The Express.
London, England, 1846-11-07 00:00:00

Ave 1 1 ling*

MAILS.
The mails for Corunna, Vigo, Oporto, Lisbon, Madeira, Cadiz, and
Gibraltar, will be made up on the morning of the 7th November
(this day.)
The overland cloned mails, rid Mormilles,to the Mediterranean,
F.gypt, Aden, Ceylon, India, llong-Kong, Be., will be made up on the
livening of the 7th November (this day).
The mails for British North America, Bermuda, and the United
States, will be made up on the evening of the 18th November.
71/e overland reads for Gibraltar, Malta, Greece, the lonian Islands,
Egypt, Aden, Ceylon, India, Hong-Kong, and Chinn, rid Southampton,
will be made up on the morning of the 20th November.

TO CORRESPONDENTS.
We aumot notice, In any way, any communication that is sent to as
anonymously' but those who choose to address us in confidence will
And their confidence r NEITHER CAN WE UNDERTAKE
TO RETURN ANY USCRIPTS WHATEVER.
We shall be glad to have details from JUSTITIA and time lien.
• Advertisements intended for TAe Express, London evening paper,
must be at the Office by Two o'clock on the day of publication.

MOH WATER AT LONDON-BRIDGE.
Dos Dar. —Morning, I min. past 4; Afternoon, 21 min. past 4.
to-noniow.—Morning, 42 min. past 4 ; Afternoon, 2 min. past 3.

LONDON, SATURDAY, NOV. 7.

HEALTHY life and sound reason are recognised
blessings—teen to a truism. " The sound mind in
the sound body" is the consummation of practical
philosophy. The theoretic value of such a boon is
universally admitted. Governments, hitherto, have
not ;thought it necessary to drive men to its pursuit
by threats and compulsion. In a matter obviously
of every one's concern it has been assumed that
every one would be active. The opposite assumption
would have been nearer the truth. The last thing an
average man thinks of is the preservation of his
health. He will postpone all thought of it to the
gratification of the most trifling appetite. He feels
abundant fear of death, wheu the phantom ap-
proaches him on the scaffold, the field of battle,
or the bed of sickness. Bat let him ride unseen
on the exhalations of a grave-yard, or the miasma
of a cesspool, and we shut him into our houses,
pen him within our bed-curtains, inhale him greedily
into our lungs, eat him with our food, and drink him
with our drink. We make a bosom friend of him.
Ile plays amongst our children until his moment
comes, and then he strikes them with fever. He
goes about reaping an abundant and unwatched har-
vest. We even furnish him with weapons. He may
not strike with the knife, nor administer arsenic ; but
he may fill our streets and impregnate our houses
with gases whose operation is as deadly, though not
so rapid, as either steel or poison. Science can de-
tect him by analysis ; medicine discovers his presence
in the crowded fever-ward and raging epidemic.
Politicians, statists, and philanthropists trace his
withering activity in the tables of mortality, and the
harrowing details of the visiting society.
The terrible enemy of all has hitherto had his work
aided rather than obstructed by each successive
advance of civilization. The triumphs of mind over
matter have been, like the victories of PYR11111:8, only
lees fatal than defeats. Machinery has collected
population in masses, and quickened the rate of their
increase; with the enlargement of productive power,
and it may even be at a more rapid ratio. Wherever
a large town has grown up, with a dense labouring
population, the seeds of death have been sown with
those of life.

Society, hitherto, has acquiesced in this state of
things. Individuals have allowed it to continue from
selfishness, supineness, but chiefly from ignorance.
Governments have done nothing to change it, from a
mistaken notion of their functions, and a natural but
short-sighted indifference to mischief, of which they
did not personally experience the pressure, or ade-
quately conceive the consequences.
This apathy has disappeared in some quarters, is
disappearing in others. Wise and benevolent men
first forced on the executive the subject of sanatory
regulations about eight years ago. Commissions were
formed, and reports issued, at various times between
1838 and 1843.
" The result of these various inquiries has been,"
in the words of the committee of the Health of Towns
Association, " the collection of a body of evidence of
the highest order relative both to the extent and
intensity of the evils in question, and to the proper
legislative remedies; nod the publication of this
evidence will, in the opinion of your committee,
form an era in the history of legislation, there being
no other instance known to them in which evils of so
much magnitude have been proved to be so generally
prevalent; in which the search after efficient and
permanent remedies has been attended with a success
so unquestionable and so unquestioned ; in which the
mode of giving practical effect to these remedies has
been so satisfactorily shown ; and, consequently, in
which so much has been done at once to guide the
legislature and to instruct and prepare the public
mind for cordial co-operation with it."
The evils disclosed in the evidence collected by the
Health of Towns Commission, appointed in 1843,
were appalling. Drain and sewer, main and cistern,
court and alley, earth, water, and air, bad each their
catalogue of horrors, their black list of long-continued
neglects and fatal consequences. Side by side with
the mischiefs were arrayed the remedies. The in-
quiries had been under the direction of men
thoroughly devoted to their work, possessed of the
purest benevolence, and the most practical know-
ledge. Foremost among; these stood Dr. Sorra-
WOOD SMITII,---it name not to be mentioned without
Ilreverence by all who sympathise with the miseries
of their species. The report of the commission
furnished a basis for public sanatory operations such
as no government ever yet possessed. It showed,
what was indeed indispensable to its future useful-
ness, how the changes it urged and the restraints
it recommended, could be enforced without confisca-
tion of property or interference with private rights,
beyond what is involved in the very idea of govern-
ment. It taught the world, in fact, that sanatory
regulations came within the sphere of a government's
duties—that they furnished, indeed, the very centre