"To allow such a state of things to exist is a blot upon this scientific and enlightened age, an age, too, teeming with so much wealth, refinement, and benevolence. Morality, and the whole economy of domestic existence, is outraged and deranged by so much suffering and misery. Let not, therefore, the morality, the health, the comfort of thousands of our fellow creatures in this metropolis be in the hands of those who care not about these things, but let good and wholesome laws be enacted to compel houses to be kept in a cleanly and healthy condition." There were, it was said, "a formidable host of difficulties" as regarded the execution of improved works of house drainage. There was the opposition of the proprietors on the ground of expense; there were the provisions of the Act of Parliament,[11] which were so intricate as to be almost unintelligible and unworkable; there was the want of a proper outfall for the sewage; and the want of a supply of water to wash away the filth--a possible explanation for the existing state of abomination, but certainly not a justification for the prolonged inaction of successive Parliaments and Governments in allowing affairs to reach so frightful a pass, and for dooming the people to a condition of things which it was entirely beyond their power to remedy even as regarded the single house they inhabited. Just as everything connected with sewerage and drainage was so placidly neglected, and so fearfully bad, so also was it as regarded another matter of even more vital necessity, namely, the supply of water to the inhabitants of London for drinking, or for domestic, trade, or sanitary purposes. "Water is essential as an article of food. Water is necessary to personal cleanliness. Water is essential to external cleansing, whether of houses, streets, closets, or sewers." Manifestly, the supply of water was not a matter which the individual in a large community such as London could in any way make provision for by his own independent effort. And yet there was no public body in London, central or local, representative or otherwise, charged with the duty of securing to the people even the minimum quantity necessary for life. Early in the seventeenth century the New River Company was formed for the supply of water to London. And as years went on Parliament evidently considered it fulfilled its obligations in this respect by making over to sundry private companies the right of supplying to the citizens of London this vital requirement, or, as it has been termed, this "life-blood of cities"; and Parliament had done this without even taking any guarantee or security for a proper distribution to the people, or for the purity of the water, or the sufficiency of its supply. Practically, a generous Parliament had bestowed as a free gift upon these Water Companies the valuable monopoly, so far as London was concerned, of this necessity of life.