The Express.
London, England, 1847-11-03 00:00:00

the question who is to preside over the health
of towns. More than all, we an. threatened
with the cholera. Let the municipal and parochial
authorities show themselves equal to the emergency.
They cannot any longer plead want of power. The
Nuisances Removal Act of lad session invests them
with liberty of action, and furnishes them, besides,
with a simple legal machinery for applying their
powers to offenders. There is no reason why any
borou4h blessed with a town council or a board of
guardians should be any longer poisoned from its
sewers, or fever-stricken from its cesspools. The in-
c•-hitants of the nuisance-ridden quarter have but to
comp ,4 ma; &
•'-..'• complaint with a medical
lan., M
• .
certificate. The governing uq...„ feouncn, jfl.
ticca, or boards of guardians, as the case may be, issue
their summons to the owner or occupier. If he neg-
lects to attend their court, and fails to abate the nuis-
ance, the complainant receives from thecourt authority
to do it for him, and saddle the defaulter with
all the coats, legal and local. This short and
simple net puts a broom into every hand.
It only demands a sense of the nuisance from
an inhabitant, and a complaint arising, to lead
to a prompt abatement of the source of annoyance.
The measure will act usefully in more ways than one.
It will supply not only a relief but a test. It will
rid towns of their nuisances and rob local laziness of
au argument. The usual plea to all charges of neglect
of sanitary duty brought against municipal bodies
has been, hitherto, want of power. This plea is
barred since the statute 9 and 10 Viet., chap. 96, cams
into operation. Moreover, this act may help us t•
evidence of the real concern of the country in sanitary
matters.

The agitation of these subjects has hitherto pro-
needed chiefly from scientific philanthropists, most of
them medical practitioners. But we have little proof
that the people who chiefly suffer from neglect of
sanitary precautions are themselves awake to their
danger, or sensible of the amount of their losses, pecu-
niary and otherwise. But since this act was passed, if
they tolerate a nuisance, it may be argued that they
are careless of its operation. They don't complain be-
cause they do not feel. 'They suffer, but it is from
unseen causes. Fever strikes in secret. Malaria
cannot be weighed and handled. Plague walks in-
visible, until abut up in the condensing apparatus of
the chemist.

There is reason to fear that the people of this
country are insensible, on the whole, to the poisons
they breathe, and the filth that surrounds them. In
the worst cases both minds and senses have become
subdued to the atmosphere that surrounds them.
Item health is in these cases an unknown blessing,
and like coined money to a savage. There are thou-
sands who ':ndcrstand the good of a glass of gin, for
one who appreciates the effects of a good washing.
Few, who have not had the reflections forced on
them by science, in some form or other, ever reflect
that we swallow air just as much as we do food or
drink; that there are poisonous 'orms of the former
just as mach as there are deadly preparations
of the latter ; that as far as air-diet goes,
there are thousands daily rationed on prussic
acid, in forms more or less diluted. With the facts
before our eyes, and the fears in our hearing, there
may now be some chance of the sanitary reformer
being heard. We have almost grown weary of re-
peating the startling results of sanitary inquiry. We
are tired of reminding readers that every year wit-
nesses a slaughter from preventible causes as fatal as
Waterloo—that in Lancashire alone the sum total of
such preventible deaths amounts to upwards of 10,000
—that the Londoner on the average throws away
eight years of life, and the inhabitants of Liverpool
nineteen—that in a square mile of country the mor-
tality is 1 in 52, while in the worst town districts of
the same area it is I in 37 annually—that for
I death in 56 inhabitants of Hackney, there is
1 in 19 of St. Olaves—that the unnecessary
sicknesses average yearly I,6Bo,ooo—the unne-
cessary widows 27,000—the unnecessary orphans
100,000, the unnecessary funerals 60,000—that all
this represents but a tithe of the loss sustained by the
diminution of productive labour, the unnecessary
charges on the poor rates, on hospitals, an dispensa-
ries, on the thousand forms of public and private
charity, and no little of the criminality of the coun-
try. All these truths arc becoming " flat, stale, and
unprofitable" by dint of repetition. We are anxious,
at present, to recall to the minds of those in autho-
rity, both in the metropolis and the provinces, that
there is an act, above referred to, which gives local
bodies the necessary powers for summarily abating
nuisances of all denominations. Whether the cholera
be hovering about our shores or not, there is no ques-
tion that fever is at home amongst us. He at
least is no visitor, but a constant guest
sitting at the poor man's door, always, and
not seldom setting his terrible foot across the
rich man's threshold. If it were but to cut off his
supplies, local authorities should vigorously and gene-
rally bring into play their powers under the stet. 9 and
10 Viet., chap. 96. If cholera comes into the bargain,
they will find the business on their hands so increase
that the mach dreaded Board of Health will very
likely bo prayed for by the general voice of the
country. Bat in the mean time they may either pro-
long their tenure of power, or grace their relinquish-
ment of it by doing what they can for the removal of
glaring, staring, stinking nuisances, wherever such
exist.

If they neglect this duty, the responsibility which
now lies on them will weigh ten times heavier. They
have mach to answer for in the past. If they remain
inactive they will find, in due time, that they were
destined to have still more to answer for in the future.
It rests with them to leave the field to cholera, or to
struggle with him to leave his favourite allies, filth,
stench, and poison, in full occupation of their vantage
ground, or to best the main army by cutting off these,
its supporting reserves.
The means of carrying on the war are within their
reach. Neglect of them can only be explained by.
treachery, or incapacity, or supineness. Whichever of
the three they rest under at last, they are equally
convicted of unfitnemi for that duty which they will
not delegate to other hands, though hitherto they have
fulfilled so little of it with their own.

TIIE chaplain of the Preston Hoare of Correction
has succeeded in giving a peculiar interest to his
annual reports, by his great care in investigating and
classifying the causes of crime. This care,
ther with the peculiar interest attached tetra
observation of a district so full of manu-
facturing life, attracts more than common atten- •
tion to these annual reports. That before us
contains matter of grave interest and of congratulation.
Crime is evidently on the decrease in that part of Lan-
cashire consisting of the hundreds of Amounderness,
Blackburn, Leyland, and Lonsdale. Similar im-
provement is visible throughout the entire county;
but we at present confine ourselves to the particular
text of the document before us. The indictments at
the Preston sessions, and the summary commitments
in the above hundreds for the years 1843 to 1847 in-
clusive (the criminal year ending June 30th), were as
follows: 1843, 2,050; 1844, 1,549; 1845, 1,183; 1846,
1,105; 1847, 1,144. The rapidity of the improvement
is very striking. The slight increase in the last over the
immediately proceeding years is neither very remark-
able nor important. Such minor fluctuations in the
tides of crime may always be expected, arising from
local or special causes. In this instance, the causes
have been but too well known, namely, the depression
of trade and the sanity of work. In 184.5 and 1846
trade was prosperous, employment abundant. From
the middle of 1846 the operatives of Lancashire have
been severely tried, but they have borne their priva-
tions on the whole with a dignity and patience which
arc truly commendable : the reverend gentleman
bears ample testimony to this remark, and
offers a well-merited tribute of respect to their
' calm fortitude under sufferings which have been
little less severe than those of many who have trum-
peted their calamities and clamoured for relief most
noisily. One of the most curious and important
results of the analysis of the tables given in this
report, and one which indicates how much an ample
scheme of national education would do for the pre-
rent ion of offences against the law, is the fact, that,
although the want of employment was the remote
cause of the increase of crime, the immediate cause
was not the distress, but the idleness, conse-
quent upon it. Persons accustomed to a life of
activity, when suddenly cut off from their cus-
tomary avocations, are thrown upon their own
resources to kill the time—and, if uneducated, unahle---_.,
to find occupation sad snamment in tb ,
forced, by thevery =band craving forldt.. • At ,:
merit which is so an attribute it. • . '"
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