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

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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
terry 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
DtcKENs, and ballad mongers such as Hoop, but by
that matter-of-fact class inspectors whose figures
of speech are numerals, and whose literary offsprings
are the blue books printed by order of Parliament.
We have guaged the wretchedness of the very
destitute. We know to some extent the dimen-
sions of their woe, and the profundity of
their abasement. The cloud has been dissipated—
the wounds have been probed—the evidences of suf-
fering have been analysed with a precision which aP -
nrently proceeded from callousness, but which was
ly the prelude to an active and resolute enterprise
behalf of a permanent social reorganization. Out of
3 fulness of information as to the necessity for the
-ilance and forethought of the Administration has
tug a singular variety of schemes, such as would,
i taken separately, prove of infinite benefit to the
tatives and destitute, but which, coupled together,
ild inevitably tend t 3 the preservation of
and the diffusion of happiness. Ragged
.dustrial Schools would relieve the streets
'l'm a swarm of miserable and degraded chil-
dren. Model lodging-houses would secure to the
impoverished a cheap and wholesome shelter. Public
baths would promote habits of personal cleanliness,
and diininish 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