The Sun.
London, England, 1847-11-08 00:00:00

ObTlxing but.

LONDON, MONDAY. NOVEMBER 8, 1847.

Until some practical improvements of a sanitary
character are adventured ',upon by the Government
we shall not cease to agitate for their immediate
and comprehensive adoption. The moral and physical
necessities of the population alike demand the inter-
ference of the State, whether in the agricultural or
manufacturing districts, in the homestead or the
workshop. Something must be attempted for the
amelioration of the miseries of the industrial classes,
and that something must be done forthwith, for the
mortality is on an increase proportionately greater
than the annual increase of the community. For that
superfluous amount of destruction the Legislature is
directly responsible, so long as it remains inactive
and so long as it is notorious that a legislative inter.
position would necessarily diminish the likelihood of
contagion and abate the ravages of the more virulent
diseases. Granted that the abuses which have
to be destroyed are enormous, both in their
individual intensity and in their collective
magnitude ; granted that a sufficiency of time
is requisite for the effectual extirpation of
the different causes of the most prevalent maladies;
granted that a vast amount of obstinacy has to be
overcome before the regulations of cleanliness can be
insinuated upon the municipal and parochial autho-
rities. Granted all this, and we still persist in crying
aloud for the commencement, at least, of this compli-
cated and essential species of social reformation.
So much has to be accomplished that we are
scarcely amazed at the hesitation of the Cabinet—a
hesitation arising manifestly from a natural degree
of incertitude as to the priority which should be
most judiciously granted to the various measures of
innovation. The dwellings of the poorer portion of
the inhabitants of larger towns are altogether so
inadequate for the proper conservation of health,
that the most philanthropic Administration must
tarry upon the first inquiry, without being able to
decide at once upon the most advisable course which
should be pursued through evils so tremendous and
innumerable. Benevolence is paralysed into inactivity
" at the first blush" of such gigantic and inconceivable
misfortunes. As to the character of the privations
endured by the labouring part of the population, there
can be now no hesitation whatever. The mists of the
malaria by which their tenements are enveloped have
been penetrated not merely by novel writers such as
D Lams, and ballad mongers such as HOOD, but by
that matter-of-fact class
of inspectors whose figures
of speech are numerals,gs and whose literary offsprings
are the blue
ganged
the
`We have
wretchedness of the verydestitute. We know to
an
acme h
e the
the dimen-
sions of their
woe,
profundity of
their abasement. The cloud has
been
dissipated—
the wounds have been probed—the evidences
suf-
fering have been analysed with a precision whiocfhap-
ap-
parently proceeded from callousness, but
which
anly the prelude to an active and resolute enter w'as
prse
in behalf of a permanent social reorganization. Out of
this fulness of information as to the necessity for the
vigilance and forethought of the Administration has
sprung a singular variety of schemes, such as would,
even taken separately, prove of infinite benefit to the
operatives and destitute, but which, coupled together,
would inevitably tend to the preservation of
life and the diffusion of happiness. Ragged
er Industrial Schools would relieve the streets
from a swarm of miserable and degraded cbil-
ilren. Model lodging-houses would secure to the
impoverished a cheap and wholesome shelter. Public
baths would promote habits of personal cleanliness,
and diminish the liability to cutaneous affections.
Public washhouses would introduce purity into the
homes of the very poor—homes which, in spite of
the venerable adage that " Home is home, be it ever
so homely," have been hitherto. scarcely entitled to
the appellation, from their perpetual squalor and

discomfort. The erection of abattoirs, the enlarge-
ment of the more contracted thoroughfares, the con-
struction of proper cabinets d'aissance, the extension of
the system of drainage, the building of oval instead
of angular channels in the scheme of sewerage, the
abatement of the smoke nuisance exhaling from every
species of manufactory, the prevention of intermurai
interment, and the ventilation of all kinds of habita-
tions whatsoever, would most effectually conduce to
the diminution of the mortality of the United King-
doms. It would, by a variety of such economical
arrangements, introduce robustness where there was
previously decrepitude, joy were there was dejection,
life where there was death. For it would affect the
multitude of sufferers through the most sensitive of
their bodily organs—the organ of respiration. It
would restore salubrity to the air which had been
heretofore vitiated by pestilential vapours and
pernicious particles of diseased matter. How far the
purification of that atmosphere is conducive to the
proper sustentation of health we have already re-
peatedly explained. But that the removal from it of all
foreign gases is absolutely essential for existence is
demonstrated by the physiological facts—that while
man can do without the nourishment of the stomach
for a very considerable period, he cannot preserve his
vitality for fifty seconds if deprived of the nourish-
ment of the lungs—that man, when in a healthy con-
dition, breathes, on the average, about 20 times in a
minute, or 1,200 times in an hour—that in the course
of a minute he inhales and exhales 600 cubic inches,
or three gallons of air ; in an hour 48,000
cubic inches, or 180 gallons ; in a day, 1,152,000
cubic inches, or 4,000 gallons. It is manifest, there-
fore, that purity of atmosphere is one of the principal
requisites for the maintenance of health in the animal
kingdom; and if a locality with an atmosphere thus
fitted for consumption be not altogether armed
against the incursions of epidemics, it is obvious that
those epidemics will be less difficult to render inde-
structive with the assistance of the Pharmacopoeia.
As the Registrar-General has remarked in his return
of the mortality for the September quarter—" A
salubrious city in an epidemic like a city
built of stone in a conflagration —is ex-
posed to danger and injury, but not to
the same extent as the present cities of Eu-
rope, which are left without any adequate regulations
for the health and security of their inhabitants."
And how, we may ask, is it possible that London can
be rendered comparatively salubrious while the foul
air of the city, according to the account of the same
authority, hangs like a disease-mist over the metro-
polis ?—" Lying dimly over Eltham, Dulwich, Nor-
wood, Clapham, Battersea, Hampstead, and Hackney;
growing thicker round Newington, Lambeth, Mary-
lebone, Pancras, Stepney; dark over Westminster,
Rotherhithe, Bermondsey, Southwark ; black over
Whitechapel and the City of London without the
walls; and, over the district of St. Giles's, hanging
like a dark spot in the midst of surrounding dis-
tricts ?" With this disease-mist depending over Lon-
don, what will not be the ravages of the Asiatic
Cholera when it has arrived amongst us? And that
it is hastening towards our shores with irresistible
and indomitable swiftness is shown by an intelligent
paper transcribed in another column, from our dis-
tinguished contemporary the Lancet. Still out of
evil arises good ; and it appears to us by no means
improbable that as the Legislative acceptance of free
trade was hastened by the destruction of the potato
crop, so the adoption of a good and comprehensive
measure of sanitary improvement may be forced
upon Parliament and the Cabinet by the terrors of
the Cholera.

The meeting called by the Irish Council, to which
we alluded on Saturday, has been further adjourned

until to-morrow. There was considerable discussion

on the second day on each of the resolutions proposed
by the committee, the Young Ireland party having
attended in considerable force, and brought forward
amendments to each proposition. It has ever been
the misfortune of Ireland that when anything has
been suggested for the national amelioration, parties
have stepped forward and attempted to intro-
duce their own peculiar views, so that the general
co- operation of persons of all varieties of creeds and
of political opinions (by which alone the desired ob-
ject could be attained), has been prevented, and the
differences and dissension which it was hoped would
have been suspended for even a brief period, have

broke forth with increased virulence. Last year the
opponents of an efficient poor-law for Ireland com-
pletely neutralised the advantages that might other-
wise have been obtained from the exertions of the

Irish party, and at present the Confederates, as the
advocates of physical force delight to call themselves,
bid fair to destroy the benefits that would result

from an attentive consideration of the really valuable
and moderate suggestions of the Irish Council. We
will, however, hope that anything really useful, and
calculated to improve the condition of the Irish
people, may be acted on by the Irish Government—
no matter from what quarter it may proceed. We
are convinced that the present Ministry are actuated
by the purest and most beneficent intentions with
respect to the sister kingdom—we believe that
there is no reasonable assistance that they
would not willingly afford to her children, when
once they had set themselves zealously and ener-
getically to work on their own behalf, and they
would do so with the cordial concurrence of the
whole or at least the overwhelming majority of the
British people. But the Irish must set their own
shoulders to the wheels, and. indulge in no extrava-
gant or overweening expectations. Measures which
would prove most valuable auxiliaries, if moderately
acted on in the spirit in which they were con-
ceded, would become not only inefficient but posi-
tively injurious if pressed too far, and made to
sustain the entire burden. Such was the fate of the
Labour-rate Act of last year, which was intended to
give employment to the superabundant labour in the
overpeopled districts, to be used in aid of private
enterprise, but the moment it received the legislative
sanction it became the signal for the cessation of all
private employment and for the discharge of the
labourers, who were thus driven to the public works,
and the proper cultivation of the soil was neglected.
The Ministry will have to guard against a similar
abuse of any means that may be adopted for the
relief of the destitute in the more distressed districts.

lire believe that it is now generally admitted, that
in many localities the entire produce of the lands,
and all the resources of the proprietors are inade •
quate for the support of the people. It, therefore,
becomes the imperative duty of the Government to
adopt such means as may prevent the possibility of
any of our follow-creatures perishing from want of the
common necessaries of life. This grave responsi-
bility can neither be evaded nor procrastinated.
Something must be done with respect thereto be-
fore the Parliament shall be adjourned for the Christ-
mas recess. The property in the land itself is mani-
festly the first fund to be resorted to for that
purpose, but when that is palpably insufficient,
new resources must be opened up, and had recourse
to. The Irish Council invite the Legislature to pro-
pose a tax on Ireland, which it is suggested should be
either an income or a property-tax.
To the principle of an income-tax we are con-
scientiously opposed. It is not just or reasonable that
the burdens which should be borne by the accumu-
lated property of a nation should be imposed on the
labours of those who are compelled to work for their
own livelihood, and who should lay by a considerable
portion of their earnings, in order to make a provi-
sion for their families. An income-tax, therefore,
under almost any circumstances is objectionable, at
all events it should only be resorted to as the dernier
resort, but there can be no such reasons urged against
the imposition of a property -tax, which is at once the
most equitable, and the most easily collected of the
public
enacted
chargeable L Let
on such a
every
property-tax
description
rea-
lised b
property-in Ireland, and from the proceeds
thereof let all the expenses of the extraordinary
measures that may bebe necessaryd to provide
tee frraiayotee d
aid T
of
fi s
local
for the Irish people
yin
the
iredinepdr.eviously
should only be resorted
ha
taxation, and not until a heavy
be
hdis-
been levied on the property
trict, otherwise the inducement that should
out to the proprietors of the soil to affordsusefludl
employment, and so far as possible to unpauperise the
population on their respective estates, would be with-
drawn.
This is the most urgent of the Irish questions, and
that which must be disposed of immediately on the