The Sun.
London, England, 1866-08-10 00:00:00

The New Act on Public Health.

The Act to amend the law relating to the Public
Health, which received the Royal assent on Tues-
day, has just been issued. It contains 69 sections
(with two schedules), and at the present neriod the
new law is attracting public attention. The act is
to be cited as " The Sanitary Act, 1866." There
are four parts in the statute. The first part relates
to the amendment of the Sewage Utilisation Act of
1865, and is to be construed as one with the recited
act. Any sewer authority is empowered to form
committees, and where the sewer authority of a dis-
trict is a vestry or other body, may, after notice,
form part of the district into a special drainage dis-
trict, for the purpose of the Sewage Utilisation Act,
and a number of inhabitants, not being less than 20,
may by petition to the Home Secretary .bring the
matter under his consideration. Any owner or oc-
cupier of premises within the district of a sewer au-
thority is to be entitled to cause his drains to empty
into the sewers, and the sewers may be used beyond
the district. Provision is made as to the drainage of
houses, and the supply of water and wells, &c., be-
longing to any place are to vest in the sewer autho-
rity. The second part relates to the amendment of
the Nuisances Removal Acts. In any place within
the jurisdiction of a nuisance authority the police
may enter a house for the removal of a nuisance by
the warrant of a justice of the peace. A requisition
of ten inhabitants is to be equivalent to a medical
certificate as to a nuisance. The word " nuisances"
is to include any house or part of a house so over-
crowded as to be dangerous or prejudicial to the
health of the inmates, or any factory, workshop,
bakehouse, &c. A nuisance authority is to make an
inspection of the district, to ascertain what nuisances
exist calling for abatement, under the powers vested
in it, and to enforce the provisions. A nuisance
authority, on the certificate of any legally qualified
medical practitioner, may order premises to be
cleansed or otherwise disinfected, and to pro-
vide means of disinfection. Carriages may
be provided for the conveyance of infected
persons. " If any person, suffering from any dan-
gerous infectious disorder, shall enter any public
conveyance, without previously notifying to the
owner or driver thereof that he is so suffering, he
shall, on conviction thereof before any justice, be
liable to a penalty not exceeding £5 ; and shall also
be ordered by such justice to pay such owner and
driver all the losses and expenses they may suffer in
carrying into effect the provisions of this Act ; and
no owner or driver of any public conveyance shall
be required to convey any person so suffering until
they shall have been first paid a sum sufficient to
cover all such losses and expenses." Sick persons
suffering from any dangerous contagious or infec-
tious disorder being without proper lodging or
accommodation, or in a room occupied by more than
one family, or being on board any ship or vessel,
may be removed on a certificate of a medical practi-
tioner to a proper place. Places for the reception
of dead bodies may be provided at the public ex-
pense, and places for the reception of dead bodies
during a post mortem examination are to be pro-
vided. Power is now given to remove to hospitals
persons brought by ships. A nuisance authority
may require payment of costs and expenses from
owner or occupier, and the occupier paying is to
deduct the same from the rent. In the second part
of the Act, entitled " miscellaneous," in cities and
boroughs or towns the Secretary of State, on the
application of a nuisance authority, is empowered to
make regulations as to lodginghouses, in fixing the
number of persons who may occupy a house, or part
of a house, which is let in lodgings, or occupied by
members of more than one family, &c. Cellars used as
dwelling-places maybe closed by the nuisance autho- ,

rity. Hospitals may be founded for the sick. There
are two provinces in the Act which require immedi-
ate.publicity. By the 38th section it is enacted that
any person with an infectious disorder, wilfully ex-
posing himself, or any person in charge of sick per-
sons causing such exposure, is to be liable to a
penalty of £5, and by the next section, for letting
houses in which infectious persons have been lodged
without properly disinfecting such places the offender
is liable to a penalty of £2O. There are other pro-
visions to enforce sanitary regulations as to local
boards, burial boards, and other matters, to be
adopted for the preservation of the public!' health.
The fourth part of the statute is to be applied to
Ireland, and certain modifications are made for its
adoption in that part of the United Kingdom. The
first schedule has reference to Ireland, and the second
schedule shows the statutes repealed by the present
Act. It came into force from Tuesday, the 7th of
August inst., when it received the Royal assent, and
may be generally adopted as " the Sanitary Act "
of the Session of 1866.

SPIRIT OP TII PUBLIC JOURNALS.

--s-

POST.—The Lord Mayor is evidently an optimist.
It is scarcely more than a week ago that he said the
very prettiest thing imaginable of the " smooth-
tone-tied chief" who is now ruling the country, at
the head of a Conservative Ministry. The expan-
sive movement of the civic breast consequent upon
a good dinner may perhaps have had something to
do with that, and the reticence upon most political
subjects which earned for most of the speeches tipon
that occasion the distinction of having nothing in
them, may have further contributed to the flowing
periods and elegant extracts in which the First
Magistrate of the City celebrated the qualities of
Lord Derby. The Lord Mayor has evidently since
that evening been advantageously employing his
time in a favourable review of all the intermediate
classes of society ; and, true to his principles, he
appeared, " accompanied by his mace and s word-
bearers," on the platform at Guildhall, on Wednes-
day night, to proclaim that he also extended his
belief in the virtues of mankind to Mr. Beales and
Mr. Odgers,- and his conviction that " good temper,
good judgment, and moderation" were there before
him, " strongly written upon the faces of as good,
as fine, and as intellectual a gathering of working
men as he had ever seen brought together under one
roof." It is painful to us, however, to remark that
even the Lord Mayor was not exempt from. that
mania of taking " precautions" which has been made
the subject of such severe comment in the case of
Mr. Walpole. With so touching a belief in the tem-
per, judgment, and moderation of the meeting, it is
surprising that he should have thought it proper to
allow such an invasion of the liberties of the people
as is implied in the protection of drinking-fountains
and statues by boardings and the defence of a plat-
form by barriers. And no doubt those who are
less advanced in optimist opinions than the Lord
Mayor will assert that they detect in his speech,
at the conclusion of the meeting, wherein he
solemnly enshrined among his recollections that of
having presided "in that beautiful hall over one of
the noblest and most glorious meetings which had
ever taken place in the City of London," a tone of
relief that the beautiful hall was as beautiful as ever,
and that a risky affair had been safely got through
without either broken heads or a profanation of Gog
and Magog. So far as this goes we agree cordially
with his lordship, and we recognise with pleasure
the recorded fact that the whole of the proceedings
were conducted with an amount of order and good
temper which do infinite credit not less to its prd-
moters than to those who composed it ; and unless
Mr. Beales and the Reform League are above learn-
ing an obvious lesson from the fact, it will hence-
forth be clear to them that an orderly meeting
within four walls is of far more value as an expres-
sion of opinion and carried with it infinitely more
weight than a mere assemblage of individuals " in
their thousands," under circumstances which pre-
clude all possibility of either speeches or resolutions
being heard and understood. It would no doubt
go rather against the grain to give up monster
demonstrations, with all their excitement, and the
additional spice of a possible brush with the police,
for comparatively tame and common-place public
meetings, where arguments alone can be used, and
where the " brutality of the police " is only put
forth to secure their discussion. But if, as we are
quite prepared to believe, the object is to produce
an effect upon the reasoning faculties of the public,
the two methods of agitation bear no sort of com-
parison with each other, and we trust that the
ardent Reformers will be content with availing
themselves of the ordinary means of moving the
public mind, even though they are permitted, in
preference to again attempting to make use of
extraordinary means, which are eminently unsatis-
factory in themselves, even although they are
prohibited. In view of these considerations, we
cannot but regret that Mr. Beales devoted the
greater part of what was otherwise a very good
speech to an elaborate defence of the action taken
by himself and the League in connectiOn with the
late Hyde-park disturbances. It is perhaps useless
to remind Mr. Beales that when he inveighs against
those who have made an " attack upon one of the
most important and constitutional of the people's
rights— the right of public meeting," he utters the
strongest condemnation of the League itself, which
brought that right into disrepute and disgrace by
obstinately insisting on exercising it improperly,
and thus giving occasion to all that followed. But,
to speak strictly, it was not a public meeting at all
that was ever contemplated in Hyde-park, and of
this Mr. Bea_!es must be perfectly aware. And the
opinion that " a large peaceful gathering" is in it-
self sufficient to " show convincingly what is really
the state of the national feeling," is utterly worth-
less. Such "gatherings" are, from their very nature,
powerless for discussion. They advance no question
and prove nothing beyond their own existence,
which is of a very doubtful value and tendency.
Mr. George Potter followed in support of the reso-
lution which declared that the working classes " will
be satisfied with nothing less than the speedy in-
troduction of a bill for the amendment of the repre-
sentation on the basis of residential and registered
manhood suffrage and the ballot ;" and certainly
addressed himself more closely and successfully to
the subject. With the help of many figures he vin-
dicated the title of the working classes to a stake in
the country, and based upon it the assertion that
"the principles of honesty, morality, and justice
should be observed in matters of government and
taxation," which, although true as a proposition, by
no means leads to the ground taken up by the resolu-
tion it was intended to support. Nevertheless, al-
though there are very few who are of opinion that
either honesty, morality, or justice require the in-
stitution of manhood suffrage, there are still fewer
who deny the propriety of au extension of the suf-
frage beyond its present limits. Mr. Potter did not
overstate the case when he said that the claims of
the unenfranchised have been " recognised by both
Liberal and Conservative Governments," although
that recognition by no means implies a recognition
of universal suffrage ; and the Reform Bill of the
session now expired, which proposed a most liberal
extension of the franchise, if it failed, failed not upon
the merits of that extension, but owing to the un-
happy and ill-judged manner in which it was pre-
sented and conducted in Parliament. Mr. Connolly,
who made an unfortunate and suggestive reference
to Jack Cade, and Mr. Odgers appear chiefly to
have concerned themselves with invective against
the supposed opponents of Reform, and a laudation
of Mr. Gladstone and their "noble selves;" while
Mr. Mason Jones went so far as to propose ie tem-
perate measure of a petition to her Majesty, request-
ing her to exchange her Ministers- for Mr. Jones's
nominees. Apart from such little eccentricities as
these, the meeting appears to have been creditable
to its promoters and their cause, and we trust it will
mark a return on their part to the proper and recog-
nised exercise of the " most important and constitu-
tional right" of public meeting, as distinguished
from demonstrations which have hitherto demon-
strated nothing but the inability of those who get
them up to control them.
DAILY NEWS.—The sudden arrival of the Empress
of Mexico heightens the interest which so many Eno.-
lishmen have reason to take in the affairs of that
country. It is natural to suppose that the Emperor
Maximilian would not have permitted the partner of
his throne to make a sudden voyage to Europe in
the ordinary French mail steamer unless the busi-
ness on which she came were extremely urgent.
The Empress Charlotte is no merely ornamental- of a court : she is a woman of courage
and dignity, of capacious understanding and prac
tieal aptitude, formed in all respects to figure with
distinction in the great world. She has had a full
share of the responsibilities as well as the perils at-
tending her husband's remarkable adventure in the
New World ; and now that that • enterprise has
reached its crisis; the public will not be far wrong
in supposing that the Emperor Maximilian, tired of
the periphrases of diplomacy, has permitted his
other self to visit the distant source and centre of
his power to learn at first band what further
aid he has to expect from the creator of his throne
and empire. There can be no doubt that this was
the wisest step he could take ; if the truth is to be
got at the Empress will find it. The Emperor of the
French, however, may justly complain if he will,
for it is rather sharp practice to introduce feminine
naivete and persistence into an affair so mysteriotis
and sacred as diplomacy without a moment's warn-
ing. The Empress left Mexico before the great
events which have recently taken place in Germany