The Sun.
London, England, 1864-10-05 00:00:00

SPIRIT OP THE PUBLIC JOURNAL a

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TIMES.—Among the pains of wealth and power
not the least is that they cannot do what they want
mostly. They can do a great deal in the way of
caprice, or to satisfy the exigent for a season, but
if they are combined with high and useful aims they
are doomed to disappointment. The great wealth
and power of this country are manifest in our cities,
our palaces, our fleets, our prisons, our railways,
and innumerable splendid institutions. But there
is a crook in the lot of even Imperial grandeur and
benevolence. They cannot effectually reform the
dwellings of the poor. We believe that the gene-
rous instinct which lately prompted a distinguished
merchant to spend a fortune for this purpose alone,
following the example of a lady who has left many
a like mark on this metropolis, is very widely dif-
fused, Were there no special difficulties in the way,
moat gentlemen with adequate means would make
.great sacrifices to see their peasantry or their work-
people well housed. But something stops the way
and brings the most earnest endeavours to a dead-
lock, till perhaps the resources are otherwise spent
or the impulse itself worn out. Even in its vast
aggregate it is a small thing compared with the
wealth of this empire. The calculation is not diffi-
cult. Let us confine ourselves to the agricultural
classes. It is they that have the most claim to
public sympathy, because theirs is really the worst
and the most helpless case. In any town, if a man
chooses to pay a shilling a week more or to walk
half a mile further, he can change one room for
two, a lodging for a house of his own, or, a
wretched hovel for a commodious and healthy
cottage. Bat is not so in the country. Besides
the low rate of wages, there are generally other
causes in the rural districts that put it almost
out of the power of the labourer to choose his
own abode. It often happens that there is
not a single cottage in the whole parish fit for a
large family. Even where there are several they
ate not obtainable. They must be waited for, and
much interest must be made for them. Meanwhile
the elements wait not. Disease comes and goes as
it lists. The course of nature cannot be retarded for
human convenience, though it be to crown the most
virtuous hopes and reward the most meritorious
exertions. Before the healthier home has been ob-
tained The growing progeny has been stifled in its
contracted nest, and it is only a sad and sorrowing
remnant that reaches the wished-for haven. Such
is the ordinary case of our agricultural poor. They
may easily be well fed and well clothed, but not so
easily well housed. This is what England, with all
its wealth and power, cannot remedy. Yet, as we
said, even the aggregatecost is a trifle in the national
scale. If we suppose there to be a million agricul-
tural labourers in this island, three-fourths of them
to be ill housed, and an average expenditure of .£lOO
to be sufficient to build new cottages or renovate
and enlarge old ones, then a total of 75 millions
would complete the desired reform—a little more
than our annual income, and much less than the
ccst of the Russian war. So we are obliged to a
" Herts Vicar" for recalling us to a topic which,
old though it be, is unfortunately still new. The
case he describes is one of sad frequency. A village
prospers. The people find work for all ages, for
women and girls as well as for men and boys. There
is an unusual demand for small services. Men are
calling to ask for lodging for a few weeks or a year.
There are buildings, roads, railways, planting, or
inc!osing within the radius of a few miles. There is
straw plaiting, lace making, or some other small
industrylon the increase, and still paying well.
The first impulse in the struggle for existence is the
struggle • for wages—wages with excessive toil,
wages with hardships, wages with peril, wages with
diminished life, wages with inevitable sickness,
wages at the sacrifice of family duties and affections
—but anyhow for wages. So in wretched tene-
ments that refuse to expand, and cannot be ex-
changed for better, families increase, and will not
seek their fortunes elsewhere. Perhaps their work
itself, by its monotony and its very toil, weakens
the energy and takes away enterprise. Be that as
it may, there is one thing that even the strong and
healthy labourer seldom gives a thought to. He
thinks of his meals, his fireside, his clothes, and a
few other wants, but little indeed of his sleep. He
goes to his bed, as to his nightly grave, for oblivion,
and little heeds whether the vapours of his chamber
be even as those of the grave, and the bed itself be
too apt a type of the final rest. He does not always
wake as well rested as he might ; nay, he often
finds, he knows not how, that he is more tired in
the morning than he was over night, and is not quite
himself till set up by open air and a meal. If he thinks
little of himself, as little does he think of his wife
and children—what air they breathed in the night,
or how they felt in the morning, or how it told on
their weaker frames, with less to restore them in the
daytime. He does not ask how it is that with
food enough, and no visible foe to health, yet his
children do not thrive as they ought. If he chance
to return to the little chamber in which he and nine
or ten other pairs of lungs have been breathing
the same air with hardly a chance of change for
as many hours he is almost knocked down by
the odour, as "A Herts Vicar" truly says, and as
every diligent parish priest knows well by experi •
ence. But he thinks no more about it ; air is air
to him, and an ill odour is only a nuisance, per-
ceptible to the waking, but harmless to those who
perceive it not. So he and his family go on spending
nine hours out of the twenty-four in an atmosphere
forbidden to our unions and gaols. The poison,
nevertheless, works its way as surely as that of a
reptile or a mad dog. The system is undermined.
The lungs lose their energy of action. Every muscle
and every fibre loses its self-recruiting power. An
epidemic comes and finds prepared victims. They
fall before it easily. Even if they recover from the
specific disease they die of the weakness. In the
collapse from one malady they sink into another,
and perish before a foe who attacks them with a
more terrible reserve in his rear. Just surviving
measles they are destroyed by fever. What better
account can be given of the case described by our
correspondent, when the death-rate of a large agri-
cultural parish in, as it appears, too prosperous
circumstances, was suddenly raised four-fold P It
may possibly turn out that the medical treatment
of measles and fevers has much to answer for, and
that with proper care convelescence need not be so
fatal in operation. Bat in these cases, unhappily
very general, we see the prima facie proof of a
want of stamina or reserve of force in the system.
When, too, a whole family is attacked by an epidemic,
or is slowly recovering, nature itself must fight with
terrible odds in an overcrowded cottage, where the
safest of all medicines, fresh air, is denied. It is not
to be denied that there is a mystery in epidemics
that no theory can meet, and that only forbids the
supposition of any one preponderating cause; but
all experience sets pure air and epidemics in the
strongest possible antagonism. As things now are
in this country at a time when we are beginning to
feel the value of souls, and of bodies too, that agri-
cultural population which is the rough basis of our
national strength has to struggle with conditions
perfectly removable but most injurious to health,
and. in a certain large proportion, actually fatal to
life, Many thousands of valuable lives are' annus
ally lost by a merely social difficulty, for it is only
social. It rests with the owners of land and the
employers of labour to say where the blame rests;
but the evil exists, and in the letter before us we see
too plainly that the remedies are very slow in reach•
ing it, if indeed it is not getting far ahead of them.
POST.—The Wreck Chart and Register of Wrecks
for the year 1863, published in the Journal of the
National Life-boat Institution for the present month
tell a sad tale of suffering and loss of life, relieved
by an account of the lives saved by means of the
life-boats stationed on our coasts. The life-boat is
naturally and peculiarly an English institution, be-
cause our large maritime commerce suggested its
necessity, and our skill in naval architecture, also
the consequence of our insular position enabled us to
construct these light but buoyant vessels in a way
capable of weathering the most violent storms. In
illustration of this we may adduce the fact that
during the past year 414,000 vessels, using round
numbers, entered into or cleared our ports on our
coasts ; an amount of shipping which represents
about 62,000,000 tons burthen, and a money value
of more than £400,000,000; while the wrecks and
casualties on our shores during' the same period
were upwards of 2,000. Of these more than half
were caused by stress of weather, and the remainder
by defects in the ships themselves, or through the
negligence, unskilfulness, or mismanagement of
their crews, together with various unknown causes
not specified. But, whatever the cause, the effect
is the same for the crew, and then it is that the uti-
lity and value of the lifeboat are experienced. In
the course of last year about 5,100 lives were saved,
principally by means of the lifeboats stationed on our
coasts, of which there are now as many as 182 in fell
service throughout these isles. There are 21 of these
on the coasts of Scotland, and 22 on those of Ireland.
Besides the lifeboats stationed at the most appropri-
ate points on our shores, there are 239 mortar and
rocket stations in the United Kingdom; Scotland
has 26, and Ireland 43. Within the past eight
years these various establishments have been the

eans of saving more than 25,000 human lives,
upwards of a fifth of which were rescued from
drowning during the past year. The lifeboat
stations on the shorts of England are 139 in num.
ber, and the mortar and rocket stations 170. Oi
looking over the Wreck Chart of the British Isles
it is terrible to contemplate the innumerable black
dots which mark the numbers and localities of mari-
time casualties and wrecks. Side by side with these
are the thin red lines which indicate the lifeboat
stations, and these assure as that help is at hand.
Still the number of lives lost is terrible to contem-
plate. From 1854 to 1863 nearly 7,800 lives were
the sacrificed. And of late yearn these casualties

have been much on the increase. This is prO
due to the increase of our maritime trade and
rapidly augmenting numbers of the vessels whirl
enter and leave our ports. But of course
there are exceptional years of storms. The
wrecks and casualties in the year 1860 were 1,51 f,
in 1861 they were 1,494; in 1862 they were I,BTa
and in 1863 they were 2,ool—making a grand t°_,
of 8,117 within the period of four years. The Ow_
paratively moderate increase of the former year;
suddenly presented an excess of nearly 200 wre°,',
and casualties in 1863 over 1862, and of consideraDiS
more than 300 in 1862 over 1861. This was owing
to the severe gales and storms which occurred
111,
the last three months of the year 1863, and
January, October, and December, 1862. And keri
we come upon a very important point in considerinP
these matters. We allude to the weather forece:
derived from the readings of the barometer. I'l
National Life-boat Institution has a hundred of OP,
instruments at its various stations on the coast) 813,.„
the Board of Trade has a like number at other eon
venient points on our shores. With the assistance
of a diagram or chart for showing the variations o 1
the barometer, seafaring men can tell what the
weather will be with a degree of approxinaat!v
certainly sufficient for practical purposes. 1t is 111:
deed chiefly to the lack of such a precaution, or the
disregard of the admonitions of the quicksilver, that
so many casualties are due. But it is gratifying tO,
know that our fishermen and sailors are becoming
more and more educated every day in this Ptl
essential branch of maritime knowledge. The fate
gales of the autumn of 1863 were distinctly and
emphatically indicated by the barometer. The
mendous storm of the 30th October was foretold by
the perturbations of the quicksilver as long Prey
e
viously as the 27th, and it continued falling uP,Lit
the time when the full stress of the gale was
I
along our coasts. The violence of the storm map
be judged from the fact that the pressure of Win'
or atmosphere in motion, was about 301 b to the
square foot. The storms of the following months
were predicted by equally unmistakable symptoms
But though, as we have seen, there has been a
steady increase in the annual number of wrecks
and casualties, there has also been a sin:till'
taneous falling off in the number of lives
sacrificed. For instance, the number of live°
lost in 1863 is less than the annual average
of the last twelve years by 161. This no doubt
is in great part owing to the exertions of the life'
boat crews stationed on our shores. In the beginning
of December last, during one terrible night of tern‘
pest, 120 human souls were rescued by the lifeboat
from a couple of ships wrecked on the Girdler Sand;
and the Shingles. One of these vessels was full o,',
emigrants. The crew of the lifeboat were at svol'
all night. drenched with the waves that washed over
their small and fragile craft at every plunge, and
numbed and frozen by the icy wind, Bat they
flagged in their labour till they had brought theta
last freight of human beings—men, women, an
children—safe on shore. During that December
storm about 250 human beings were saved by the
lifeboats; nor should we forget to mention the bene;
volent and humane co-operation of the employes 0'
the Board of Trade, the coastguard, and the fisher:
men and boatmen round our shores, who are eve'
foremost in the danger when there is human life to
be saved. According to the statement before us, t°,
the National Lifeboat Association is due the credit
of having contributed to save the lives of 14,000 i
persons. This institution alone claims to have sacec:,
more than 400 lives and 17 vessels within the Pei
year, and to have granted rewards to the crews of
shore boats and others in respect of the rescue o',
300 lives more. But numerous as our lifeboats may
be thought, from the figures stated above, they sre
not so numerous as they ought to be. One of these
small vessels may have to go to a wreck and return
i
several times before it has brought off the crew
passengers. If we take the case of an emigrant sbilh
or a ship principally used for the conveyance of pas',
senger, or a troop ship, we shall easily understand
how the greater number of persons on board migkb:
be sacrificed through the vessel going to pieces on
rocks before the lifeboat sent to her rescue had been
able to convey her instalments of human life frail
the wreck to the shore. Let us hope that the time
is coming when, through a proper attention to the
forecasts of the " Weather office," the habits in our
sailors of consulting the barometer, and the service;
of the lifeboat, the number of wrecks, and especially
the great sacrifice of human life which they involves
will have become greatly diminished.