The Express. — 1867-02-05 (London, England)

REGINTRAR-GENtRAL sings quite a paean over the review of matters sanitary and social mining within his province :—" The aspect of the returns "is favourable in every respect. Marriages have " abounded ; births have followed in unusual num' " bers ; and deaths, in spite of an imminent epide" inic, have been less frequent than in the corre" spending seasons of former years. Hygienic " measures have been prosecuted with unusual " activity, and apparently with good results." Yet, as nothing human is absolutely perfect, there are one or two little shadows which certainly are not unworthy of notice in the prospect which the Reolsremt-GeNutAl. contemplates so serenely. The upward tendency of the price of wheat, for instance, is not a trifling matter. The average price per quarter in the first three months of 1865 was 38a. 4d., and from that time the rise has been progressive ; 40s. Gd., 435. 3d., 445. 10d., 455. 61., 465. 6d., 515., to 565. Bd. per quarter, represents the extent to which the staple article of food has become augmented in value within two years. And concurrently with this increase there is an accession of recipients of in-door parochial relief : the average number relieved on the last day of each week in the December quarter of 1866 was from four to six thousand in excess of the number I relieved in any of the corresponding seasons since 1862.  Wheat also was dearer last quarter than in any quarter since September, 1862. We have only to take a yearly average to see how steadily in-door pauperism is affected by the price of wheat. Thus in 1864 the mean price of wheat was 40s. 2d., and the mean weekly indoor pauperism was 126,753 ; in 1865 the relation was as 41s. 10d. to 128,596; and in 1866 as 495. IW. to 129,534. Outdoor pauperism, on the contrary, has decreased from 788,689 to 758,559, and 736,352, in the last three years. From 1864 to 1866 there was an increase of 25 per cent. in the price of wheat, and of 21 per cent. in the recipients of indoor relief ; there was, however, a decrease of 7 per cent. in outdoor pauperism, and of 5 per cent. on the aggregate of both classes of recipients. Facts such as these are very suggestive, and many deductions may be drawn from them, but none more certain than that a time of dear bread is pregnant with distress to the thousands of our hapless fellow-creatures who live on the border land between independence and abject poverty. To them the rise of a halfpenny or a penny per loaf just makes the difference between self-maintenance and pauperism, and hence arises one great cause of the fluctuation in the Poor-law returns at different seasons. Of course there are other elements to complicate the question, such as the condition of the labour market, and so on, but these seem rather applicable to outdoor pauperism than to the more confirmed dependence which indoor relief implies. The state of the public health during the last quarter appears to have been good, for the rate of mortality, both in rural and urban districts, was below the average of ten corresponding quarters. The exceptional cases of unhealthiness are accounted for only too easily. People will forget the proverb that one cannot touch pitch and yet be undefiled ; they will drink water charged with all manner of pollution ; they will not attend to the simplest measures of precaution, even when there is no pecuniary sacrifice requisite ; so they I die, out of all reasonable proportion, suicides in fact if not in name. Last summer, cholera had hundreds of foci in England ; it was diffused over the remotest parts of the kingdom ; but the