A copy of the Bill was lodged in December, 1880; it was read a first and second time on 21st January and 4th February, 1881, and referred to a Select Committee, which commenced sitting on 5th May, and on the 20th of the same month announced their unanimous opinion that the preamble of the Bill had not been proved. In the preamble of the Bill it was estimated that a contribution not exceeding threepence for every ton of salt in brine in the district covered by the Act would be sufficient to provide the required compensation. The opponents of the Bill declared that a compensation tax upon the salt trade would severely injure the industry and act as a restraint upon trade; they put forward expert witnesses to contend that if the brine--which they contended was produced by rainfall percolating through the superincumbent strata and reaching the salt--was not pumped out, it would run away to the sea, and the consequent subsidence of land and injury to property would not be arrested. The theory that brine, in quantity sufficient for the manufacture of 1,600,000 tons of salt per annum would, without pumping, have been carried away into the rivers by natural agency and deposited in the sea, was supported by such ingenious misstatement and misrepresentation, and the fictitious instances of brine springs overflowing and causing damage in other parts of the world were quoted with so much specious authority that they succeeded in wrecking the Bill. After a further ten years of continued subsidences and attendant damage to public and private property, the Brine Pumping (Compensation for Subsidence) Bill was introduced in 1891, to authorize the formation of Compensation Districts and Boards, with power to levy a yearly rate not exceeding threepence per 1,000 gallons of brine pumped. Shortly after the passing of the Bill, the action of Northwich, which memorialized for the formation of the whole of the County of Cheshire into one district for purposes of compensation, led to an inquiry by the Local Government Board, as the result of which Middlewich and Sandbach were excluded. The Provisional Order uniting Northwich and Winsford in one area was opposed by Winsford, and a Select Committee of the House, in 1893, quashed the Provisional Order and made Northwich an independent compensation district.