The Press.
London, England, 1858-06-26 00:00:00

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T H

mirage; re- liretantlyOGS to stifrocrilion
in preference to poisoning. TIM Templar wishes
that he had chosen the Chancery Bar, and
placed Fleet-street between himself and the
Thames bouquet. The young " soupirant," who
had hoped to urge his suit successfully during a
holiday trip to Greenwich, sickens under his ,
fair one's eye, and in a faint voice begs for the
salts, which it demands all her tenderness to
resign. The hapless alderman, whom business
has led within sight and smell of the banks of
filth reeking under a tropical sun, droops his
ample chin on his breast, and resigns a hope
more Substantial than that of the lover. "11 y
a mille maitresses—il n'y a qu'un diner,"
and for that one great event of the day he is
utterly, hopelessly unfitted. Mat is turtle to a
dizzy head and a greasy stomach ? But we must
quit these heartrending details. Enough, that
the grievance is universally felt—is the prevail-
ing theme of the daily prints, and is forced on
our consideration as an inevitable subject of our
weekly commentary. We have already pointed
out the manner in which the Metropolitan Board
of Works set about its special task of purifying
the Thames, and the style in which Sir B. HALL
contrived, after calling again and again for
amended plans, finally to hang up the scheme
which embodied the last amendments of the
Board, and which might have been now far ad-
vanced towards completion. But we are bound
to remind our readers that the incompetence of
an individual in this matter does not exonerate
the public. If John Bull were resolute, he would
get his work done. But we procrastinate, we
grumble, we theorise, while there is a pressing
call for action. Not till some irremediable evil
has been sustained do we bestir ourselves in
earnest. Despite all the practical good sense for
which we give ourselves credit, we are open to
the charge made long ago by DEMOSTHENES
against his unready countrymen. " You con-
" duct your campaigns," said the orator, "as the
barbarians box. Hit them on one side, they
turn thither ; on the other side, round go their
" hands." To paraphrase his conclusion, with
us, as with the unskilled pugilist, the attempt at
prevention follows the blow. We made our-
selves ridiculous in the Baltic for want of gun-
boats, but then we had a glorious naval review
after the war I We repaired our Crimean mis-
management, but not till it had cost us much pre-
cious time and more precious lives. Tne months
wasted at the commencement of the Indian out-
break wrought us incalculable mischief—" cooled
our friends, heated our enemies," and fatally over-
taxed the energies of men who, if duly supported,
would have been equal to any emergency. The
Thames question has thus far exhibited the same
dangerous tendency to wait till we have been
struck. In one sense, indeed, our measures can
never be too late: let the purifying of the river
come when it may, it will be a great national
blessing. But it may come too late to prevent a
visitation, compared with which all the daily
annoyances to which we have alluded are but
trifles. Unwilling as we are to seem prophets
of evil, we cannot permit our readers to forget
that by our neglect of an essential precaution we
are inviting the cholera to this crowded metro-
palis—that it may be even now at our doors.
We lay no stress on the single case of the dock-
yard labourer which has been reported—our
alarm rests on wider grounds. We see in the
midst of our city a great reservoir of filth and
miasma, which is not even allowed to remain at
rest. We eve a variety of minor outlets for
noxious and pestilential effluvia which the insuf-
ficient supply of water for flushing our great sewers
obliges us to leave open. We feel a degree of heat
probably unequalled at the same early season since
DM. And all these elements of mischief are at
work M., the very time of the year when water
excursions are most popular, and when, if there
were no other causes to predispose to cholera,
the temptations to indiscretion in diet arc most
various and most fraught with danger. We have
Ogg spoken with a single medical man who does
Mak consider the conjuncture peculiarly. favour-
stoic _to the development of that Asiatic pest of
fth the germs seem always to exist among us ;
*alb, latent in ordinary seasons with ordinary
preovestion.
For the present summer it is too clear that pallia-
tives only are possible; especial cleanliness, the
liberal use of disinfectants, especially along the
sistilaing mud-twanks of the river, achlitiowil
i•TarJHrTior.l.l) 131.11 d. ;.7 ) •. • , 4,1 t rot