parish; and to take the necessary measures of
precaution on behalf of the poor under their
charge. Will any reader look at Clerkenwell
—go into the odious by-streets of Clerkenwell
—and sit down to dinner afterwards with
what little appetite he may, and think of these
Guardians in this present advanced year of
grace! The ordinary causes of this kind of
blindness on the part of local boards are
notorious enough. Some members think
more of their own shops than of their neighbours'
homes, and say to themselves, "Why
should we offend or frighten away
customers?" Perish the thought. Perish the
neighbours, and success to trade! That last
sentiment may not occur to them, but
certainly it should. This unwillingness to lie
under the imputation of begetting or
harbouring anything pestilential is manifest
enough whenever there is general attention
paid to a prevailing epidemic. Towns and
even cities, against which a faint accusation
of infection may have been made, rush to
the advertising columns of the Times, and
there, if their doctors guarantee them to be
clean, placard their cleanness. Even the great
city of York during the late visitation, having
been wrongfully accused of harbouring the
cholera, advertised a disclaimer signed by a
brigade of doctors. It is in this spirit that,
when infection does appear in any place, the
local managers of its affairs are so often disposed
to remain blind to it as long as possible.
Not only they who represent the meaner
interests of trade, but they who are concerned
about house property—small or large house
owners, being guardians or town
councillors—are apt to oppose ideas that
lead to the cost of altering and amending
houses ill-equipped or ill-constructed. There
prevails also a mistaken idea of economy in
the administration of parish or district
affairs. It would be a task of no great difficulty
to teach an ordinarily tractable Idiot,
that the economy which cripples health is, of
all kinds of extravagance, the worst.

At Newcastle, great numbers of people
have been killed by the refusal of the
Corporation to interfere for the removal of
unhealthy conditions, upon which a special
commission had reported in the strongest
terms to Parliament. Of the report of the
commission the authorities of Newcastle took
little or no notice. One of the greatest
conflagrations known in England by the present
generation has very lately been committing
havoc upon Tyne-side. Thereupon men thank
Heaven, and refer to the days when the
plague of London was killed by the great
fire of London, that devoured the food on
which the plague was nourished. With
certain factories and shops, there have been
burnt to the ground at Newcastle and Gateshead
many of the worst of those filthy chares
and dwellings by the water-side, in which
fever had fixed its permanent abode. But is
that not a great calamity which has
destroyed forty or fifty human lives? That is a
great calamity which at any time destroys the
lives of innocent and useful people—of whom
there were many in this case—but we think
the Newcastle fire a less calamity than that
which it has superseded,—the existence of a bit
of town destroying hundreds yearly; we think
it not so much a calamity as the possession
by any town of a town council, or by any
parish of a governing board, under any name
that allows pestilence to slaughter men from
day to day, from year to year, from generation
to generation, and opposes no check to its
cruelty.

Men higher in rank, who should have ampler
knowledge, need also to be instructed in their
duty by the public. A nobleman whose character
as a paid protector of the public health was
very bad, might be so far ashamed of it as to
desire its complete destruction. He might
destroy it, no doubt, perfectly, by rising in his
place in Parliament, and there making some
joke, awfully ill-timed, about the cholera. But
such a public act would be a solemn affair in
its way. It would be serious as formal suicide
in Japan; where, it is said, that any gentleman
who has found life a burden asks
his friends to dinner; and, when they are all
seated together, rises, delivers a neat sentiment,
and gives it emphasis by ripping
himself open. By such an act of what we should
take to be political suicide, LORD SEYMOUR,
late Chief Commissioner of Public Works,
distinguished himself towards the close of last
session in the House of Commons. But the
jeer with which he slew himself was taken
up by his companions. They chose to die by
the same weapon. The jest from which a
nation shrank appalled, awakened, among
members of the House of Commons, Cheers
and laughter.

From whom then is to come help against
the ravages of death by which we are afflicted?
There can scarcely be one reader of these
pages, out of his first childhood, who has not
lost by cholera, typhus-fever, small-pox, wreck
at sea, or other preventible calamity, some
house companion, or relative, or friend, whose
life he prized, and who might have been
living now, had all men done their duty. The
question about Public Health is a Home
Question to us all, affecting us more nearly
than any other conceivable question
terminating on this side of the grave.
Nevertheless it is proved by hard experience that
in this, as in every other domestic movement
calling for large measures of reform,
no progress can be made unless the
Nation as a body works at it. We must
all tug at the ropes, or push behind to
move the dead weight forward. We must
agree in demanding of our lawgivers efficient
service; and, that our demands may be to the
purpose, we must, as we do generally in such
cases, study to master the chief points which
we require to see decided. During the past
session, upon the excuse that War was coming,