The Express.
London, England, 1847-12-23 00:00:00

THE BISHOP OF LONDON'S PASTORAL
LETTER.

Rev. and dear Brethren,—There is every reason to
expect, as far as human judgment tan look forward to coming
events, that the cholera, that fearful sad mysterious disease,
which is again traversing the surface of the globe, and
tracing, in characters which even the careless can hardly fall
to read, the power of God and the helplessness of man, will
before long make its appearance on our shores. It is stated
in the first report of the metropolitan sanitary commission,
which has just been presented to parliament, that, according
to information received from the English consuls abroad, this
pestilence is steadily advancing upon precisely its former
track in 1832.
It appears to me that the near approach of this fearful
malady, while it gives to all • solemn warning, suggests
certain duties of a special kind as proper to be undertaken
by the ministers of religion, in addition to what may be
deemed the more peculiar functions of their spiritual office ;
and it is to these that I shall, in the first instance, request
your attention. As, on the one hand, it is clearly one of your
first duties to impress upon the minds of your people, what-
ever be their condition in His, the necessity of an implicit
trust in God, and of an entire submission to his will, se ea
the other hand you will discharge an office of real piety lad
charity in urging upon them the importance of removing aII
those physical causes which invite the approach of anassit
and aggravate its malignity; and in endeavouring is re.
spade them that, while we may not look for a blessing upon
the resources or contrivances of human skill if they are sot
employed in bumble reliance upon the power and goodness
of God, so neither, if we neglect to use all probable and
practicable means of prevention and preservation, ham we
any reason to expect that He will especially it team ao
rescue us from the consequences of our own negligence.
It is abundantly clear, from the inquiries which have been
made during the last few years, that the most powerful pre-
disposing causes and aggravations of disease amongst the
poorer inhabitants of our great towns VP, in the first place,
a want of cleanliness, and, in an inferior degree, intempe-
rance and an insufficiency of wholesome food.
With respect to intemperance, no fact was more clearly
proved than this, during the prevalence of the cholera in
this country, that it found its readiest and most helpless
victims amongst the votaries of drunkenness and vice.
But as a preservative from this, or from every other epi-
demic dimities, cleanliness is even more important than tem-
perance; more important, because the want of it is more
extensively mischievous. The intemperate man is rendered
liable, by lila Tide, 10 fall an easy prey te &aeon The
evil nits short his single life, and is so far personal only.
But it is the property of uncleanliness to propagate itself,
and its injarions conssersessoms A drynkord tom. be
rsedgthe cause of Ids gown untimely death, and than the
mortality ends ; but an uncleanly person will live in an un-
cleanly habitation ; and that person, and that habitation,
will be each a lamas of disease sod infection, when sick-
ness comes • a centre of contamination and death to a whole
neighbourhood • and with this additional and fatal peat-
lianty, that Uncleanliness speedily converts the milder
forms of disease irate the more malignant. The dirtiest
neighbourhoods were in every ease those where the cholera
first appeared, and where it assumed the mat fatal type
nor were instances wanting where it broke out to all ap-
pearance spontaneously, with no discoverable existing cause
but that of extreme filth.
It is stated by the autitan commissioners, that whereas,
" when it previously visited this country it was believed
that the moot powerful predisposition to this disease is in-
duced by improper or deficient food, and that for this reason
its chief victims are found amongst the poor. it is now uni-
versally admitted that a far more powerful predisponent is
the habitual respiration of an impure atmosphere ; that the
highest degree of susceptibility is produced where both these
conditions are combined—that is, where people live irregu.
laxly, or on unsuitable diet, and at the same time
filthily;
and that, in places in which a great degree of cleanliness is
maintained, the poor as well as the rich enjoy an exemption
from this disease. That on an examination of the actual
state of the back streets, lanes, courts, and alleys of the metro-
polis, it is found that in general little or no improvement
Les taken place in their sanitary condition since the preva-
lence of cholera in 1832 ; and that were this disease to break
out again, in the present state of these localities, there is no
reasonable ground to suppose that the pestilence would not
spread as extensively, and prove as fatal, as on ifs former
visitation."
These statements, which are borne out by abundantly.
sufficient evidence, appear to me clearly to point out a line
of duty for the parochial clergy, in which they may rendm
themselves eminently useful, and which is surely in class
correspondence with the mature of their office as the miniature
of a gospel of love ; for if to visit a sick parishioner and to
minister to his recovery be one of their plainest duties, it
is a still more blessed work of charity to rescue, under the
blessing of God, whole maws of their poorer brethren
from the inroads of disease.
Suffer me, then, reverend brethren, to urge upon you the
duty of an active personal co-operation with the authorities
of your respective parishes, or district', in carrying out
every practicable measure of sanitary precaution and
Improvement ; and of calling their attention to the sub-
ject, and inviting them to form local committees for that
purpose, where you perceive a want of knowledge or of
activity. Your own share in this work of real bene-
ficence will, for the most part, bo the not very easy
task of convincing those who are its objects of the advan-
tages of cleanliness; and of persuading them, by motives
of the most powerful personal kind, to adopt the suggestions,
and to submit to the regulations, which are intended to pro.
mote their safety and increase their comfort. You possess, from
the nature of your duties, a larger experience than almost any
other persona of the actual state of the dwellings of the poor,
and of the nature and extent of that evil, which is sometimes,
no doubt, the result of theirown ionorance or carelessness, but
much more frequently, at least in the metropolis and other
great towns, of deficiencies, which they have no means of
eupplying, and of obstacles to cleanliness, which it is the duty
of other persons to remove.
The poor of this country are not by nature, nor inclination,
indisposed to cleanliness on the contrary, it is almost al-
ways found, that if its means and appliances be placed within
their reach, so as to be aeceseible without much cost ce
trouble, they gladly avail themselves of them ; and it is
never to be forgotten, that if thousands and tens of thou-
sands of our fellow Christians are at this moment living,
and that too in the very neighbourhood of our most sump-
tuous palaces and hall, in the extreme depths of
physical, social, and moral degradation, and expend
to the most imminent danger of perishing by disease, that is
not entirely, often not at all, their own fault; but the fault
of those 'rinse duty it is, not only to teach them the benefits
of cleanliness and decency, but to do something towards
furnishing them with the means of being cleanly and decent,
which, under their actual circumstances, is nothing less than I
SD impossibility.
Intemperance and filthiness are too frequently the results
of want ; and unless something be done for the relief of ex-
treme indigence it will be an empty mockery to tell those
who are borne down and crushed by its weight that they
would bo less miserable if they were less filthy. Your
wealthier parishioners should be reminded that their poor
neighbours are, in too many cases, exposed to the clanger
of perishing by want, as well as by disease; and that if it be
a work of charity to protect them as far ,s human means can
protect them, from the inroads of pestilence, it is a still more
sacred and urgent duty to rescue them from death by starva-
tion. But this is so obvious a truth that a passing allusion
to it will be sufficient.
The extreme closeness and inconvenience of the miserable

tenements or apartments occupied by the poorest classes,
at rents the excessive amount of which cripples their
means of comfort and cleanliness; the inadequate supply of
water; the want of all provision for ventilation; the
absence of all convenience* for personal ablution and house-
hold
washing—these, and the disgraceful state of the sewer-
age in the most crowded parts of the metropolis, are causes
which engender or aggravate disease, and hurry great
numbers of our fellow-creatures and neighbours to an un-
timely grave.
Ido not hesitate to express my opinion, that such an
amount of practical and personal attention to the removal of
these evils, as may not seriously interfere with the discharge
of those duties which are of a more purely spiritual kind,
may be not unreasonably looked for on the part of those