The Sun.
London, England, 1846-08-06 00:00:00

1-11ornilagrnt

LONDON, THURSDAY, AUGUST 6, 1846.

Among the various means of materially improv-
ing the sanatory condition of our populace, none are
likely to produce such immediate benefit, whether
morally or physically, as the regulation of public
cemeteries upon a different system than the present.
So thoroughly convinced are we of this circumstance,
that we have never tired, nor shall we ever tire, of in-
veighing against the pernicious grievances incident
to the present arrangement, until it be altogether and
permanently abandoned, and one of an entirely dif-
ferent character substituted. Feeling thus earnestly
in regard to the precarious tenure of public health,
under the existing evils of burying-grounds within our
most populous cities, we are heartily rejoiced to perceive
that Mr. MACKINNON has re:talled the serious atten-
tion of the Legislature to the subject, by moving for
the second reading of the Public Cemeteries' Bill.
We regard those Members of our representative
assembly with peculiar interest, and, we must acknow-
ledge, with a kind of paramount partiality, who
labour arduously and unostentatiously for benefac-
tions to their common country. Such men as these
we look upon as the most laudable and legitimate,
because the most retiring and the most hard-working
of our legislative patriots. They contemn the mere-
tricious glories of faction; they may be classified as
among those who, on a large scale, "do good by
stealth, and blush to find it fame." As we re-
gard the fabrication of the sickle or the plough as
immeasurably beyond the marvellous inventors of
eurehas, and automata, and eccentric clocks, we re-
gard these abolishers of social scourges as of a
loftier renown than that acquired by the METTER-
NICHS and the TALLETRANDS, in the adroit and so-
phistical construction of treaties and protocols. How
much more advantage has been entailed upon succes-
sive generations by the first shoemaker, than by the
first worker in tinsel and lacquer ! Precisely ana-
logous are those descriptions of statesmen whom we
have particularised and contrasted. Again we repeat
our gratification at the revival of the ques-
tion of public burial-grounds by Mr. MAC-
KINNON. He has recognised the extraordinary
benefits that would accrue to the community by some
radical alteration in the present localities and the
_other baneful concomitants connected with our
churchyards._ Nor do the Ministers evince any
disregard to the necessity of such a change. From
the incidental observations of Sir GEORGE GREY we
are deeply rejoiced to see that it is the intention of
Government to incorporate with other sanatory mea-
sures now in preparation, some plan for an alteration
similar to the one proposed by the Hon. Member for
Lymington.
Mr. Macarrmost has, after the most approved
fashion of preachinnd propounding, divided his
proposition into the% distinct heads, all of them
likely to prove individual causes to a common effect.
First, he insists upon the necessity of preventing all
interments within the precincts of large towns, or
populous places; secondly, of speedily committing
the bodies of the poor to the earth, so as to lessen the
chances of the spread of pestilential disorders;
thirdly, of puttingsome limitation upon the charges of
undertakers and others, the like gloomy craftsmen, who
,-...
are at present enabled to impose upon their unwilling
employers by the mostAexorbitant charges. We
conceive that thie foregoing classification is
judicious enough, as far as it extends, but we be-
lieve that there are other collateral requisites in this
reform which should have been distinctly specified,
and successively enumerated. With the prevention
of interments within towns should have been joined the
prevention of interments in thßyaults of such sacred
edifices as are habitually us 4 as places of public
worship, and thousands of which structures would
not come undl the influence of the preliminary
clause of this ill. Is it not contrary to common
sense, to imagine that sound health can be pre-
served in our rural districts, and contagi-
ous diseases avoided in the sequestered
hamlets of England, when every Sunday the coun-
try folks assemble together in their churches, some-
times as well " suited for the reception of the
parishioners as a thimble to a quart of gooseberries ?
Can health of body and avoidance of contagious
maladies, we repeat it, be insured when a crowd of
these labourers assemble every Sunday in their
diminutive church and sit there for hours in the
broiling heat of summer, with the steam and stench
of mortality reeking up through the planks or tiles
of the floor from the decaying flesh of their brethren
in the vaults beneath ? Is it possible that
while breathing such a pestilential atmosphere
at periodical intervals, these people can preserve the
purity of their own blood, and the wholesome or-
ganisation of their " tissues ?" It is from such
monstrous and unnecessary evils as this, it is from
the inhalation of the vapours arising from animal
decomposition, it is from the living poor sleeping for
many successive nights in the same room with the
dead poor (and this particularly in the dense quarters
of our metropolis),
it is from unwholesome earth of
our City gray.
pits infusing a subtle poison into the
lungs of our e•
civilians,
_that thousands of lives