Parliament joyfully did nothing for the welfare
of the people. The removal of some grave
social evils—the existing laws of Settlement
and Poor Removal, for example—had been
promised, but the merest fiction of pre-occupation
with a subject which required little or
no parliamentary discussion, was held
sufficient to excuse in our law-makers the neglect
of almost all their proper duties. So it was
when war was coming: and we shall not fare
better now that war is come; unless we take
pains to help ourselves. It is precisely
in a land burdened with foreign war that a
true statesman would labour most to compensate
for trouble so incurred by the relief of
home vexatious and distresses. Plans for
the bettering of our social state are precisely
the plans which ought not, when we are
paying war taxes, to be voted inopportune.
The calamity of war is doubled, if we must
needs stand still in our civilisation while
it lasts.

The calamity of war is great, and so is its
responsibility. And great is the need that we
act vigorously for the sake of bringing it to a
right close. But, greater still is the calamity
of pestilence; and as, to us at least, heavier
responsibilities attend upon it, inasmuch as it
is kept on foot, not by the Bedlamite ambition
of one foreign madman, but by our own neglect.
Is then the need of vigorous action for the sake
of checking the incessant ravages of death
among ourselves so small, that we may set it
aside for years on the excuse of engagement
in another sort of war? If the Duke of Fussy
Munchasausage declared war to-morrow
against England, should we leave the Russians
free to invade all our coasts, because, in defending
ourselves against Munchasausage, it would
be necessary to attend to nothing else, and
because it would be absolutely necessary to
neglect defence against the greater enemy
while we opposed the lesser? By as much as
the Czar is more formidable than any such
Duke, by so much is Typhus a more deadly
enemy than any Czar. Let us therefore, by
all means carry on both wars: we can;
nay, if we are to carry on any war long, and
not be driven to recruit our soldiers from a
disheartened and enfeebled people, we must.

But, as we said before, the Must has to be
spoken by the people. It is necessary that
we pay attention to our own affairs, and look
after our servants. They excuse a want of
cleanliness by bluntly accusing their
employers of a taste for dirt. Sir William
Molesworth, sitting as a government official
at the Board of Health, would not allow the
Public Health Act to be introduced in any
place, or under any circumstances, where the
majority of the inhabitants were against it.
Within a certain limit, until ignorance and
prejudice are somewhat dissipated, this is
wise policy,—and by the act itself such policy
was recognised. But it was provided also,
and most righteously provided, that if in any
place the yearly mortality exceeded twenty-three
in a thousand, the board might, as it
saw fit, interfere on behalf of sufferers. The
representative of government never saw fit so
to interfere. All the medical men of Portsmouth,
the clergy and the whole intelligence
of the place, declared for the introduction into
that town of the Public Health Act. The
mortality from preventible disease was so
excessive, that it would have been most fit to
interfere; but no interference was allowed by
government, because a bare majority
petitioned to be left alone. And yet it was known
that this majority was due to the exertions of
small landlords, by whom the poorer tenants
were compelled to sign against their own
relief.

The Board of Health as it is now constituted
has worked to the extent of its powers
indefatigably; but, for the performance
of its duties, it is equipped with funds
and powers miserably scanty. Few things
are more necessary to the maintenance of
health in towns than a system of industrious
inspection. The smallness of the number
of deaths in the City of London during the late
epidemic, has been due mainly to the fact that
the City Sewers Commission is served by a
most energetic officer of health, whose
services are above all praise; and who has,
established under him, a staff of vigilant inspectors
visiting from house to house and room to
room, all places likely to breed fever, and by
whose oversight, landlords and tenants are
compelled to maintain their premises free
from pollution. Water supply has been to
a certain extent superintended, all house
drains have been trapped, and the best has
been made of such imperfect provision for the
maintenance of health as, at this time, exists
in London.

The other parts of the metropolis have been
less favoured and have suffered in proportion.
The Metropolitan Sewers Commissioners who
have dominion in the metropolis outside the
City, constitute another of those boards from
which nothing is to be had and nothing
hoped. It behaves in the spirit of a select
body of engineers looking upon a consideration
of public health when applied to public
works, as a ridiculous innovation and a great
stretch of impertinence. Its engineer issues
reports, and gives evidence, manifesting a gross
ignorance or disregard of the elementary
principles of sanitary science. Its members
absolutely scoff at ideas which concern the
lives of the inhabitants of London.

Some time ago the dangerous state
of the drains under our streets and houses
was pointed out in this journal in an
article entitled, A Foe Underfoot. "A
Foe Underfoot! " said a leading Commissioner
merrily to his comrades when they
met upon a subsequent occasion. "Where else
would you have him? I like to have my enemy
under my foot." The enemy in question being
a poisonous gas, the sense of the joke was not
much better than the feeling that it