The Sun.
London, England, 1845-03-24 00:00:00

SPIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURNALS

FROM THE EVENING PAPERS OF SATURDAY.

GLOBE.—The recent revelations touching the con

tion of the Spa-fields burial-ground, revolting as they
are, will yet be viewed with a failing of satisfaction by
those who are aware of the extent to which the health of
every town-population in the kingdom suffers from the to-
lerated nuisance of inter-mural interment. This is but a
single instance, ard it is no worse, in reality, than hun-
dreds of others ; but it will probably serve to attract
public attention to the general subject ; and, in doing
this, will, we believe, remove one of the chief obstac:es
to an amendment of our present system of interment.
Among those whose attention has been drawn to the
sanitary condition of our population, particularly in
connexion with the recent Parliamentary inquiries
into the causes affecting the health of the in-
habitants of towns and popular districts. there are
probably few who have not been painfully conscious of
the vast amount of physical suffering and moral degra-
dation which is traceable directly to such causes as mere
indolence, ignorance, or prejudice on the part of the
chief sufferers. That men, being breathing animals, need
a constant supply of air, must, however vaguely, have
been practically recognised as a truth from the days of
Adam downwards. But that the health or good condi-
tion of the breathing body was dependent in any degree
upon the purity of the air supplied to it— that the pro-
cess of respiration was a chemical as well as a mecha-
nical one—appears to have been left for the 19th century
to discover. For ages men have continued to immerse
themselves in collections .ef foul air, and die at once, or
gradually to accumulate it around them, and sicken slowly
to the same end, without any definite idea of what they
were doing. From the mute astonishment of the won-
der-seeker in the Grotto del Cane to the unknowing and
silent suffering of the denizens of three-fourths of the
habitations of Europe, the want of a visible distinction
between the vital necessary, and the subtle poison,
alone seems to have prevented a recognition of their
difference. Rooms, and houses, and towns, have for
ages been constructed wholly without reference to ven-
tilation. Food, a want more gross and palpable, but
no whit more pressing, has always been an object of
keen regard. It has often been hard to get ; and mul-
titudes have died of famine. But during its greatest
scarcity we do not hear of men having voluntarily and
largely mixed with their food articles not only unfitted
to nutrify, but especially adapted to disorganise and
destroy their bodies. Yet so have they invariably
dealt with the air they breathe. Of all the neces-
saries of life it is by far the most plentiful, and
most universally accessible ; and yet it is in-
dubitably that with which we are worst supplied.
As to the economy of towns in this respect, recent
investigations have established the fact that, under
ordinary circumstances, the population of a town
vitiates, or renders unfit for the purposes of respiration,
a stratum of air " sufficient to cover the entire surface
of the town to the depth of three feet." To this is to
be added " the changes caused by the products of com-
bustion from forges, furnaces, and other fires mingling
s ith the atmosphere (to siy nothing of the enormous
quantity of gas, oil, and candles nightly consumed in
large towns), and by the escape of gaseous effluvia
from manufactories of different kinds." The expediency
of constantly changing the air, thus rendered unfit for
further breathing, is obvious enough. The vitiation
itself, so far as we have yet described it, cannot be
avoided. It is a necessary result of the congregation of
the people in towns. There are, however, many diffi-
culties in the way of a constant and complete change
being spontaneously, or even easily made. The most
prominent feature of the alteration effected in atmo-

spheric air by its use in respiration and combustion is
the generation of carbonic acid gas. This, being heavier
then air, settles downwards, and so is easily confined
in narrow streets and in low districts. Again, much
of the foul air is pent up in close rooms and passages.
It stays there till it is driven out, and as no means are,
in general, taken to do this, its stay is commonly de-
pendent upon causes merely accidental, and is in almost
all cases very much longer than is consistent with the
health of those most nearly concerned. All this, how-
ever, merely concerns ventilation in its more general
point of view; it goes only to impeach the neglect of
the measures required for clearing the air of crowded
districts of impurities necessarily engendered in it.
But the peculiar class of atmospheric impurities
to which our attention is now mainly directed,
and of which the state of the Spa-field's burial-
ground furnishes so apt an illustrat;on, involves
far more pressing considerations. The question, in this
department of the subject is, not whether we shall fold
our hands and leave untouched those sources of atmos-
pheric contamination consequent upon the mere existence
of towns constructed in ignorant disregard of the natural
laws affecting ventilation, hut whether we shall continue
the barbarous and disgusting prrctice of slowly poison-
ing each generation with the gaseous effluvia from the
dead bodies of the preceding one.
STANDARD.—Mr. Morison's speech of Thursday,
on the subject of railroads, merits more attention than
can be claimed for his resolutions, with which, indeed,
the speech is at variance. The resolutions demand to fix

a maximum of railroad fares, than which we can imagine
nothing more foolish, or more likely to deprive the public
of the benefit of these improvements. This great
instrument of social improvement is as yet in its
infancy, and its prompt and successful operation,
must depend to a great extent, upon the perfect freedom
with which the experiment is permitted to be tried. We
are firmly convinced that the necessity for competition
(in eadem maScria) to induce railroad proprietors to
lower their fares will not have arrived for many, very
many years to come, if it shall ever arrive. Judging
from the experience of the last few years, it
is plain to us that the lowering of fares will be
the true means of increasing profits, until all
the population shall have beome travellers. The pro-
prietors of railways may not, perhaps, have yet made
the discovery, or if they have, they may reasonably
enough think that it is as well not to apply it too
abruptly; but no less is it manifest to us, that before the
lapse of many years extreme cheapness will be the
rule in railroad travelling--dearness the exception.
It must be apparent, however, that at all times, in
the future as well as at present, some railroads must
have less traffic than others ; and therefore, to in-
sure remunerative profits, their owners must demand
higher fares. Any attempt, therefore, to fix a maximum
fare would be either unjnst to the less popular, or useless
on the more popular lines, and would thus repress enter-
prise in every case, except where very great profits were
certain. As matters stand, the public surely has little
reason to complain, seeing, that on any one of the
principal lines a person can travel any given distance at
about half the expense, in from a third to a fifth of the
time ; and beyond all calculation more at his ease,
than he could travel by coach ten years ago ; and as
respects expense, this is merely a beginning. Most,
if not all,- of the lines commenced at their opening
with much higher fares than at present ; but,
uncompelled either by law or competition, they have
lowered their fares, and as they have lowered them
they have found their profits increase in a greater
proportion—and so it will proceed, fares descending
and profits rising, until the locomotive wants and
propensities of the whole thirty millions (probably
the number of the present population of the United
Kingdom) are exhausted—a term which we may con-
sider as indefinitely remote, when we reflect upon the
multitude of new trades and pursuits which railway tra-
velling is creating, and the prodigious stimulus which
it supplies to old pursuits. Mr. Morison's allusion
to the improvement of the fisheries, among the rest,
is most interesting and most gratifying. An im-
provement which really makes provision for half
the food of the people, in case of necessity, is itself
an occasion for deep gratitude to the Giver of all good,
but in the low light, this must cause a great traffic
not merely of fish, but of fishermen, and of all
others concerned in the renewed trade. The same
must take place in a greater or less degree with hun-
dreds of other trades and pursuits revived or
called into existence by railroads. " The iron
net," as Mr. Smythe poetically calls it, thrown
over the island, gathers the whole population into
one market—(the Greek word agora, " gathering,"
better describes the collection) and the whole of the
two islands will soon present the bustle and activity of a
market. Already, indeed, we have some specimen
of this bustle and activity at the railroad termini ;
but this is a very slight foretaste of what
may be looked for to occur in the lifetime of many now
living. We may mention in passing, that there is, as
regards the metropolis, at least one obstacle, the removal
of which will, we are persuaded, at a stroke augment
the number of railway travellers twenty-five per cent.,
wo mean the delay, expense, and turmoil of getting
at any railway, whether by omnibus, coach,
or cab. A man going to Oxford or Portsmouth,
thinks much more frequently of the stage to Pad.
dington or Nine Elms than of the rest of the
journey. We can answer for some who would have
visited both the one and the other of these places
half-a-dozen times within the last year, had it
not been for the delay and difficulty of getting at " the
London end" of the railway. Were it not for this diffi-
culty, multitudes who now confine themselves to
London, would consult their own health and the health
of their families, by residing at a distance, thus leaving
the City more airy, and therefore more healthy for those
who remained.