The Sun.
London, England, 1844-08-07 00:00:00

THE SANATORY REPORT.

(From Bell's Life in London.)
This report has at length been published, and its
contents are such as to do honour to the industry of the
Commissioners, and the witnesses who have been called
on to give evidence before them. There is above all
others, one service which it will render to religion and
morals, as well as to the poor in their physical condition.
It will displace, and for ever utterly destroy, that cruel
and blasphemous proposition, that war, and plague, and
wretchedness are the natural checks upon a redundant
population. That these things may destroy life, is no
doubt true—that they will permanently check the too
rapid advance of population is now shown to be false.
Nature and religion are now freed from a tenet which
seemed to contradict both, but which appeared so true,
that nothing but a very strict and exact examination of
intricate and multitudinous facts could possibly have de-
tected and exposed its fallacy. Mr. Chadwick deserves
the credit of having first given to the world this con-
tradiction of a belief which was admitted by all good
men, with the deepest regret, and the complete and
overwhelming contradiction to which will be received
by them with the greatest joy. The Commissioners
have fully worked out the contradiction which Mr.
Chadwick first offered to the glad acceptance of all
feeling and religious men. It is now clear, that when
these scourges of the human race, war and pestilence,
diminish the amount of the population, they do it only
for a time, at the fearful cost of substituting an un-
healthy and weakly, for a healthy and vigorous race
of men. The numbers wasted by pestilence are 'soon
supplied, but if that pestilence is of the slow, though
continually operating kind, if it proceeds from dirt,
and the want of the means of cleanliness, those num-
bers will be recruited by creatures suffering from the
same causes which occasioned the deaths of their pa-
rents, and oppressed through a short life with the
dreadful curs© which attended their entrance into ex-
istence. And these wretched creatures will come into
existence in larger numbers than their more fortunate
fellow-beings. What is the lesson taught us by this
fact ? What but that which reason and religion would
alike have taught before—that to diminish the amount
of human misery in any classes peculiarly exposed in
their circumstances to its visitation, is to increase the
comfort and happiness of all. No one class can be
happy while others are suffering around it—no one body
of men can long prosper on the wretchedness of those
who aro about them. All human events work in a
perpetual circle, and sooner or later the mischief, in-
flicted or permitted to be inflicted upon some, returns
on those who might have prevented its existence. In
a moral and political point of view, all far-seeing men
had known this to be the fact, and statistics now
come to their aid to show that in the ordinary affairs
of the internal economy of a nation, the same rule
applies with equal force. Nature is thus vindicated
from that which appeared to be a fearful self-con-
tradiction, and the wish to improve the condition of the
lower classes will receive additional strength from the
circumstance that those who possess the power to effect
the improvement have an interest in effecting it.' We
are happy to be able to add, that even pecuniary in-
terest is now proved to be on the same side with
morality and good-feeling, and that the researches re-
cently made abundantly show, that improvements in the
dwellings of the poor, care for their health, and atten-
tion to their advantage and happiness, will not only
benefit them directly, and their superiors
(though quite as extensively), but will diminish the ex-
penses, and improve the profits of all. We could not
avoid referring to this one great and gratifying dis-
covery, but the report itself is full of matter of the
highest interest and importance, and we shall again and
again refer to its contents.