DRAINAGE-CUM-HEALTH BOARD.

Globe, Volume VIII, Issue 1040, 25 October 1877, Page 2

DRAINAGE-CUM-HEALTH BOARD.

To the Editor of the Globe. Sie, —Here's a job. I lire up north on 50 acres, and my neighbor, whose land adjoins mine, has 150 and keeps pigs, and I won't have it. So I goes to the Road Board to ask assistance to hare them removed, as I had heard that no one was to keep sich animals. Mr Road Board looked on me -with compassion, expressed in eye and voice, and said, "My good man; don't you know that a mighty power has arisen, and taken to itself the awful powers you require, and we have nothing to attend to but the roads now ; your party drains will be attended to by that power if you ask." Law, how I felt all over at the prospect of being introduced to this wonderful power ! Says I " The name, please, and don't keep me." In a frightened and subdued voice he whispered in my ear, " Drainage Cum-Health Board, Christchurch, where they attend to everything, and do the thing most liberally. Clean your party drains for you, settle your little quarrel with your neighbor at once, and pay all expenses. Think of the honor of an engineer at £BOO a year being sent to settle the drainage of your party drain, bank and ditch, which you made as a division to your land, and being (called a watercourse as was done in that mighty case of Poninghan's, which took this great engineer and a surveyor at £SOO a year and inspector at £2OO to settle, and all came of a private matter like yours between neighbors, and they held respectively three acres and six acres. There's a chance for you to annoy your friend at no cost." How I opened my eyes. Says I —" How's it done ?" "This way," says he. "The Board has friends at Wellington, and can smuggle any Bill through Parliament without the people knowing till the tax collector comes round. Have you not heard of their last attempt ? " "What?" says I —" Cutting off our water and the Is 3d in the pound business ? " " No," says he—" Rate to keep you healthy. Sanitary laws to compel you to have a pan, all iron, on farms of 200 acres downwards, and removed regularly, and a doctor, because the district, being for the most part an agricultural one, will tend to breed disease." "No more,";l replied; "let me go to see this phenomenon." I am all of a tremble to see this Board to get the pigs away, and I will tell you, Mr Editor, all the particulars when I have been. RATES.