The Express.
London, England, 1866-10-05 00:00:00

THE EXPRESS, FRIDAY EVENING, OCTOBER 5, 1866.

other city. It is certainly a fact that cholera,'
attacking a district, tends to csilininafe rapidly and
then decline more slowly than it arose. But it Is
equally true that in a large city like our; ibe
whole mortality has always been made up of a suc-
cession of such local outbreaks, and the present
extensive diffusion of the influence throughout the
metropolis •is exactly the means by which such
local visitations are excited.

Everyone willbe disposed to echo the Rroseraut-
GENERAL'S observations respecting the medical
Office!" of health. " Each health officer," he
writes, " should eons:der that the safety not only
" of the people of his own district, but of three
" millions of people, depends on his activity. It
" is to be regretted that these inadeluately paid
" officers cannot devote the whole of their time to
" the duties of their important office." The pre-
sent is the first cholera epidemic in which these
useful officers have been employed. Of the im-
portant service which they have rendered there
can be no question ; indeed it is fair to believe
that a considerable amount of the decrease of
fatality to which we have referred may be laid to
the arrangements carried out by them. But the
experience of the present outbreak has been
enough to show that their powers have been
hampered, and their utility much interfered with,
by the system under which they are appointed.
The time must arrive when the medical officer of
health will hold a position independent of the
local authorities ; when, indeed, he will be their
director as well as adviser in sanitary matters, and
act as the responsible agent of Government in
overlooking local arrangements. At present there
are no less than forty-seven of these officers
scattered throughout the metropolis. In nearly
every case they are men engaged in the active
practice of their profession, and able therefore
to give up to sanitary duties only that small part
of their time for which the salary allowed is a
remuneration. They are appointed by the local
authorities, whom therefore it is their direct in-
terest to please. In these circumstances the
amount of self-sacrificing devotion which they
have shown is something remarkable. In many
cues the officer of health has had to obtain
his requirements at the cost of incessant
appeals to bodies which always include a
number of persons whose prejudices are only
equalled by their obstinacy. We cannot
help feeling that the only road to a really ade-
quate supervision of sanitary matters in the me-
tropolis lies in its division into a few great dis-
t icta with an officer of health to each. This
official should be so remunerated as to enable him
to give his whole time to the work ; his appoint-
ment should rest with the Government, and it
should be his business to see that the very com-
plete orders contained in the Sanitary Acts are
faithfully carried out.

Factories Acts, shoe.' to be sound by our expel:anal, have
as yet bees but imperfectly applied. In his seal, however,
for the sneerer. from asel and oppreesive trades, Lord
Shaftsabmi wens to leapt the sixtent,hundred thousand
persons who are undesthe hopeless seifdom which is the
lot of our agricultural labourers. Excilog in a short and
unsatisfactory passage, interpolated apparently in reply
to Professor Favrcett's challenge, he makes no reference to
them. The hearers of the briokfield impress him deeply
the miseries of the oorn and grass fields are passed by.
The landlords in parliament bore,thechild partinrefcaming
the factory system of England, and the manufacturers are
bound to return the service by the reform—not less nacre-
sary—of the land system of the country. Or are we to
writ until that " aping-tide of self-confident democracy,"
whirl, according to Lord Shaftesbury, "is now nigh at
hand," sweeps away with some things that ought to pariah,
much that, if toryiam will permit, it would be desirable
to preserve'

The Morning Post thinks that at the present Wage the
best service that can be done is simply as the Congress
does—to talk about the questions which are brought before
it, to turn them over and MR and manipulate them until
they take shape and form, and to give to the world such
conclusions as may fairly and immediately be drawn from
them. Every such oonclusion is a seed of improvement
which cannot fail in due time to bear fruit.

However precisionista may cavil at the term "social
science," the Tekgraph contends that it none the less in-
dicates a field of labour which has no saperice—perhaps
no rival—in the richness of its details and the momentous
character of the interests which it involves. The con-
grew may worthily engage in the labours of the profoundest
philosophers as well as the moat practical philanthropists.
Nor do the men to whom the modern social reforms are
chiefly due fail to appreciate the benefit it can confer on
the cause for which they have laboured.