The Sun.
London, England, 1849-09-26 00:00:00

LEWES SHEEP FACE.—The September sheep fair
was hiin on Finlay, in 3 fi.,•ld opposite to the site of ill.,
now county gaol and south of the Brighton turnpike
rode. The number of sheep penned exceeded 30,000;
there was also a ffo,d spr,nkle of lean neat stock and
horses, and Mr. Thompson displayed a large collec:iou
fargricultural implements. The fair opened with a
brisk deco ;ad for all sorts of sheep, but at prices abput
twenty-tivi, per cent. less than List year. This was re-
jected by the flock •masters, who were prepared to make
a Isrmn dttd c .
uc ion. big so great a sacrifice as that re-
quir:d Could not be submitted to, and consequently the
fair fli..
-,ged up to two o'clock, when some few sales were
Let,F)..redteciliastMinr:43ll:liminttohnedfirsed of two lots of ewes to
C. C. Cavendish for 345.
A few lots of iambs were al::seo 1 at 178. and 18s. At ter
dinner some other sales were
retsh efrofomlloiwiintgo
i.,.A.5: —Weathers from 26,. to' made3n t
there
11 14a.; limbs from 103, to 25;.,. bl'i
gene-
rally experienced what may be called a dull and aansda heaysal-, tiri.ing from no want of buyers, but from a seemingg
de:a:initiation on their partr to make no parchaseb-
at a greatly nducad rate. The sale of rams was tratheurt
brink.— ilaidstone Journal.
TIIE YANYEE.—An American has said of his
countrymen that the genuine Yankee would not be able
to rapoie in Heaven itself if he could not travel west-
wa lie must go a-head. Prophecy.
v. 1 tifnievtlen the valley of the looks.. forward to
Mistissippi shall over-
( ii 7,17 .wifit: this restless population, and Europe be subject
10
._— ,
jp a.neve rajgiwion. " What do I consider the bounda-
ries of rot country, sir?" exclaimed a Kentuckian.
" Why, 'sir; on the east we are bounded by the rising
sun; on thei trtth, by the aurora borealis; on the west,
133Litie. f..r— ssion of the equiioxes; and on the south, by
i.-141 t:40.141. ' Ofonic,nt.:
„.„,,,,,,,,

-_")4

SPIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURNALS.
TIMES.—The struggle between the Board of
Health and the formidable phalanx of City guardians
(some 80 or 90 strong) whom they summoned before
the Lord Mayor last Wednesday, to answer for
neglect of sanitary orders, is virtually this—Shall the
sanitary government of the country be for the future
central or local ? Shall the management of the public
health be confided to a single metropolitan board,
constituted ad hoc, or remain, as heretofore, a branch
of ordinary parochial administration ? The parochial
party and their supporters protest against the cen-
tralization of sanitary control, first, as an unconstitu-
tional encroachment on the " free-born Briton's
indefeasible right of local self-government ;" and,
secondly, as an "impertinent and unwarrantable
interference" with the sanitary operations already
adopted by the parish officers—operations which, it is
vehemently affirmed, have anticipated by their
promptitude, and surpassed in their success, the dila-
tory measures of the Board of Health. The parish
party are wrong at both points. The whole force of
reason and the whole weight of facts are against them,
as we will endeavour to show. In the first place,
the interests affected by the jurisdiction to which
they lay claim are not local, but collective. The
management of burial-grounds, slaughter-houses,
and manufactories leaving putrescent residua, con-
cerns the health, not merely of particular neigh-
bourhoods, but of whole cities, and of the entire
kingdom. If the efflavia of St. Saviour's burial-
ground, for example, could be confined within the
boundaries of St. Saviour's parish, so as to infect the
air and the water of the recalcitrant rate-payers
alone, they might perhaps fairly object to be hindered
from cooking those necessary elements to their own
taste—from working up their dead friends as an at-
mospheric condiment, and flavouring their water-
springs with infusion of mortality. So, again, if the
Bermondsey cesspools and black tidal ditches stank
only in Bermondsey nostrils, and fevered no other
than Bermondsey blood, Bermondsey might perhaps
have a right to choose whether its rates should be
laid out in abating these evils, or saved up for subse•
quest expenditure on the widows and orphans of the
cholera-smitten. In like manner the churchwardens
of St. Bride's or St. Olave's, if backed by their parish-
ioners, have possibly a right to put 5,000 corpses into
as many leaden retorts, called coffins, and to distil
these corpses, through tapholes bored in the lead for
that purpose, into carbonic acid (the choke damp of
miners), sulphuretted and phosphuretted hydrogen
(the rotten egg gases), and. other effluvia of the
same sort; provided always they can show that these
inevitable residua of the intramural burial trade
fall exclusively to the share of those who enjoy the
profits of the business. Every Briton is cock on his
own dunghill, no doubt ; but on this indispensable
condition—that his dunghill offend no one else's nose.
If, then, it appear that the burial-traders poison their
neighbours as well as themselves, and that parochial
economists, to save themselves a sewer rate, saddle the
whole community with a costly epidemic (costly,
alas ! in more senses than one), it is clear that these
sticklers for freedom practise the very despotism of
which they complaim, and trespass. on the rights of
other's while denouncing the infringement of their
own ; and when, therefore, on looking in any school.
boy's chymical catechism to the chapter on the diffu-
sion of gases, we find it a positive law of nature that
each gas acts like a vacuum to the others, and that
consequently the volatile poisons which issue from
the leaden alembics of each London graveyard radiate
by an unresisted force of expansion throughout the
whole metropolitan atmosphere, we arrive at a
dire ct scientific refutation of the pretended local
rights set up, and find parochial claims outweighed
by collective rights of paramount importance. So
much for the infringement of local rights and
privileges imputed to the Board of Health. The
charge is not merely untrue—it is the diametrical
opposite of the truth. The accusers are themselves
the culprits; and the Board of Health are but resist.
in,;, by the means which the law places at their dis-
pesal, and with the general approbation of the com-
munity, the unjustifiable encroachments of parochial
trespassers on the lives and liberties of the public at
large. But the parish party join issue with the Cen-
t rat Board on the practical question itself. " The
measures," they say, " which we have taken to pre-
vent epidemics, or to meet them when they come,
have been better than yours—more vigorous, more
timely, more prudent, more efficacious, and, above all,
less exoensive. You tell us to distribute monitory
handbills; we have done it already. You bid us ap•
point house t house inspectors ; we have a sufficient
medical staff as it is. You order us to empty our
cesspools, to close oar graveyards, to flush our sewers,
and to cleanse our alleys. All this, so far as we
think it necessary ani practicable, we have done, and
we refuse, at your bidding, to de more. The mar-
t slity in our districts is not above a fair average, nor
beyond what might be reasonably expected during an
epidemic. We are men of business, better acquainted
than you with the necessities of our own poor, and
better qualified to provide for their relief. You, who
pretend to be sanitary reformers, do in reality more
harm than good. Your orders are as insolent in
form as th-ey are frivolous in substance. We repel
your accusations—we despise your censure—
we deny your authority—and we set you
at defiance. Do your worst." Such is
the language of the parish party. Many
simples of it have appeared in our columns in the
shape of letters from the boards of guardians. Let
us, make allowance foe its not, perhaps, unnatural
venemence ; and try, by the test of facts, the alleged
forecast, energy, and skill displayed by the parochial
officers in their seni.ary operations. In April, 1847,
.hen an epidemic typhus broke out, and ravaged the
country with rapidly increasing violence, till at last,
in the autumn, it produced for several weeks fourfold
the ordioary mortality, what measures of sanitary
reform were adopted by the parish officers ? What
steps did they take to purge the air of those exhala-
tions 'a hich are the recognised vehicle of typhoid
poison ? When, in the eleven weeks from November
20, 18-17, to February 5, 1848, there died in London
upwards of 6,000 persons above the aver,ge number
—an excess greater than the entire mortality produced
by pestilential cholera during the whole 21 weeks of
its prevalence in 1832—what were the sanitary opera-
tions of the parish officers? What lesson did they
learn from this frightful mortality ? What steps
did they take to secure us against its return ? When
the influenza—that forecast shadow of pestilence,
which preceded the black death in the fourteenth
century, the great plague of London in the seven-
teenth, and the first terrible invasion of cholera in
our own day—appeared with terrible significance two
autumns since, and slew in a single month (Decem-
ber) 1,000 of the inhabitants of London, where were
the vaunted energy and sanitary skill of the parochial
officers ? When, in the following spring, the Asiatic
pestilence itself, following its sure precursor, Caine
travelling rapidly towards us across the continent,
pursuing its old track, haunting its old lairs—enter-
ing even, in many places, the very same houses
which it attacked before—where were our parochial
strategists ?—what scheme of operations did they
plan while there was yet time to keep the destroyer
from our shores, or to defeat and expel him when he
came ? The parochial officers did nothing—abso-
lutely nothing. They left the graveyards festering—the
cesspools seething—the barrels of blood steaming in
the undergound shambles—the great mounds of
scutch putrefying in the Bermondsey glue-yards.
They left us all—the poor in his squalor, and the
rich in his fancied security—to be smitten unawares.
And when at last it came, and the people were
perishing by thousands, and the medical officer urged,
month after month, on the parochial authorities that
the plague could only be combated in the homes of
the poor, by an organized army of preventive in-
spectors, what did the parochial authorities do ?
They rejected the medical officer's counsel—they
scouted his warnings—they even mutilated his
reports; and only in the 15th week of a mortality
unparalled for two centuries, did they consent to the
nomination of the domiciliary inspectors—who, in
their very first round, discovered the corpses of six
persons dead without medical aid. Such has been
the c isciuct of the men who claim to be entrusted
with the sanitary government of the country. Do
they deeerre our coefidence ? Shall we support them
in their factious resistance to the lawful authority of
the Board of Health ?