The Sun.
London, England, 1846-12-25 00:00:00

,lixening fli-1..

LONDON, FRIDAY, DF.CENIBER 25, 1846.

Yesterday we commented upon one of those great:
measures of social reformation to effect which the
Prime Minister of England pledged himself upon the.
hustings of Guildhall. Yesterday we remarked upon
the necessity for some comprehensive scheme of'
national education. To-day we would remark upon
the equally enormous necessity for some comprehen—
sive scheme of sanatory legislation. Our attention
was re-called to the former exigency by a meeting,
at which Lord MORPETH presided. Our attention
now re-called to the latter by a meeting, of which_ -!
Lord ASHLEY was the chairman. In Wednes-
day's report of the Health of Towns' Asso-
ciation the pernicious effects of our present
system of interment was illustrated by a cor-
respondence of a very remarkable character.
The inferences which are deducible from that corre-
spondence are, to our thinking, conclusive and un-
answerable. They form, however, merely an ad litional
link in a long chain of evidence; they only corrobo-
rate those opinions to which we, as honest journalists,
have felt ourselves frequently compelled to give utter-
ance. That a vast accumulation of animal matter in a
state of the worst decomposition must act prejudi-
cially upon the health of those living in its immediate
neighbourhood, one would scarcely expect to be
denied. Yet the assertion has been incredu-
lously disregarded ; sometimes, indeed, attempts
have been made to disprove the deduction.
What was obvious to the plainest intellect when un-
warped by prejudice, has been treated as a frivolous
misapprehension by those whose pecuniary interests
were implicated therein. Men have had the stupidity
to contemn the most overwhelming statistical argu-
ments ; men have had the stolid audacity to discard
the unanimous arguments of science. With the most
violent epidemics raging periodically in the vicinity
of these pestilential churchyards, with a visible glut
of corpses, with a visible exudation of prurient matter
from the graves, with a visible malaria reeking from the
contaminated soil, before their eyes continually, these
dis'entients have insisted upon the innocuous nature
of a system which to every impartial observer was
increasing the mortality of the kingdom frightfully
The data derived from chemical analysis, the declara.
tions of experienced physicians, the remonstrances o

;he local authorities, are all to no purpose. Our fore.

fathers were interred in Saint Paul's, Covent-garden,
our forefathers were satisfied with decent sepulture
in Spafields Burial-ground, our forefathers were
contented with their six feet of earth in the
churchyard at Drury-lane why should not
we be contented in like manner ? That is
their description of logic. They forget that it is the
very circumstance of our ancestors having been in-
terred, generation after generation, in St. Paul's,
Covent-garden, and elsewhere, that renders it unad-
visable to continue adding to those surcharged pits of
corruption. They forget that sepulture might—years
ago—have been decent in Spafields, but that now it
is most indecent, most immoral, and most unchristian.
They forget that where the full measure of six feet
was allowable in the (lays of eur predecessors, it is
an impossibility now-a-days. They altogether forget
these things, or, we suspect, they wittingly distort
them for their own venal purposes, out of their own
cupidity, from a desire to extend their odious and
execrable emolument.

The correspondence to which we have referred as
having been submitted to the Health of Towns' Asso
ciation originated out of certain occurrences in Min-
ehinhampton--occurrences that go far to attest the
baneful consequences of these over-stocked burial-
grounds. They prove that even in a little country
town, where the ventilation and drainage are excel•
lent, and in which, during a period of fourteen years,
previous to 1843, not a single case of Idiopathic fever
had come to the knowledge of an experienced resident
practitioner, contagious diseases have, since that period,
ravaged the population at intervals—and this
because the parish graveyard had been literally sur-
feited with dead bodies. Beyond this, moreover, the
soil of that graveyard had been actually carried away
to the extent of several hundred loads, for the purpose
of fertilizing the adjacent meadows, though that soil
was so impregnated with animal matter that its colour
was peculiarly darkened. Can anything more be
wanting after this to prove the necessity for some
strenuous interference on the part of the Legislature
Can any additional reason be required to enforce the
annual motion of Mr. MACKINNON ? Is it not
sufficiently manifest that the present system of sepul-
ture is prejudicial to the health of the quick, as well
as derogatory to the sanctity of the dead ; that it is
a violation of all decency ; that it is injurious to the
morality of the people ; that it is opposed to some of
the holiest principles of Christianity ? Is there not
something pagan in the sawing in two of coffins, in
the " hand-picking " of human bones, in the burning
of ragged shrouds and partially-decayed flesh? Is
there not something brutalizing in the ma.
nuring of our fields with the remains of
men sanctified by death and consecrated by the
solemn language of Christian burial ? While we
shudder at the pestilence which is inevitable from
such masses of putrefaction, may we not with justice
shudder at the evils of a moral character, which are
no less inevitable ? The heart may mourn and the
eyes may weep for the memory of departed humanity,
but if its inanimate form be treated habitually with
no more respect than that evinced towards the car-
case of a dead dog, the holiness of that memory
will be first diminished, and ultimately forgotten.
Christianity has invested death with an ineffable
grandeur. By the genius of that religion the dead
man is beatified, and his body becomes, consequently,
encompassed by a multitude of pathetic and sublime
associations. The effect of our present system of
intermural interment is to destroy those associations,
to render their sublimity a mockery, and their pathos
a derision, to fill the popular mind with a heathenish
abhorrence for the grave, and a loathing of its silent
habitants.
In one of his little romances, we remember