The Express.
London, England, 1848-10-03 00:00:00

their r.nnholes at stated intervals, for the purple. an
it were, of letting off their glasses sentents is their
most intense form on all those whet yam by ties in
the street; but now that time sums
olive the the contents that were Mess* Wed
in tho cesspool., the nuisance hes lissom
mare than ever intolerable. A penmen with
the slightest sense of smell might walk through
thestreets of London blindfold, and point at the
exact locality of these danger-valves of our streets.
If the curious in these matters should not be able ter
detect the nuisance in Regent-street we would advise
them to direct their course over Trafalgar-square, and
Jost in front of Northumberland-house they will find
two most magnificent gall holes, which have lately
never failed to warn oar nostrils of the dangers lark-
ing near. Over one of these precious holes all the
ononbuees passing to and from the Strand always
atop to take up and set down their Charing.-
passengers. It would be an inquiry of
som- interest to ascertain the exact number of
omnibus passengers w have caught influenza, cos-
tinu d fever, or other symotic disease, front being
thus freely exposed fur a few minutes to the pesu-
lendsl gases that are exhaled from this unclean mouth
of the Strand and St. Martin's-lane sewers.
Ti.o-e who understand the action of these vapours
in tie air upon the piston will not for a moment
doubt that they must tend most powerfully to main-
tain that peculiar condition of the atmosphere in which
epidonic diseases are most rife. The exhalations of
an ipi n sin a gully-hole. a dung-heap, an ash-pit,
may not produce a op, rifle disease, but they will
prothms a state of the system in which derange-
ments that are ordinarily trivial and easily
cured become severe and fatal. They will not
produce scarlet fever, or measles, or small-pox ; but
persons living in their neighbourhood will more
easily catch these diseases, and when they have
eadAht them they are much more likely to die with
them, If we have no evidence to show that such
gases can ever produce cholera, we have abundant
evidence to show that persons exposed to them are
=IA likely to have cholera. We are not, then, so
free fr..m liability to disease by living in large houses,
in open streets, u some persons might be led to sup-
pose. The vapour of these gully-holes will find its
way as easily into the air of a carriage as on the
fool pith, and may be inspire-I from the open window
of a palace as easily as in the street. The whole
atmosphere of a city is quickly charged with each
exhalations, and no one breathing it can altogether
expect to escape its influence.
The number who sutler fatally front this cause may
perhaps be few, bat its effects, combined with other
causes, may truly ascertained by the returns of the
Registrar-General. Only a hundred deaths a week
above the average, is the thought of many at glancing
over the weekly bills of mortality; but supp ve this
amount of death was the result of one of those " tee-
riblt steamboat accidents" for which the Loan MATO&
is waiting for the purpose of correcting the overlading
of the steamers on the Theme', would there not be a
prodigious and immediate effort made to prevent it ?
Would anybody think that any amount of money,
trouble, or private interest, should be allowed to stand
in ths way of the application of the needed remedies?
We know this is an old tale, but not the lees true for
its age, and we feel it to be one duty to go on telling it
till semet,.ing really effectual is done for the removal of
the clues of disease. What the sanitary commission
is about we know not; they have annihilated the old
commissions of sewers, but have done little themselves.
During the sammer ot last year, when water was scarce,
we bad the sewers flushed, and kept clean as far as post
aisle ; but nothing of the sort Naos to have bean hag
oseolus to this summer, surely not because the water
was scarce. If half the water that has been anuses&
wily slushed anon our streets from water-carts had
been directed through the sewers we should not have
had tJ complain of their present abominable condition.
But something more than flushing and watering meat
be done. These holes must be abolished altogethei.
Thee is no lack of ways by which his may be draw
and with the threatened visitation of cholera it is a
matter of too much importance to allow of any further
delay.

We have watched with some interest, and no little
ainuement, the effects of our exposure of that legal
waste which the Durham clergy have been and are
now committing in their cool and deliberate appro-
priation of the profits of the coals worked under
church lands to their own private use and benefit,
without providing for the spiritual wants of the work-
ing population which these mineral operations have
congregated together in various parts of that diocese.
The more irreverent of the laity evidently deem the
expasure capital sport, while the more serious are in-
dignant that the proceedby of the church should in,
this matter be as unjustifiable in law as they are nn-
warr listable in morals. Our statement of the cue of I
"Knight v. Marley" has infused into the minds of the
voungu and poorer clergy of the diocese a hope that,
this serious alienation of the church's inheritance may
attract the early attention of the legislature, and so
be arrested : while to the older and richer clergy, I
who are the delinquents, it has conveyed fear, appre-
hension, and shame. And well it may ; for not many
hours of the next session of parliament will be allowed
to elapse before a notice of a motion to bring the sub-
ct before the Moue of Commons will be given.
NNothing now (humanly speaking) can prevent an ex-
amination into put waste and the prohibitio.i of future
waste.
The local &duvet.a of the offending clergy do not,
so far as we have seen their defences, deny the law on
the subject to be as we have stated it : they plead
that in committing this waste with the minerals
the clergy mart have acted in ignorance of the law.
But as ignorance of the consequences is held to be no
excuse for petty larceny, neither can it be tolerated
when urged on behalf of a learned body of men for
ecclesiastical waste. We are, however, inclined to
doubt the excusatory allegation of ignorance, inas-
much as we find that the Durham clergy have from
time immemorial been somewhat notorious for much,
misappropriations of the church property committed
to theirrastody. Lord Coal cites a ease so early as
in 35 Edward L, in which a Bishop of DURHAM (" this
was ANTONY Bea of that state and greatness es
never bishop was,WoLsee excepted") was resteained.
par breve de Cesacrilaria, from wasting the wade
and pousesioaa of his see. The statutes of the dean and
chapter of Madam, confirmed by the great seal 1 and 2
Philip and Mary, ordered that all sums derived from
we
lim
property of the ancient niona-tery of
hich it VIII. bad granted to that body,
go into the common fund for the we and ne-ied
of the church. And, by subsequent statutes elt this
capitular body, **chief advocate of the clergy toile as
that, " among other species of property, mime
carbenum are expressly forbidden to be Issesi he a
longer term than 21 years ; and, upon the warted of
luau, all moneys, besides seal foes, not spesially or-
dered by theme statutes to be otherwise applied, shall
go to the amnion nee of the thatch, in rapport of the
ordinary expellees, and shall not be converted to the
priede benefit of the dean and chapter, or any
of them" In the reign of Ozoaos IL, Tale
BOT, Bishop of Dunaut, actually applied to
the legislature for fts sanction to the attack
he was making on the church's mineral property and
was flatly refused legislative permission. And, to-
lairds the close of the last century the proceedings of
SHUTE BARRINGTON, Bishop of DURHAM, in cutting
down timber, were °sulfured by the Court of Common
Pleas, in the case of " Jefferson r. the Bishop GC
Durham." In that eau the principal question was
whether that court hod, on th- application of the
plaintiff,•pereon not iuterested, jurisdiction to restrala
the bishop from cutting down timber ; and it was
decided that it had not. Bat even to so munificent a
prelate as Dr. Beenteueoe, Chief Justice EYRE the
raised the warning voice of the law :
I need not my whether this application hr boa mob OE
mere splenetic or on more worthy motives, nor Whoille tie
Bishop of Durham in this instance, unintenticaelly avetakes,'
may not have doge that which the law disease mid"
even though it should turn out clearly that eke err
entice of the see have been improved. nut amaily
it is tact to be concluded that provided en twain tif
swat revenues of the see is obtained, a permasst tau
real property in woods may be utterly destroyed. Pew who
know the hon. and right rev. prelate,who have been witnesses
to the munificence which he has displayed in re•
vairinr and beautifying the fabric of his church, of
hls castles and his palaces, will suspect him of having
intentionally wasted the power:aim of the see of Durham.
At the same time it is by no means impossible that he, as
well as many other churchmen, may unwarily have slid into
this heavy ecclesiastics! offence, which all agree to be a cause
of deprivation, and which may probably be found to ho also
an injury cognisable by sense of the king's temporal courts.
I do not at all regret the expense of time and trouble in
this proceeding, since I cannot bat think it may be wo-
duetive of very good accts. It may awaken men's minds
to the consideration of this sort of qtrstion; to which,
at thi. time, it is cf importunes that they should be
direetcd. We have already 14CD one church
almost in ruins, and we have seen withcathedral what es-