with regret, because the rich land of
far-off new States offers temptations, which their native soil cannot
present.

It is certainly of great importance to the old States, to inquire into
these matters, and set proper bounds to the use of streams for
water-powers. The associated wealth and influence of manufacturers, is
always more powerful than the individual efforts of the land-owners.

Reservoirs are always growing larger, and dams continually grow higher
and tighter. The water, by little and little, creeps insidiously on to,
and into, the meadows far above the obstruction, and the land-owner must
often elect between submission to this aggression, and a tedious
law-suit with a powerful adversary. The evil of obstructions to streams
and rivers, is by no means limited to the land visibly flowed, nor to
land at the level of the dam. Running water is never level, or it could
not flow; and in crooked streams, which flow through meadows, obstructed
by grass and bushes, the water raised by a dam, often stands many feet
higher, at a mile or two back, than at the dam. It is extremely
difficult to set limits to the effect of such a flowage. Water is flowed
into the subsoil, or rather is prevented from running out; the natural
drainage of the country is prevented; and land which might well be
drained artificially, were the stream not obstructed, is found to lie so
near the level, as to be deprived of the requisite fall by back water,
or the sluggish current occasioned by the dam.

These obstructions to drainage have become subjects of much attention,
and of legislative intervention in various forms in England, and some of
the facts elicited in their investigations are very instructive.

In a discussion before the Society of Arts, in 1855, in which many
gentlemen, experienced in drainage, took a part, this subject of
obstruction by mill-dams came up.

Mr. G. Donaldson said he had been much engaged in works of
land-drainage, and that, in many instances, great difficulties were
experienced in obtaining outfalls, owing to the water rights, on the
course of rivers for mill-power, &c.

Mr. R. Grantham spoke of the necessity of further legislation, "so as to
give power to lower bridges and culverts, under public roads, and
straighten and deepen rivers and streams." But, he said, authority was
wanting, above all, "for the removal of mills, dams, and other
obstructions in rivers, which, in many cases, did incalculable injury,
ma