The Northern Daily Times.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1857-01-15 00:00:00

should be
_p_ointed out by the landlord or any
other respectable person, although they, the
police, did not personally see the violence com-
mitted ; and, therefore, that the police in this
case did quite right in going into the public-
house to take the person who committed the
assault into custody. They were in the proper
discharge of their duty when the assault was
committed."

But the police regulations of Liverpool are not
only defective in the matter alluded to ; they
are inconsistent, and in other respects encourage
a system of espionage which is as hateful as it is
annoying. Few people of manly and indepen-
dent spirit can tolerate or sanction the dodges
and schemes which are adopted ; and the " eaves
dropping " propensities and practices which are
encouraged, for the purpose of securing a convic-
tion for selling liquor before or after the legal hours.
Any one who attends our police courts on a
Friday will there be able to learn some of the
secrets of a system that positively encourages, on
the part of the police, rudeness, hypocrisy, and
false pretences, so that some unwary publican
may be entrapped, fined, and a mark put against
his licence. We will return to this subject on
another occasion.

THE Pike agitation has resolved itself, for the
moment, into a question of life and death. The
Ratepayers appear to have forgotten the extrava-

gant cost of the shameless job, in their anxiety
to decide whether they are to have Epsom salts
for breakfast and Seidlitz water for dinner, or
vice versa. That they are to be " dosed " they
feel quite certain ; and they are desirous to
know whether the salinous beverage will, in
in either case, have the same effect on the sys-
tem. We are inclined to think they will. It is
not many years since the whole of the inhabi-
tants of Tunbridge were nearly poisoned by
impure water ; and the people of Southampton
were very near sharing the same fate at a later
date. The water supplied to both towns was
bad ; and when it got into the pipes and cisterns,
it produced a disease among the inhabitants
called " lead-colic." Fearing the Corporation
Pikeists may doubt this, we will quote their own
chemist's history of this occurrence. Dr. TAYLOR,
in his work on poisoning—that same book which
excited so much attention during the Rugeley
enquiry before the coroner—says, " poisoning
" by carbonate of lead is of some interest to the
" medical jurist—l allude to the impregnation
" of water with this substance by contact with
" metallic lead. This metal, it is well known,
" is largely used for water cisterns and pipes ;
" and, under certain circumstances, hydroated
" oxide and carbonate of lead are apt to be
" formed in large quantities, and to be diffused
"in the water. * • * It is important to the
medical jurist to bear in mind, that the purer
" the water, or the less saline matter it contains,
" the more it is liable to acquire this poisonous
" impregnation." There is something exceed-
ingly consolatory in this assurance.

Dr. TAYLOR adds, however, that pure water
has no effect on lead " unless there be a free
" access of air." There is no safety, then, when
we get pure water into our open cisterns ; and
the same authority informs us that, " When
" water thus 'contaminated with carbonate of
" lead is used, symptoms of poisoning may sud-
" denly affect a whole family, without the cause
" being at first apparent ; or one or more cases
" of chronic poisoning by lead may unexpectedly

" show themselves among the members of a
" household where such water is drunk." What
will the Pike jobbers say to this ? Venders of
water ought to look closely to the quality of the
commodity in which they deal, before they.
attempt to offer it to a community. Dr. TAYLOR
tells them in his book, that " There are two kinds
" of water liable to become poisoned when kept in
" contact with lead under a free access of air.
" First—That which abounds in carbonic acid ;

" second—That which contains little or no saline
" matter." To which of these classes the Riving_.
ton water belongs has not been very clearly
defined. We have already been told " that the
" purer the water and less saline matter it con-
" tains, the more it is liable to acquire the
" poisonous impregnation." It is quite evident,
then, that we are not in a position to receive the
Rivington supply, even assuming it to be as good
and pure as Dr. TAYLOR thinks it. The.only salt
which prevents the corrosion of lead is, according
to the learned doctor's opinion, the sulphate of
lime, and it is only where he has found that this
salt amounted to the 5,000 th part of the weight
of the water that no carbonate of lead was pro-
duced ! ,

Now Dr. TAYLOR does not say one word about
the presence of the sulphate of lime, in his analy-
sis. If he had done so, he must have declared
the water was hard instead of soft. This was
not what the Pikeists wanted to hear. Their
water is compared to the best loch water of Scot-
land, and as Dr. TAYLOR has given us some in-
formation about this water in his book, we will
quote it. He says—" The Edinburgh water,
" according:to Dr. CHRISTIAN, contains about the
"12,000 th part of its weight of saline matter; and
" has but feeble action on lead. That used at
" Tunbridge some years since contained only the
" 38,000 th part—a quantity so small, that with a
" knowledge of these facts, it is not surprising
" that the water should have become contaminated
" with lead, and have given rise to lead-colic among
" the inhabitants. The same fact has been more
" recently observed in the water of Southampton.'
These statements, coupled with Dr. TAYLOR'S
analysis, to which we briefly referred yesterday,
are quite sufficient to show us the danger of
allowing the Rivington water into our pipes and
cisterns. The Edinburgh water contains 7-12ths
less saline matter than is required to prevent poison-
ing by lead, and the Rivington samples tested
by the learned Doctor contains considerably less
of the health preserving salines than he found in
water which " gave rise to lead colic among the
" inhabitants of Tunbridge and Southampton."
And now we think m e may ask—what is the
Pikeists' chemical analysis worth ? If the
Rivington water is nothing more than Dr. TAYLOR
describes it, and if water which contains the
15,000 th part of its weight of saline matter is
likely to become impregnated with lead, what