The Sun.
London, England, 1848-09-21 00:00:00

SPIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURNALS.

FROM THE MORNING PAPERS OF THIS DAT.
TIMES.—The elaborate depravity required to con-
vert the Thames into a sewer can only be comprehended
by reflecting carefully on the several steps of the pro-
cess. In the first place, there is the accumulating refuse
of a large city to be promptly removed, as containing
within itself the living seeds of pestilence and disease.
Next there are the suburban districts to be brought
under cultivation, and this for two distinct reasons, as
we shall presently explain. These are the main condi-
tions of an effectual sanitary reform, and we are found
deliberately vitiating both in order to add another ele-
ment of evil to those which we retain. We deprive the
suburban lands of the treatment they require for the
sake of poisoning our own homes with the material
which should be there employed. It is both ruinous to
keep this material, and ruinous not to bestow it else-
where ; yet we industriously incur both penalties, and
at last crown our perversity by disposing of it in such a
manner that it shall do as much additional harm as pos-
sible. We have hit upon the very maximum of mischief,
and cling to it with the desperation of lunacy. If we
were to cut off all the water now supplied to the out
parishes of the metropolis, and turn it into a gigantic
open tank somewhere about Smithfield, where it might
reek and ,putrefy in miasmatic vapours under the sun's
heat, while thousands of citizens were dying of thirst,
we should be achieving very much such a
consummation as we secure now. The su-
burban districts to the east of the metropolis
are mostly either heavy undrained clay lands or marshes,
and are extensively intersected with wide open and stag-
nant dikes, into which the drainage and refuse of the
locality is thrown, as regularly as that of London is dis-
charged into the great open ditch which used to be the
river Thames. In one of those swampy districts sur-
veyed by the Sanitary Commissioners it was actually
found, upon measurement, that there were 18i acres of
ditch to 450 acres of land; so that the surface of foul
and stagnant water was to that of land as 1 to 24.
That marsh diseases should bo rife in such neighbour-
hoods is no more than was to be expected; but the mis-
chief does not end here, for it has been matter of con-
stant notice that when the wind set steadily in from
these quarters the unwholesome vapours of the swamp
were carried inwards to the more thickly inhabited parts,
and exercised a perceptible influence upon the mortality
of the population. This is one point. The next is not
one whit less important. Everybody knows the increase
of value which land receives from lying in the vicinity
of large towns; and nobody, we presume, will allege that
the soil at present under cultivation in these islands is
superabundantly sufficient to feed the population. Now,
these suburban lands, of which we have been speaking,
grow literally nothing but fever and ague. In order to
aaake them subservient to the natural wants of man it
is requisite,sa first. that they should be drained, which
d hate the incidental effect of removing the genera-
tive uu
sof disease, and, next, that they should be
w o icaev
manured, which would again have the incidental effect
of diverting the selfsame elements of mischief from the
heart of the metropolis ; for no kind of manure is so
well adapted for this purpose as that which is now kept
to ferment under our very nostrils. Thus, if we could
but persuade ourselves to part with the sewage matter
now kept at home we should, by one and the same
stroke, extinguish one great family of diseases in the
suburbs, reclaim a vast surface of invaluable land, and
cheapen articles of the first necessity to our suffer-
ing poor. In the language of one of the wit-
nesses examined by the Parliamentary Committee,
" the presence of the richest materials for produc-
tion" is the chief source of the evils which afflicted
the dwellings of our poorer fellow-citizens. Was there
ever such a literal conversion of broad into poison! See,
now, what as expense we incur for the pollution of our
Thames ! We cannot keep this noble stream up to a
steady standard of defilement but by perpetuating the
desolation of large tracts of land, curtailing the supplies
of necessary food, and infecting the habitations of those
whom we help to famish by the same identical means.
But for the constant demand thus made upon our inge-
nuity, we should have wherewithal to fertilize a quarter
of a county. We consume in poisoning the Thames what
would disinfect the marshes of Essex, and squander in
concocting fever what would be invaluable in producing
corn. Could it cost us half as much to purify this river
as it does to pollute it ? Think of the swamps we are
compelled to leave unreclaimed, of the land we are com-
pelled to leave unproductive, of the plagues which we
generate, and the food which we lose in order to turn the
Thames into a great tidal cesspool, and make its banks
loathsome for fifteen hours out of the twenty-four. Think
what pains we are taking to tax ourselves, and what losses
rrcfutt
eme s c
water r i b e ,
whichan , i
is possible,
found
stagnating
to
we submit to for the sake of being fairly driven out of
town ! If the first step of a sanitary commission in the
suburbs
remove thistaot se
in the open ditches, what must be the course adopted
with respect to that great ditch of all, which we have
successfully exerted ourselves to snake as filthy and as
infectious as any dike in Surrey or Essex? Remove it
we cannot, but it so happens that to restore it to its na-
tural salubrity of character we have but to let it alone.
It is only necessary to abstain from waste to effect this
vast reform; and is it to be considered any great com-
plication of hardships that the same measures which
would purify the air we breathe should also incidentally
augment our resources and enrich our exchequer? There
are two objects of the greatest importance in that sani-
tary reform which so many circumstances just now com-
bine to force upon our notice—namely, the drainage of
suburban lands, and the removal of the metropolitan re-
fuse. There is only one method by which both these ob-
jects can be attained at once, and that is by not discharg-
ing such refuse into the Thames. Could more be possibly
said for any project than this ? Putting out of the
question
all damage to life and health, we will under-
take to show that more money is expended in any one
year in direct consequence of our present perversity
than could be expended on a thoroughly efficient sewer-
age even by the most costly plans. We deny that the
affair is purely one of pounds, shillings, and pence, but
we are quite willing so to consider it, and to stake the
credit of the project on the result. It would not cost so