The Sun.
London, England, 1850-11-19 00:00:00

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LONDON, TUESDAY. NOVEMBER 19, 1850.

Notwithstanding the interferences of the Legis-
lature, London still continue- ,s be contaminated by
the odious practice of intfa i; sal interment. The
parochial authorities of the capital seem indeed to be
determined to render the 13th and 14th Victoria, cap.
32, in more senses than one a Dead Letter. In
spite of the positive and explicit injunctions of the
law, in open defiance even of • public decency, the
graveyards of the metropolis continue to be employed
as the receptacles of decaying mortality, although
long since crowded to very repletion. The crimi-
nality of such proceedings is too obvious to require any
demonstration ; and we are reduced at last to the
inquiry as to what "penalties are incurred
by this shameless infraction of the rules laid
down by the enactment. Either the parties thus
offending against the law are liable to receive punish-
-ment for their total and flagrant disregard of its in-
junctions, or the measure is altogether useless and
invalid. Either their acts are illegal, and as such
amenable to the magisterial authorities, or the Bill
passed through the Legislature last session is nothing
better than a wretched imposition. To one or other
of these conclusions we find ourselves perforce driven
under the circumstances. We are necessitated to
condemn either the Government for having placed
insufficient restrictions upon those who have hitherto
disgraced the metropolis by maintaining the custom
of intramural interment, or the latter for shamefully
placing themselves in a position antagonistic to that
required by the mandates of the Government.
Unfortunately the grievances we are complaining
of now-a-days are not discoverable in merely one or
two isolated and secluded localities—they thrust
themselves under general observation, and present
themselves to public notice even in our most crowded
thoroughfares. Within a gun-shot of ourselves these
things are occurring. Dead bodies are being still
from time to time hid away in the churchyards both of
St. Clement Danes and St. Mary-le-Strand. Cheek by
jowl with the living the dead are being piled up with
a ghastly indifference to law and life—the authorities
in both cases laughing to scorn the danger of infecting
the atmosphere and Vie perils incurred by disobeying
the injunctions of an Act of Parliament. So long as
these disgusting violations of the new enactment are
allowed to pass by with impunity we shall (surely
with reason) consider ourselves justified to regard the
General Board of Health as possessing little or no
power, or, at the very least, as being gifted with little
or no discernment. Scarcely a single quarter has
elapsed since the aspirants for sanitary improvement
throughout the country were felicitating the
metropolis upon a change calculated to pu-
rify the air respired by its inhabitants,
to correct a large amount of immorality by vin-
dicating the sanctity of death in the estimation of the
community, and perceptibly to diminish the sum of
the annual mortality in the capital by promoting a
greater degree of attention to the requirements of
public health and cleanliness. Scarcely a single
quarter, we say, has elapsed since this congratulation
was addressed to the citizens of the metropolis, and
already the new hopes inspired by the alteration
have been almost entirely dissipated. So far
ftom being in this respect the object of envy
among the provincial cities of the United King-
dom, London still remains entitled to their
pity and commiseration. W bile we were dreaming
of suburban cemeteries for the reception of the dead
the bodies of our departed fellow-citizens still con-
tinued to be crowded into the vaults of our city
churches and into the fcetid soil of our city grave-
yards. The old and brutalising system is still found
to flourish in undisputed luxuriance in the very face
of a despised enactment and derided Legislature.
Are these atrocious infractions of the enactment,
we ask, to be permitted ? Is the law to dwindle into
merely so much waste paper ? or are the rights both
of the living and the dead to be vindicated ? Upon
the response given to these questions the whole cause
of Sanitary Reform is in a great measure dependent.
'I herefore it is that we feel especially interested in
watching the result of the proceedings to which we
are here directing attention. In the liberty granted
to the violators of the Metropolitan Interments Act
we recognize the assurance of a still increasing mor-
tality. Without some rigorous interposition we per-
ceive no prospect of a change for the better. Impu-
nity cannot fail to multiply such offences throughout
the metropolis in such a manner that the proceedings
of last session will be soon lost even to recollection.

Those who are at all watching the couise pursued
by this journal towards the Bill lately passed through
both Houses of Parliament, will bear in mind that
we all along insisted upon its utter insufficiency as a
prevention of intramural interment. Our arguments
even went to demand some more stringent clauses
than any to be found in the entire measure—clauses
rendering it an imperative duty upon the clergy to
close all intramural graveyards without distinction
from the very possibility of further interment. We
anticipated that without some such comprehensive
mandate the persons interested in the continuance
of the present execrable system would discover
loopholes through which to evade the power of the
enactment. Events have, unhappily, since then
shown the reasonablenees of those anticipations.
The pertinacity with which the old and atrocious
custom has been followed out proves that we were
justified in requiring from the Legislature some more
visible guarantees that the aspirations of the multi-
tude would be realized. Gladly should we have
witnessed the falsification of our predictions. Pito-
VIDEISCE has, however, ordered otherwise. What we
said would inevitably come to pass has in fact
actually transpired. The dead are still hid
away in those crumbling dens of abomination, which
invest all our principal places of pubic worship with
an aspect of repulsiveness. Dreamers may solace
themselves with anticipations of the time when inter-
ments will be everywhere extramural; but without
some resolute interference on the part of the Govern-
ment that great blessing will be denied to the pre-
sent generation.
Something, in short, remains to be done, in order