The Nelson Evening Mail. MONDAY, MAY 6, 1867.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume II, Issue 104, 6 May 1867, Page 2

The Nelson Evening Mail. MONDAY, MAY 6, 1867.

The meeting at the Provincial Hall, on Friday evening, passed off very satisfactorily, in spite of the unfortunate wording of the requisition, which, not unnaturally, had led many persons to believe that its primary object was to pass a vote of censure upon the Board of Works — an idea which, we need hardly say, was happily and entirely set at rest by the various speakers during the evening, who, one and all, disclaimed any hostility whatever to that body.

The abortive attempt of Mr. Luckie to turn the tide of popular feeling against the movement, ought, we think, to have been regarded simply in the light of a necessary safety-valve for the escape of those overcharged emotions which recent events in the political arena — doubtless, very depressing to the party which he represents — have probably engendered in his breast. Be this, however, as it may, the attempt to persuade the meeting that the resolution then under consideration had been framed with a deliberate view to override existing vested interests, was highly mischievous, and, had not Dr. Williams promptly demonstrated that the terms of the resolution had been entirely misconstrued by Mr. Luckie, might have initiated a most vexatious antagonism to this very important movement. It is not impossible, as we all well know, to find persons who delight in constituting themselves the champions of private rights, and who would not hesitate to protest against the legislative enforcement of

sanitary measures as an unconstitutional interference with proprietary privileges. From the recognised axiom that every Englishman's house is his castle, they infer that its invasion, on any pretence whatever, is despotism in its most odious form, and they will not admit any difference in this respect between the base of the castle and the floors above — between the Englishman's drain and his dining-room. These are precisely the persons who would have hailed the success of Mr. Luckie's manoeuvres with delight, whilst they would have deplored his discomfiture with no less genuine grief.

The absolute necessity for some immediate action iv reference to our present system of sewerage seems to be so generally recognised, that little, if any, opposition need be anticipated to the legislative enactments to which the report of the sewerage commission may be expected to give rise. There is, therefore, no need to weary our readers with a formal demonstration that each man's right of private property, like his ireedom of individual will, ends exactly at the point where its further extension would infringe on the similar rights of others. Naturalists tell us that in a beehive the movements of each little builder's feet tend to model the plastic wax in a circular form around him ; and that it is the similar exertions of the surrounding artificers, acting in a contrary direction, that reduce each cell to the hexagonal form. Just so, in haman societies, each individual's share of the collective power resulting from co-operation, is purchased (and cheaply purchased too) by a partial sacrifice of personal independence, compressed on all sides by the contrary development of like rights — equally expansive, and similarly restrained. So that any bee in the social hive who seeks to widen his hexagon into a sphere, finds himself immediately opposed by the six neighbors whose respective lodgings would be narrowed by such an encroachment.

This principle, embodied in the wellknown maxim of our common law — eic utcre tuo ut alienum non Icedas (so use

your own property as not to injure

another's) — establishes a broatl distinction between the dining-room and the cesspool or drain, as subject-matters of private property. For, in using the first, a man can hardly annoy his neighbor ; wheveas in using the second, or in neglecting the third, he pollutes his neighbor's air as well as his own. In fact it too often happens that the soi-disanl champions of private right prove to be really if 3 rudest assailants ; trespassing on the liberties of others while denouncing the infringement of their own, and practising the very despotism of which they complain. The very essence of good government, it may be adder!, consists in protecting oppressed minorities against the dominion of the mass, whilst it defends also, with equally scrupulous concern, the interests of majorities, when in their turn oppressed by the tyranny of individual caprice.

Above all things, it must be borne in mind that whilst sanitary measures of this description prolong the terra and enhance the enjoyment of our individual existence, by bringing its material conditions into closer conformity with the laws of nature, it is not a merely physical emancipation which they are gradually working out. Each alleviation of bodily disease and drudgery absolves also our nobler faculties from the reaction of a degrading bondage, and makes us at once fitter and freer for the pursuit of those high destinies which, albeit originating amidst the corruptions of the present, have their term in the brightness of futurity. It secure these inestimable advantages, what self-abnega-tions are we called upon to practice — what perils to encourter — what personal sacrifices to undergo? Noue — absolutely none. In the very lowest, as well as in the highest sense of the term, we shall be gainers, each and all of us, by the progress of sanitary reform ; and our private interests, personal and pecuniary, are closely bound up in the success of a cause, which might well inspire, and would worthily requite, the most heroic self-devotion.