The Sun.
London, England, 1857-10-20 00:00:00

place between the General Board of Works and

the Metropolitan Board of Works it is impossible
not to see that their apparently contrasting plans
are really after all, as the housemaids say—Much
of a Muchness. The ingredients are pretty nearly
the same in the bolus and the black-draught.
The one is diluted, and the other is condensed.
Mr. BAZALGETTE'S scheme, it will be remem-
bered, was to empty the sewage of the metropolis
en masse a little lower down the river (but still,
observe, to empty it into the river), and to do this,
moreover, at a point sufficiently near to the capital
to enable the tide in rising to wash back the pes-
tilential deposits high up under the bridges—
actually, according to this extremely ingenious
project, renewing, day after day, the very evil we
are all of us wishing to have removed. This—
recollect, was the plan suggested by the Engineer
of the Metropolitan Board of Works, and subse-
quently, and summarily, and most reasonably
rejected by Sir BENJAMIN HALL and his co-Com-
missioners.

It was then proposed by Messrs. GALTON,
SLMNON, and BLAOKWELL—in opposition to Mr.
BAZALGETTE—that the obnoxious drainage of the
capital should be conveyed further away from
London, but conveyed to that greater distance
by open sewers. This—recollect, again, was the
plan suggested by the engineers of the General
Board of Works, and now by the Rival (Local)
Board no less summarily, and, in one particular,
no lees reasonably rejected as in a great measure
preposterous. The fact of the matter being, all
the while, that neither are right, that both are
wrong, and yet that all of them are at the same
time upon the right tack, as shown in turn by
the correctness of their relative objections !
It were simply absurd to employ the agency of
.the river Thames for the main drainage of the
metropolis, as proposed by Mr. RiZALGETTE—
that being, in reality, one of the principal objects
we have in view—namely, the so contriving
matters in future that the river Thames shall be
purified, instead of being rendered absolutely pes-
tilential.

It were equally absurd to dream of bisecting
two counties with open sewers while conveying
the drainage of London towards the sea, as pro-
' posed by Messrs. GALTON, SIsoN, and BLACK-
WELL—that being actually the very species of
evil hitherto complained of with such deplorable
reason, the old system, or rather want of system,
resulting in nothing less than the transformation
of the river Thames into an open sewer, and
into nothing better than an open sewer reeking
with destructive exhalations.
Everything considered, therefore, we are clearly
as far removed as ever from the remedy so long
and anxiously desired. Let us have an end of
these little petty jealousies and rivalries be-
tween contending Engineers and Cmamissioners.
And let us have, at any cost,—(instead of these
jealousies and rivalries)—the realisation of our
Hopes as to the Main Drainage of the Metropolis.
How ? By conducting it far away from London
and from the Thames—emptying it into the
North Sea by other means than gigantic open
sewers—effecting all this (again we say it), no
matter what the expenditure !

Conspicuous among the ameliorative measures
required at the hands of the Legislature, at as
early a period as practicable after the re-assem-
bling of Parliament, will assuredly be one iu re-
ference to the treatment of the houseless poor when
applying for aid, at the last extremity at the door
of the hospital or of the workhouse. At present
the law in these cases appears really and truly to
be altogether inoperative. Particular instances
in proof of this were idle—they are unhappily of
such very frequent occurrence. It is only very
recently, indeed, that sundry lamentable illustra-
tions of this fact have been brought rather pain-
fully to the public knowledge. An accident sud-
denly occurs in the street, and the sufferer
is conveyed to one of our hospitals, to be there
refused admission (after some delay) and sent off
to another hospital in a different part of the metro-
polis. An unfortunate drayman is jolted off the
shaft on which he is sitting, his team being sud-
denly startled into a trot by the passing by of a
runaway horse, and he is borne iu great agony to
another London Hospital with seventeen of his
ribs broken, and his frame subjected to other in-
juries, and The is coolly dismissed forthwith from
the institution and sent home in a cab, as having
nothing particularly the matter with him—there,
of course (in his poor home), to exeire is great
agonies soon afterwards. As a companion picture,
to all which we have repeated roe rds simul-
taneously in our police reports—relating how
ome wretched tramp, who has trudged wearily up
to London from a remote corner of the pro-
vinces--footsore, famished, and drenched with
rain during the inclement weather—is bandied
about, long after nightfall, from one workhouse t.)
another, until—shelter at list- being given (but not
food) the poor wretch is carried off in an hour or
two after admission by a frightful attack of
diferrhon, brought on by the combined effects of
cold, fatigue, and inanition. It is not too
much to ask and to expect that the law shall so
interfere that deaths of this most lamentable kind
shall in future be IMPOSSIBLE in this great city,
save under the most exceptional combination of
circumstances. We do demand that efforts at
least in this direction should be made soon after ,
the beginning of next session, in February—and
we demand it most earnestly in the name at once
of our common Christianity and of our boasted
civilisation.