The Express.
London, England, 1861-11-27 00:00:00

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LONDON, WIDNEWAY, NuV. 27.

Tarr terrible estmilrophe which in Edinburgh
has just overwhelmed with destruction as many
human beings as would make the sum of the inha-
bitants of a a:maul village, is one of those dis-
asters which turn for the moment the most care-
kse into month:era We are half prepared each
morning to learn that an accident to which the nature
of their avocations makes them notoriously liable,
has the day before hurled some souls into eternity.
Battles, wrecks, explosions of firedamp, the mur-
derous issue of angry omega, touch our feelings of
pity or of reprobation, but do not startle us with
a sound of utterly unexpected horror. But that
in Coe of our chief cities five-and•twenty families
retiring to rest on • Saturday night, should, ere
the Sunday dawn, without one instant's waruiug,
be crushed to death beneath the ruins of their
etwasion home, is a calamity which it would have
been esteemed madness to predict, and for •
parallel to which we must turn to the records of
those lands in which earthquakes or volcanic
eruptions assert nature's terrible absegtb. Nor,
Inked, is there wanting in this sae even some-
thin of the element of personal fear which eye-
witnesses of these coovulseime tell us forum ass of
their most prominent features. This house which
fell like • pack of cards, without further notice
than • scarce observed sinking in one of the ceil-
ings • day before, may be the type of thousands
beside. The sleep of its inmates was broken by no
dream of danger more than whispers by our own
pillows. The age of the building was but 300
years, not more than that of many another
dwelling in town or country ' • and, indeed,
carrying in back to • time when houses were
built of materials better calculated to stand
for centuries than our more flimsy erections are
for ea many decades. The part which was
visible was, it would appear, sound enough—since
it excited no alarm in the mind of the builder who
impacted it the day before. But what was not
seen was that on which everyth'ng depended, and
this, throughout the whole building, must have
been decayed almost to powder. And thus
the stillness of night, when not a footstep
crossed the floors, nor a breath of 'skid
shook the walls, the hour arrived at
which the pile could no longer suppoi;; even its
own weight, and it sank in one indiscrim'nate
crash upon the sleepers, who were never again to
,wake on earth.

Our part, however, is not fiat of moralism.
We leave the text of lee's chances to other
preachers. Our task is to urge those tolerably
obvious considerations which shall make unfors-

seen accident a leas fruitful cause of calamity than
it is. In the present cam several days must pro-
bably elapse ere the ruins which still entomb so
many human remains are sufficiently accessible to
allow of an accurate investigation of the state
in which the building had been, and of the point
at which the law first broke out. But in the mean-
time it is scarcely possible to believe that decay
so extreme should have existed without giving some
indications of its presence which ought to have
drawn attention. It is scarcely possible to sup-
pose that the floors were all perfectly level, the
doorways all perfectly square, the walla perfectly
upright and solid. Where, indeed, is the old hones
in which such indications of perfect soundness are
to be found 1 We grant the rarity, but we cannot
grant the conclusion that such appearances are im-
material. They are, in truth, every one of them,
signs of weakness, whether that weakness lie in
the original corstruction or in superinduced decay.
Wherever they exist they are warnings. A
close

may show that the
weakness is not dangerous, that the tim-
bers are not subjected to a breaking strain,
and that their substance is sound. But to accept
such appearances without investigation into their
cause and extent is to invite destruction. It can-
not be supposed either that these warnings were
absent in the old house in the Edinburgh High-
street, or that if a thoroughly efficient examination
had been made, the real peril to all the inmates
would not yu ckly have been discovered. We
peas over the inspection made by a builder on
Saturday, for it was obviously only to discover
whether there were symptoms of a recent settle-
ment, and it left untouched the question whether
there ;were older settlements which indicated •
long existing insecurity. If such there were, as in
ell human probability there must have been, the
heavy responsibility of this catastrophe lies with
those who, seeing it, were as though they saw it
not. It is, however, • responsibility which lies
upon the owners almost exclusively. Mere tenants
cannot be expected to take upfloors, to examine into
the soundness of joists, or to scrape off plaster to
trace out a crack in the walls. They rely, se
they are entitled to do, on the landlord having
ascertained that such appearances do not indicate
real danger, and on the obligation, as much moral
as legal, which Ns upon h'rn to make sure that
the building is fit for the purpose for which it is
leased. Such an obligatieu becomes strengthened
when the tenants are of a clams little capable of
judging for themselves respecting the nature of
any suspicious symptoms—or *impelled to live in
houses of which few can be found wholly exempt
from like symptoms. But it lies, we are bound to
remember, upon everyone who himself, with his
own family, occupies, or who lets for the residence
of others, a house in which the smallest symptom of
weakness can be detected, without taking due care
to ascertain whether the weakness is of a char
rector which renders it dangerous.
It is very probable that in Edinburgh this duty
ary be made somewhat more difficult by the
peculiar system under which a house is often the
property of limey dit:vrent owners, each holding