The Express.
London, England, 1847-10-18 00:00:00

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LONDON, MONDAY, OCT. 18.
GREAT visitations are not sent for light ends.
Hurricanes, wars, pestilences, and famines, have pur-
poses not the less real for the mystery which veils
their operation, the apathy which disregards their
chastening, or the carelessness which forgets the les-
son of the scourge when the scourge itself has passed
away. Tha time may not be far distant when this
country is destined to the repetition of a terrible visi-
tation, of whose warning passage sixteen years ago,
no adequate use has been made either by the govern-
ment or the nation.
The cholera, it may be confidently asserted, is
steadily advancing westwards. The route already
traced by the disease corresponds very closely with
that which it took in 1830. The plague is now at
work on the borders of the Black Sea. The summer
may see it making havoc among the squalid serfs of
Russia. It may again descend the ])wino or the
Elbe, and, from ports in constant communication with
this kingdom, ship itself for the Thames, the Ham-
ber, or the Tyne.
So far, in its advance this year, it has found few
obstacles to its progress which did not exist
in 1430. Will it encounter any fresh and formidable
antagonism in Great Britain? Speaking from
what has been done, we should reply, but little. The
hasty precautions of 1831, inspired more by panic
fear than sober sustained purpose, have dropped into
disuse. Filth and fever have returned to revel in the
habitations from which the lime-pail and fumigating
apparatus frightened them for a short moment. The
scavenger's vocation in strange places is gone.
Boards of health, which sprang into being with the
cholera, dissolved as the cholera disappeared.
We can hardly wonder at this. We have scarcely
a right to complain of it. In 1831 sanitary know-
ledge was confined to a few. The health of towns'
question was still shut up in the sad experience of
such men as Dr. Soeruwooo SMITH and Mr. EDWIN
IDWICK. That lives were annually wasted, in
tens of' thousands, was a fact undreamed of by legis-
lative as by parochial authorities. To have asserted
then that a plague as fatal as the cholera was the
daily inmate of countless houses, would have been
looked upon as the raving of a pernicious and frantic
alarmist. The rights of life had not then set them-
selves up against the rights of property. Nuisances
enjoyed all the immunity of vested privilege.
Filth reposed on the basis of prescription. The old
ways were uncleansed, and conservatism stood upon
them proudly, with eyes unconscious of their abomi-
nation and noses plugged against their offence.
As far as mere knowledge goes, this state of things
is altered. We know now that the lower class of our
town and country population is exposed to the un-
ceasing decimation of inevitable fever. We know that
of every 1,000 born in our densely populated towns,
383 die under 3 years of age. We know that the ar-
tisan of London has a tenure of life for 22 years to the'
gentleman's 44. We know that there are districts in
London in which the average age, at death, of the
working man is 16 years. We know that in the
4,000,000 inhabiting our large towns there is a waste

of 22;000 lives every year.
Nor is this the worst of our knowledge. We know
that almost every unit among these deaths has its ac-
companiment, in many sicknesses, in privations un-
told, in the orphan children and the widow, and their
aggregate in increasing pauperism, over-crowded
workhouses, and an unsummed amount of ignorance,
immorality, and crime.
A wider comprehension has added to this sum of
mischiefs the negative evils of unhealthy constitutions,
hampered education, and undeveloped resources.)
Who can calculate how much of influence on the pre-
sent, and hope of the future, is locked up, lying idle,
like unproductive capital, in the constitutions and
characters of the working classes of Great Britain?
All these things we know ; and this is the best view
to take of the difference between what we are now
- and what we were in 1831. But little action has yet
ensued upon this knowledge. The ignorance, prejudice,
and apathy of local bodies have hitherto nullified the
active efforts of scientific benevolence, and paralysed
the good intentions of government. Parochial im-
portance has been alarmed by the demand for changes
which, properly understood, would have opened new
fields for its operation. The bugbear of a misun-
derstood" centralisation " has been evoked to answer
the demands of the commonest humanity and the
soundest reason. An idle word has conquered
a host of facts. Timid men have been frightened
into inactivity, and bold men bullied into
harmful opposition. What should be, above all others,
a common work for all municipal activities, has been
degraded into a subject of unseemly warfare. Prin-
ciples worthy of being the guiding principles of a
government have been degraded into the patty cries
of petty borough politics.
'l6e cholera, should it arrive among us in 1848, will
find much new knowledge arrayed against it, but few
material barriers to its progress raised since 1831. Its
presence may, however, serve to quicken the progress
of practical sanitary measures, and to frighten out of
the field much parochial obstinacy. Nor, we trust,
will the precautions which the visit of such a guest
must, doubtless, be thought to require, be dropped as
soon as the guest has withdrawn. Wo are bound to
improre the cholera of 1818. It will furnish us with
a good opportunity of erecting a solid and connected
system of sanitary supervision and compulsory sani-
tary law.
We are glad to sec that the newly-appointed com-
mission for the metropolis is already at work,
examining the condition of those districts in which
the cholera committed its worst ravages in 1832. But
Shadwell, Rotherbithe, and the Borough, bad as they
are, are not worse than Shoreditch, Whitechapel, or
Saffron-hill, nor so bad as some parts of Liverpool,
Glasgow, or Sheffield.
The appointment of the metropolitan sanitary
commission has already, as we have observed
borne good fruits. It has roused the loeaL
authorities, especially of East London, to unpre-
cedented activity in the hunting out and suppres-
'ion of nuisances. Never have we had to record
such a warfare on the sources of disease as within the
last two months. The BUMBLES are setting their I
house in order for the official visitation. But more
trustworthy indication of a better spirit is to be I
found in the provinces. Liverpool and Manchester,
especially the former, are carrying out much that wail,
contemplated in Lord MORPETII s abandoned bill of
last session. Other of our manufacturing towns arel
following the example.
We have before us a report furnished to the health'
committee of the Sheffield town council, which, while
it exhibits with painful distinctness the abominations
under which the town is suffering, shows also that
the spirit and ability to mitigate and remove them
exists in the municipal authorities of that important
borough. An intelligent system, with compulsory
powers and adequate supervision, is wanted to
enforce on our towns generally what the most
intelligent of our towns aro beginning to do
for themselves, without general enactments. It is
to be hoped that another session of parliament will
not pass without this being furnished. 'the country
is singularly impatient of ready promise and slow
performance. The bungling of last session may be
excused, but must not be repeated. Our hope is that
no plague will be needed to give body and reality, to
the abundant suggestions already at the command of
the legislature. .May we have to record 1818 as an
era unmarked by a strange and appalling pestilence,
but signalised to all time by the first great step in
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