The Sun.
London, England, 1847-11-03 00:00:00

tntn ~~

LOND')N, WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 3, 184:

The first duty of a Ministry is by every prac-
ticable means to develop the industrial re-
sources of the country over whose destinies
they have been selected to preside, to stimulate
employment, so that every man, able and will-
ing to work, may find a market for his labour,
and be enabled to maintain himself and those de-
pendent on him, from the profits of his own honest
industry. There must be something radically defec-
tive in the condition of any nation when myriads of
its inhabitants, who might be the producers of national
wealth, are compelled to remain without occupation,
and to consume unproductively in place of increasing
the national resources. The wretched state of Ireland
affords a melancholy example of the results of pauper-
izing an entire kingdom. We have witnessed a
land of extraordinary natural fertility, with
magnificent harbours and rivers, vast quan-
tities of labour easily attainable —in fact
a drug in the market—and all the elements of na-
tional prosperity—and to what a depth of misery has
she fallen—and from what ? Simply from the mis-
government of her rulers through a long series of years,
which has led to the lands not being half cultivated,
producing scarcely one-fourth of what could be
obtained therefrom ; to millions of acres, that might
easily be reclaimed so as to pay at least ten per cent.
on the amount expended on their improvement, re-
maining utterly waste and unproductive, and to
the bulk of her population remaining in a state of
inutility, when the proper application of their labour
would change the entire condition of their country
from one of the deepest distress to great prosperity—
would convert the trackless wastes into smiling and
well-cultivated homesteads—and the squalid hovels,
now the abodes of misery and desitution,
into humble but cheerful cottages, inhabited
by a happy and contented people. And yet
to attain those blessings, to make Ireland the
right arm and support of Britain, in place of a
grievous and weighty burden, all that is required is
the due application of her own internal resources
—she requires but little, if any, foreign assistance.
The want of capital is said to be her chief grievance,
from which all her miseries proceed, owing to which
there is a stay to every species of improvement, to
every description of productive employment. But
this is not so. In the vast amount of labour that is
at her disposal she possesses a real capital, far more
valuable than if she had heaps of hoarded bullion in
her banks. The latter would be absolutely useless
but for an ideal and fictitious value attached thereto ;
the former is the real foundation of national wealth.
Capital is nothing but hoarded labour, and al-
though Ireland has not,
owing to the existence
y
of the same causes by which
she is still depressed,
laid by, and accumulated the monuments of past in-
dustry, she pes:esies in abundance the only. source
from which it can be obtained. The mine is there
well stored with the precious mgerteallst, but it remains un-
wrought and neglected. llerof
a.meraeal want has been
a,nndshof
having,hit Judi_
Money has been too scarce, and cemmand:d' (.too%s.
a price, too exorbitant a rate of interest. there 111-11
not a sufficient circulation for the wants and exigen-
cies was
of the nation, and consequently improvements
were not attempted, w irks were left undone, the
people were compelled to be satisfied with the scan-
tiest subsistence of the coars,:st description, even in
the most propitious seasons, without the slightest
superfluity, while at an adverse period they were
reduced to the most fearful state of destitution, and
dependent on the charity and benevolence of other
nations for the means of dragging on the most
wretched existence.
And such is the condition to which our own once happy
land will be brought if we persevere in an obstinate
adherence to the unwise and pernicious monetary law
under which for twenty-eight years we have been re-
stricted, and by which all our energies have been weak-
ened and impaired, s 3 hich rendered the nation far less

prosperous during seasons of universal peace and
tranquillity, when the Temple of Janus might be
said to have been closed throughout the whole of the
civilised world, than it had been during the conti-
nuance of the most sanguinary and expensive wars.
Already tens of thousands of labourers have been
driven from their employment, and with their families
exposed to the most painful privations. Artizans
and operatives of every description have either been
obliged to remain in perfect idleness or to work short
time. No class of labour has been spared. A shout
of triumph has been raised because the railway
works have at length been stayed, and the directors
in consequence of the inordinate price of money,
at length obliged to yield; but that yielding
has necessarily been accompanied by the discharge of
many thousand navigators. The progress of our
industry, the erection of works, that would remain
perpetual monuments of our power have been ar-
rested ; and why ? because we sacrifice everything
to the maintenance of a currency founded on
a gold basis which is wholly insufficient
for the wants of the country. We make
money dear by artificial means. Formerly usury
was prohibited by law under weighty penalties, be-
cause it was known that when carried to too great
an excess it crippled our trade and commerce, and
checked production. Then, interest after the rate of
five per cent. was the highest that could legally be
taken on any transaction, anything greater than that
being looked on as deeply injurious to all the national
interests, and contrary to public policy. Now the
Bank of England is prohibited by Government from
discounting at less than eight per cent., and it is
needless to say that under such circumstances the
rate throughout the country must be at least from
ten to twelve per cent.—a rate which, if maintained
for any prolonged period, must prove destructive
to our merchants and traders, and act almost
as a prohibition to our manufactures. It is impos-
sible that such a system can be con-
tinued. The country will not submit to it.
There. must be a circulation proportioned to the
wealth, to the taxation, and to the population of the
kingdom. The undue scarcity at present creates a
scramble amongst the different interests, each
ascribing their own sufferings to the undue demands
of others. There should be enough for the legiti
mate demands of all. Mr. LOCI E, in his " Considera-
tions on Money," has afforded an apt illustration of
this state. He says, " People not perceiving the
money to be gone are apt to be jealous one of
another, and each suspecting another's inequality of
gain to rob him of his share, every one
will be employing his skill and power the
best he can to retrieve it again, and to
bring the money into his pocket in the same plenty
as formerly. But this is but scrambling amongst
ourselves, and helps no more against our want than
the pulling off a short coverlet will among children
that lie together, preserve them all from the cold.
Some will starve unless the father of the family pro-
vide better, and enlarge the scanty, covering." All
the evil is ascribed to the demands of the railways,
whereas it should be to the inadequate circulation.
The only remedy is for the father of the family (the
Government) to enlarge the scanty covering, and
give sufficient for all; and this can only be done by
the adoption of a national currency, which will admi
of the due development of the national industry.

In pursuance of the intention announced in our
impression of yesterday, we shall now endeavour to
particularise the more important of those precau-
tionary measures which it would be advisable for the
Legislature to take pending the preparation of a com-
prehensive Act for the enforcement of a system of
sanitary improvement.
The diminution of the mortality should be the prin-
cipal aim of these precautionary measures. The in-
creased comfort and happiness of the community
would be their inevitable concomitants. Now, to en-
sure the former success, it is absolutely requisite that
the Executive should discover, first, the most destruc-
tive diseases—the diseases which more than any other
thin the population—that they should thereupon trace
out the causes of their frequency, and see whether or
not it is possible to diminish the number of their
victims by removing the more deleterious of the
agencies by which they are produced. The
returns of the Registrar-General will furnish the
necessary statistics, the writings of our most popular
and intelligent physiologists will indicate the abuses
by which the different maladies are originated, and
the newly appointed body of Sanitary Commissioners
can readily superintend these investigations, and deli.
berate upon the course most advisable under the cir-
cumstances to be adopted.
To come to the point :—Among the most destructive
and prevalent of the various maladies to whici the
human race is subject are consumption and pulmo-
nary diseases generally. This is proved by the fact
that in the September quarters of 184.5, 1846, and
1847, the persons who perished from the former were
1,558, 1,784, and 1,581, in London alone. Of those
destroyed by inflammatory affections of the lungs in
the same quarters, and in the same district, there were
1,111, 977, and 1,071. Surely these figures are suffi-
cient to attest the frequency with which death is in-
flicted through the respiratory organs. Common
sense will convince one at the first instant that dis-
eases are acquired in those organs in the act of in-
spiration, in the pernicious qualities of the air
which is inhaled, and in the constant subjection of
the lungs to the influences of that baneful atmo-
sphere. What we would see done, therefore, by the
Legislature for the diminution of the numbers com-
prised in these tables of the national mortality is
rather the removal of the causes of consumption, and
of inflammation of the lungs, than the restoration to
health of those whose lungs are already affected.
We demand rather precautions for the future than
assistances for the past. The discovery of remedies for
this most subtle of maladies is more appropriately the
theme of individual enterprise and philanthropy. It
is for physicians like Dr. HASTINGS to discern
whether decline can be eradicated by the use of pyro-
ascetic spirit, or, as it is more commonly called,
naphtha ; it is for those who are personally actuated
by sentiments of benevolence to see whether those
compound agents are best in the treatment of phthisis
which are peculiarly rich in carbon and hydrogen.
The duties of the Legislature do not interfere in any
manner with these investigations—the duties of the
Legislature, in as far as the public health is con

cerned, being rather preventive than curative, san
tary rather than sanatory.

'What we cannot but conceive to be the principal
responsibility of the Sanitary Commissioners in re-

gard to the eradication of the tendencies to
phthisis or consumption, is this—the prevention of
the contamination of the atmosphere. This contami-
nation comes from an extraordinary variety of
sources. It comes from indifferent sewerage ; from
the imperfect cleansing of streets, courts, and alleys ;
from the decay of animal matter consequent upon
tallow-boiling, the slaughtering of cattle, knackers'-
yards, ill conducted tanneries, &c.; from the delete-
rious vapours evolved from chemical works, such as
those for the preparation of lead, colour, mercury,
water-gilding, corrosive sublimate, ammonia, sulphu-
ric and oxalic acid, as well as from lucifer-match and
floorcloth manufactories. It comes from the insuffi-
ciency of drains, or from their construction in an-
gular instead of oval channels ; from the exhalations
arising from open cesspools ; from the evils result-
ing from the lack of Cabinets-d'aisance ; from

the disgusting and poisonous gases which reek up
from the rotten soil of the intermural churchyards,
and from the deplorable ventilation of the workshops
and tenements of the industrial poor. The causes,
indeed, of the contamination of the atmosphere in our
larger and more populous cities are so numerous,
that to destroy them effectually and immediately is
hopeless. Clever as HERCULES was in cleansing the
Augean stable, his fame as the divinity of scavengers
would be rather perilled were he to undertake the
purification of the air of London by the removal of
the different abuses by which its natural salubrity is
instant st ai t
certainpuri fie a ttiic;
ant
sciencem ay a
dissipated. Impracticable, however, as such an
s
phpeasar
retaheteentfiyt
proved
recently
sight,
away the open cess-
it to be possible. "Without closing
graveyads, without putrescentlit
pools, without bodily carrying
contents of the metropolitan
ting a stop to the operations of the tanneries, ofpthe
abattoirs, of the knackers'-yards, or of any other of
those establishments which must necessarily accumu-
late large quantities of animal matter in advanced
stages of decomposition—thH air may be at once re-