The Sun.
London, England, 1852-06-03 00:00:00

THE SUN,

the Earl of DERBY alluded to the necessity for some
immediate and comprehensive sanitary innovations as
a matter of actual notoriety. Now, we would
simply inquire, how hes it come :0 pass that such is
the case with the Ministry
inactive, and the Legisla-
ture negligent ? It comes exclusively from the humane
efforts of private well-wishers of the community! It
arises entirely from the benevolent assiduity of those
very philanthropists who are usually spoken of by
men of business and members of Administrations as
fantastic dreamers, or crackbrained enthusiasts. To
the efforts of these large-hearted and industrious bene-
factors of the community, are the people indebted for
the exposure of evils which, but for their beneficent
perseverance, might have remained unnoticed and
unsuspected. Foremost among all the sanitary re-
formers we have always placed, and must always
continue to place, Mr. GEORGE AL/RED WALKER,
the man who first revealed the atrocious abomina-
tions of intramural interments. By his per-
sonal exertions in collecting evidence of those
very horrible practices, and by his numerous works,
recounting the result of his singularly repulsive in-
vestigations, he first opened the eyes of the people to
the demoralizing influence and the desolating atmo-
sphere in the midst of which the sin and the disease
in our larger cities are engendered. In this manner
hne may be said to have orig,i ated the sanitary move-
ment as indisputably as COLUMBUS originated the
scheme of navigating the waters of the Atlantic. To
his endeavours, and the endeavours of those who have
emulated his proceedings, we owe the disclosure of
facts such as must eventually lead to some very extra-
ordinary improvements.
Meanwhile the Press, it must be admitted, has been
not. altogether inactive. Scarcely a journal pub-
lished in the United Kingdom has refrained from la-
bouring in the good cause, disseminating by this
means truths of the most beneficial tendency through-
out the population. Provincial as well as metropo-
litan organs have participated in this advocacy of the
required innovation. At first one or two almost so-
litary voices were heard—the cry was then gradually
taken up in other directions—and ultimately
the principal portion of the fourth estate
may be said to have broken out into a chorus of
unanimity. For ourselves, we may maintain without
arrogance our right to the credit of having from the
outset insisted upon the necessity of carrying out
the proposed changes with rapidity and comprehen-
siveness. Yet, up to the present moment, notwith-
standing the arduous labours of Mr. G. A. WALKER,
notwithstanding the assiduous efforts of the Press,
both provincial and metropolitan, nothing whatever
of importance has been effected for the diminution
of the evils complained of, or for the preven-
tion of the continuance of these long ex-
posed intramural abominations. Insomuch so,
that the Great Delineator of Human
Life, the most popular Author of his Age, CHARLES
DICKENS, can write in his new story, Bleak House,
page 106, when recording the funeral of NEMO,
that the beadle, with his pauper company, " bears off
the body of our dear brother here departed, to a
hemmed-in churchyard, pestiferous and obscene,
whence malignant diseases are communicated to the
bodies of our dear brothers and sisters who have not
departed; while our dear brothers and sisters who
bang about official back-stairs—would, to Heaven
they had departed I—are very complacent and
agreeable." Thus, continues the Master-No-
velist, "Into a beastly scrap of ground
which a Turk would reject as a savage
abomination, and aKafir would shudder at, they bring
our dear brother, here departed, to receive Christian
burial." Yet more accurate, if possible, is the de-
scription which follows—a description as exact in its
verisimilitude as it is noble and persuasive in its elo-
quence:—" With houses looking on, on every side,
save where a reeking little tunnel of a court gives
access to the iron gate—with every villany of life in
action close on death, and every poisonous ele-
ment of death in action close on life—here
they lower our dear brother down a foot or
two : here sow him in corruption, to be raised
in corruption : an avenging ghost at many a sick
bedside: a shameful testimony to future ages how
civilization and barbarism walked this boastful island
together. Come night," he cries, " come darkness,
for you cannot come too soon, or stay too long, by
such a place as this I Come, straggling lights, into
the windows of the ugly houses ; and you who do ini-
quity therein, do it at least with this dread scene
shut out ! Come, flame of gas, burning so sullenly
above the iron gate, on which the poisoned air deposits
its witch-ointment, slimy to the touch ! It is well
that you should call to every passer-by, 'Look
here I' " Solemn words, and very touching and beau.
tiful in their soleumity—words through which Genius
has acknowledged that the horrors of Fiction may be
enhanced and rendered yet more fearful by the grim
and sordid horrors of Reality.

Everywhere, indeed, it would appear, there is the
recognition of a necessity for sanitary improvements,

saving and excepting within the walls of the Impe-
rial Legislature. Everywhere the atrocity of the

system of intramural interment is appreciated,
everywhere the perils of its evil consequences are

understood, saving and excepting always within the
hallowed precincts of the Parliament. A Metropoli-
tan Interment Bill, it is true, has been passed,
and efforts have subsequently been made to
bring about the possibility of its amend
meat;

but hitherto the enactment, as we

ourselves predicted from the first, has proved
wholly and lamentably inoperative. A commission
no doubt has been installed during the last few years
in the offices and drawing-rooms of Gwydyr House,
but hitherto without any other result that can be
seen, but the printing of many pounds weight of blue
books filled to repletion with an interminable and
fruitless correspondence. These peculiarities, both
on the part of the Legislature and on the part of Ithe
Government, should, we submit, be borne very
carefully in the remembrance of the electors on the
the occasion of the ensuing dissolution of the House
of Commons. Upon the Sanitary Question, not less
than on the Free-trade Question, or the Parliamen-
tary Reform Question, or thennancialßetrenclunent
Question, or the Education Question, the possessors

of the franchise should be curious and vigilant. They
should evince no negligence upon this head in their

cross-examination of the various candidates. For

upon the settlement of the demand for sanitary inno
vations, and first of all, of course, for the great

and exigent innovations relating to intramural
interments, depends, possibly, for the next seven

years, the comfort, the morality, the health, nay, the

very existence of a large portion of the community.
How far we are accurate in so speaking, may be

comprehended when we remark, in addition
to what has been already here observed,
that upon the state of the City grave-yards,

or upon the treatment of what has been (in a
two-fold sense) aptly called the "Dead Man's

Question," depends in a frightful manner the amour

of the annual mortality.

distress
The lengthened paroxysm of with which
Ireland has been visited has to so great an extent
monopolised the public mind in England us regards
the calamities which in our days have thickened
round the
en Celtic population of these islands, that we
re
a very inconsiderable portion of attention
pamphlet
has been
Western
uidirectedbi to the afflicted condition of the
justg ads and Islands of Scotland. A little
the perusal orissuedthose
from the press*. is well worthy
present state
This unhappy these
traced to circumstancesis,consideration
involving a complex element.
of
thiis impossible to overlook the
3 Celtic race of which the
innate character
1
population there
incontro-
vertibly far less pdapte'd than and which is incontro-
a prominen. is the An
to occupy
in a great
competitiv4 society like t
that
activity and
an lib'
active exist-
ence at the pruent day t in
The pure Celt
is deflcient in progressive energy,
Wales, integrally connected for five
Even in
e hundred years
there is, with small
with England,
sence of befitting commercial
" The history of Great Britain tells u enterprise.
says the
writer, " that till alien blood becomes largely'"
min-
gled with that of the inhabitantsof
the
purely Celtic portions of the three king-
doms, the latter must ever continue
to be a
--- ---

• " The True Causes of Distress in the Weat---ern pr;
lands and Islands of Scotland." By Wallace if—gn"
London: Ridgway, 1852. arvey.