration, but as best suiting their ultimate views, issued compulsory edicts on the inhabitants of this great city to empty into the river, and almost at once, the accumulated _excreta_ of a quarter of a century, such being at least the average age of the contents of the cesspools. Thus was demanded of the river a depurative force at the least twenty times greater than under another system would have been required of it. Lastly, to complete a series of experiments so injurious to the public, but so profitable to individuals, the same party proposes further to deprive the stream of all aid in the purification of its waters, by pouring into the German Ocean the entirety of the water which the natural drainage of London, and the valley in which it stands, contribute to it, together with one-half the waters of the river itself, taken from it above the tide-way for the supply of the capital. Thus, by a series of manœuvres, transparent enough to those who have carefully watched the movements for the last twenty years, its inhabitants are now called on at their own expense to remedy the clumsy experiments of those who occupy positions they could not fill in any country but England.[7]