The Express.
London, England, 1848-11-04 00:00:00

t
in orlil the having been Is prison would be a recom-
mesidation. Nor is this possible. Skill may be ao-
waked in prima—bat set character. So long
as pri!ons we the chosen places of punishment
for crime, a stigma, healthy and wholesome,
will necessarily attach to them. No teaching
can remove the taint of mime. Industrially,
even intellectually, the convict may be improved in
prison : but socially, morally, he must inevitably be
lowered. Under the best of systems, he must loss
more than he can gain : and there need be little fear
that the honest will fo.rget their virtues—give up
their characters--to obtain the most perfect education
which a prison could afford.
Cliptaint MACONOCIIietI mark system proposes a
solution of these difficulties. His plan ought to be
tried. His wonder at the apparent fruitlessness of his
labours is natural. He has not been well used.
Others begin to filch his ideas without acknowledg-
ment—and officers of government quote them with
approval. Why is he not tried? Surely we have
need of all our capacities in sash a work.

Tin Quarterly Returns of the Registrar-General,
which have just been published, and of which an ab-
stract appeared in onr columns of Thursday, exhibit,
we were happy to perceive, a considerable ameliora-
tion in the Mate of the public health, especially in
those manufacturing districts which suffered so
severely in the years 1846-7. This is particularly
cheering at the present moment, because, the better
the general health of the people, the less likelihood is
there that the Asiatic cholera will either spread very
widely, or prove very destructive' where it does pene-
trate. Its progress among us has as yet been re-
markably slow ; and indeed from its absence or infre-
quency in all the nearest parts of the continent, we
would be inclined to infer that the violence of the
epidemic is for the 'Jena abated, though it may
possibly break out with renewed malignity in the
spring.
To these cheering considerations the metropolis it-
self is, unfortunately, an exception. Twice over
in
his last report the Registrar-General is forced to
make this one melancholy exception. " The improve-
ment in the public health," says he, "is considerable
in all the divisioss except London ;" and again : "The
pressure of mortality has slightly increased in Lon-
don' though it has abated in the country." It is not
the first tame that it has been neeessary to make this
exception. Our own impression, from a tolerably
minute examination of the returns of late years, is,
that while in all other parts of England unhealthy
and healthy seasons succeed each other with some
thing of a due reaction, the health of the inhabitants
of this vast metropolis has for several years been gra-
dually deteriorating at a rate which, during the last
two years, has been most alarmingly accelerated.
Any of our readers who will take the trouble to
examine the last four pages of tables appended to the
Ninth Annual Report of the Registrar-General,
will find the evidence of this fact set before him, in a
very compact and convincing fashion. It contains a
comparative statement for each quarter of eight
years, 1840 to 1847, of the deaths that have taken
place in the Metropolitan Districts, classified accord-
ing to their causes. The more minutely this table is
examined, the more discouraging will the results
appear ; and the more perplexing, if an attempt be
made, to assign adequate causes for so I.rge an in-
crease in the mortality, resulting from nenly
every form of disease. Considerable attention has in-
deed bees already directed to the fact, that during the
last two years there has been an extraordinary in-
crease in the mortality from contagious end epidemic
diseases. But the public generally are not aware that
this increase has by no means been confined to what
are classed as zymotic diseases ; but that in fact there
is hardly any ailment to which the human frame is
liable, of which the fatal cases have not in our me-
tropolitan districts increased in a proportion far ex-
ceeding the highest ratio of increase that can be as-
signed to our population. It is to some of the most
striking instances of this, to us denizens of the great
metropolis, rather alarming state of things, that we
propose at present to direct our readers attention.
We shall in most instances content ourselves with
comparing the years 1840 and 1847. The romps-
risan of two isolated years is, we admit, not always a
safe criterion. But it so happens that 1840 was,
especially in the metropolis, an unhealthy year, and a
comparison between it and 1847 is therefore a stronger
condemnation of the latter. They are likewise the
extreme years in the data furnished by the Registrar-
General's reports.
A main element to be kept in view in inquiries of
this kind, and one which we must request our readers
not to lose sight of, is the probable Increase of our me-
tropolitan population in seven years. Calculated on
the basis furnished by the censuses of 1831-41, this
increase would be about 11 per cent.; nor do we
imagine that any extraneous causes have swelled it
muck above that proportion. If, then, we find in the
tables an increase, in the same period, of deaths from
most classes of disease in the proportion of from 30
per cent. to 100 per cent. and upwards, it is impos-
sible to avoid drawing the most unfavourable conclu-
sions as to the sanitary condition of the metro-
polis now, compared with what it was seven
years ago, especially if in many cases the
increase be a gradual one, and not solely attributable
to the transitory epidemics which have visited us for
the last two years. We have abstracted from
the Registrar-General's returns the totals for each
year; the tableau prepared by him, giving only the
totals for each quarter; a very convenient arrange-
ment for investigating the fluctuations of disease from
season to season, but not applicable to the comparison
which we are about to institute; there being some-
times an excessive mortality in one month or one
quieter of a year, whose total fatalities are below the
average. Our object is to compare the years ; and
the annual ravages of the principal maladies that
shorten the lives of the inhabitants of this metropolis.
The ling of the classes into which the returns are
divided are the Zymotic, or Epidemic and Contagious
'diseases. The deaths in this class were, in the eight
lyears 1840.7 respectively, 8,500, 8,980, 7,834,
10,132, 11,142, 9,524, 9,496, 13,887. The increase
is here entirely in the last year, the excess over 1840
being 63 per cent., and over 1846 so much as 46 per
cent. In some diseases of this class the increase is
mach greeter, and largest in those of the most malig-
nant character. 5,788 of the deaths from zymreic
disease in 1847 happened in the last quarter; of which
1,161 were from influenza, and 1,279 from typhus ; a
destructiveness unparalleled, we believe, in the re-
membrance of the past or present generation.
The influenza has likewise had the principal hand
in swelling the returns of the next class to which we
shall direct attention—Diseases of the Lungs and
other organs of Respiration, generally a class of ail-
ment+ tolerably uniform in their fatality. Contrast-
ing, however, the extreme years to which our inquiry
extends, we find

In 1540. In 1947. Ineresse.
Deaths from Wombs of 1101911.81 a. 14,160 19,460 30 per out.
The increase in the classes of disease to which we
have hitherto adverted, being partly ascribable to at-
mospheric causes of that mysterious kind, which waft
from clime to clime the seeds of epidemic disease, we
might look forward to an improvement in future years
when the atmospheric influences shall be more favour-
able. But what is to be said when we ootae to those
classes of disease, on which the general state of the
atmosphere has less effect, and of which the
main causes must be supposed to be pretty
constant in healthy as well as unhealthy sea-
sons ? To what sue we to attribute the fact
that the mortality from Diseases of the Liver, the
Heart, the Kidneys, &0., has in our Metropolitan
districts, increased in a still larger proportion than
that caused by zym Votic or pneumonic ailments ?
In the returns, Clem ~ for instance Diseases of the
Heart and Blood-vessels were in the years 1840-7
respectively, fatal to the following exteat-1,019,
1,021, 1,089, 1,272, 1,694, 1,719, 1,783, 2,123.
Here then is a gradual and rapid increase for the last
flee years: the excess in 1847 over 1840 being in the
proportion of 108 per cent.
figain, in Class VL—Diseases of the Stomach,
Liver, and Digestive Organs—the fatality is largely
ins/slimed • and the rise has on the whole been toler-
ably gradual. We give only the numbers for the
extreme years :
In 1340. In 1147. beams.
Deaths from Disease el Noma*
Lives,Ao.
11l Diseases of the liver alone the difference ia still
more striking, though there has been greater fluctua-
tion in different years—the ambers
IH7are :
In 1540. In . Lamm

Drains from Messed Liver... ill 6119. 60 per amt.
Clue VlL—Diseases of the Kidneys, &e., have be-
come fatal in a still larger proportion—the mortality
wu :
In 1840. In 1647. Inermien
Maths from Dimes of Yid- l se 612 160
pa.
ma.
nem Ike.