London (Ancient And Modern) From The Sanitary And Medical Point Of View — Ditto: The London 'Death Rate'; Improved Conditions Of Modern London; What Is The Outlook?; Annual Death Rate Per 100,000 Living Children; The Loose Ends Of Our Sanitation

THE LONDON “DEATH RATE.

” The present writers on London, like their predecessors, are loud in its praises and blind to its defects, and they point to a figure which is called “the death-rate,” and ask us to accept it as evidence that the state of public health in London is as good as can be.

It is quite true that the death-rate of London is low, and that it is not much in excess of the country at large, and is very much below that of some of the big towns scattered through the kingdom.

Nevertheless, before we accept this figure and rest contented with it, we must take several facts into consideration.

1. The London of the Registrar-General is very extensive, and no small part of it is rural or semi-rural in character.

Many of the dwellers in Lewisham, Wandsworth, Fulham, Hampstead, Hackney, Greenwich, Camberwell, and Woolwich, can hardly be looked upon as dwellers in a city, and it must be remembered that the death-rates in these districts, which contain only from 40 to 8 persons to an acre, tend very materially to reduce the death-rate of the whole town.

2. London is very largely a city of wealthy and well-to-do people, most of whom must be looked upon as sojourners rather than dwellers in the city.

Among such as these, who can command every luxury and necessary of life, including change of air, death-rates ought to be low.

It is manifestly unfair to contrast the death-rate of St. George’s, Hanover Square, or Kensington, with the death-rate of a town packed with the wage-earning class.

3. The mobility of the London population is so great that it must vitiate any statistics bearing on the health of the inhabitants.

“Londoners” are a mixture of races, recruited from every clime from China to Peru.

They are, as the phrase goes, “Here to-day and gone to-morrow,” and probably no one fact quickens their departure more than ill-health.

I am told by the proprietor of Kelly’s Post Office Directory that the annual correction of addresses amounts to about ten per cent.

of the whole, so that the London population shifts on an average completely every ten years, even among classes who have far more stability than the labouring classes.

It is also well to point out that these changes in the Directory do not represent all the changes, because in trade it is common for new individuals to trade under an old and established name.

I find, on comparing the Directories of 1880 and 1889, that in my own street of 96 houses there have been 87 changes of names, and that 96 houses are now credited with the addresses of 140 individuals, whereas in 1880 the individuals numbered 120. 4. Still more important, as vitiating the value of the “death-rate,” is the abnormal age distribution in London.

In London (and especially in the central portions of it) there is a great deficiency of young children and old people, among whom the death-rate is always highest;

the population of London is largely composed of selected adults imported from the country, among whom the death-rate ought to be low.

5. The continued low death-rate of London is very largely accounted for by the diminishing birth-rate.

Thus the birth-rate for the ten years 1877-86 averaged 34·4 and the death-rate 21·2, while for the year 1887 the birth-rate was 31·6 and the death-rate 19·5. This is a diminution of 2·8 per 1,000 of population in the birth-rate.

This, in a population of 4,250,000, means a deficit of 11,900 children; and as out of every 1,000 children born in London in 1887, 158 died before they were one year old (_i.

e. _, 13 per 1,000 more than in England as a whole, and 66 per 1,000 more than in the county of Dorsetshire), it is evident that this diminution of the birth-rate entails a deficit of 1,940 in the total deaths occurring in London in the year.

It is clear from this that in taking account of a diminishing death-rate we have to take into consideration the diminishing birth-rate also.

These considerations make it very doubtful whether the death-rate of London is of much value, as indicating the amount of disease in the City.

Even if we accept it we must not draw any hasty conclusions that the disease-rate bears any definite proportion to the death-rate.

There may be much disease with comparatively few deaths, as was the case with the scarlet fever epidemic of last year, and there can be no doubt that the improvement and extension of medical knowledge has very largely diminished the death-rate of those who are sick.

Further, an enormous proportion of those who fall ill in London return to the country to die.

A fact which must throw considerable doubt on the healthiness (_i.

e. _, a real vigorous and robust condition, which is the true meaning of health) of the population is the amount of sickness, as evidenced by the ever-increasing work which is thrown upon the hospitals.

According to a table which was published last June in _The Hospital_, it appears that in 1887 there were treated in the London hospitals 79,261 in-patients, and 1,180,251 out-patients, or a total of 1,259,512 persons, excluding those who received relief in the hospitals belonging to the Asylums Board (and these were very numerous, owing to the epidemic of scarlet fever), the workhouse infirmaries, the lunatic asylums, and idiot asylums.

Thus it appears that in a city whose death-rate was very low more than 25 per cent.

of the population had recourse to the hospitals for relief.

We must therefore conclude that the death-rate and the disease-rate bear no fixed ratio to each other, especially when we consider that between 2,000 and 3,000 medical men found sufficient work among the population to furnish them with an income.

If deaths be few in London, it is clear that second-rate health is by no means exceptional.

IMPROVED CONDITION OF MODERN LONDON.

Although we have to make many allowances, and take many things into consideration before we can estimate the true value of the London death-rate, it is, of course, undeniable that an enormous improvement in the health of the City has taken place since the beginning of the present century.

To what is this due?

The chief cause is the increase of knowledge as to the modes in which diseases are spread.

Our knowledge of the mode in which small-pox, scarlet fever, cholera, and typhoid are disseminated has led to the establishment of fever hospitals, and to the improvement of the water-supply, and the inspection of dairies.

It is not only that the knowledge of doctors has increased, but what is more important, this knowledge has spread to the public, and as “self-preservation is the first law of nature,” the public has assisted in protecting itself.

The practice of vaccination, and the dealing with epidemics by the method of isolation, have also materially assisted in diminishing the death-rate.

Another very important point is the disappearance of malaria.

Drainage, the filling up of low-lying places, and extensive building operations, have banished malaria from our midst, and this, be it remembered, was not only a cause of death in itself, but probably tended to make other diseases more deadly.

It is conceivable that the impregnation of the soil by coal-gas may have helped to stop the growth of noxious microbes which make the soil their habitat.

Again, our system of sewers, which has carried filth away from the dwellings, has probably assisted in improving the public health.

That sewers have done and are doing much harm as well as good is undoubted, but it is probable that the balance is so far in their favour.

For the present typhus fever has disappeared, and this is probably due to two causes--first, the prompt separation of the sick from the healthy, and secondly, to the fact that we have had no scarcity for some years.

Typhus is due to overcrowding and want.

I have drawn up a scheme which shows by a curve the average price of wheat from the year 1800 to 1886. From this it appears that the staple article of food has, broadly speaking, and with some considerable fluctuation, fallen steadily in price from 1812 to the present time, when it is at its minimum.

Not only wheat, but all articles of food and clothing, and also fuel, have of late years been getting steadily cheaper; potatoes and other vegetables are in common use among the masses, and thus we have kept away famine diseases, and also that taint of scurvy, which was undoubtedly a great cause of ill-health in the middle ages.

A

most important fact has been the removal of the in-take of the water companies to a part of the river containing less sewage than that between the bridges.

It is not enough to be able to rejoice in a small death-rate.

We ought to be able to look ahead and feel that to the best of our knowledge there is no probability of the return of a high one, and that our sanitary arrangements having been set a-going, will continue _propriâ motu_.

We have to remember that diseases disappear or become unimportant, and that others become prominent.

In our own day we have seen the rise in importance of diphtheria and enteric fever, and just at present we seem to have lost sight of typhus, for a long time the most important of the febrile diseases.

“Leprosy,” which was at one time common in London, has practically disappeared.

Plague, sweating sickness, and malarial fever have also gone.

Whooping-cough was not recognised till the end of the sixteenth century, and could not, therefore, have been as common as it is now.

In like manner, scarlet fever was not distinguished from measles until the seventeenth century, and from that fact we may infer that there could have been no epidemics of it, although we must remember that in the great crowd of fevers it must have been hard to distinguish individuals.

The fact that diseases wax and wane must be borne in mind, and should prevent us from indulging in a feeling of false security.

WHAT IS THE OUTLOOK?

Judged by our present standard of knowledge, have we a right to hope that London is likely to remain free from epidemics?

There are certain facts which make me seriously doubt the permanence of the present state of health in London.

The first of these is the fact that some of our hygienic measures have tended to produce overcrowding of houses, which is infinitely the greatest of all sanitary evils.

Formerly the sanitary arrangements of houses were such that without some garden or back premises they would have been uninhabitable, and a reference to Aggas’s map, or Norden’s map, or Newcourt’s map, will show that in Old London a large proportion of the houses had gardens or back premises large enough to be shown on a map.

These maps also show that in Charles II.

’s time, just before the plague, the overcrowding of houses in London was much more marked than in the days of Elizabeth.

When every drop of water and all the fuel used had to be carried to the upper storeys by hand, there were practical inconveniences attending upon very high houses which prevented them from being built to any great extent.

Now all is changed.

Our system of sewerage has made it possible to build houses with no curtilage whatever, and with no outlet but a hole, and the possession of a high pressure of water (the result of steam power) and the modern system of gas has made it possible to have houses of any height, without any great inconvenience to the occupants.

“Five hundred rooms, passenger and luggage lifts to every floor, 1,000 electric lights, hot and cold water laid on to every room, bath-rooms on every floor,” is the kind of advertisement put forward by an eight-storeyed hotel without an inch of curtilage.

Without steam power, without water under pressure, and without water-carried sewage, such Yankee monstrosities were not possible, whereas nowadays the loftier the hotel so much the greater is the profit, because extra storeys do not increase the ground-rent.

On the other hand, the fact that houses can be and are allowed to be built without curtilage has given an altogether fictitious value to land, the price of which varies in this country (according to situation) from about £200,000 to £10 per acre.

It is not surprising that the bias of landlords and builders is very much in favour of our present system of Sanitation.

Sanitary authorities are also in favour of it because, having borrowed enormous sums of money, which have to be paid out of the rates, they are naturally quite regardless of hygiene if they can increase the rateable value of the district, and so make the burden of rate-collection lighter.

“Black care (in the form of rates) sits behind the councillor.

” Everywhere throughout the metropolitan area houses are being pulled down and replaced by others twice as high; extra storeys are being added to old houses, and back-yards and gardens are fetching enormous prices for building purposes, so that the buildings in the centre of London have doubled their height and have lost all their curtilage.

Huge thoroughfares have been driven through London in all directions, but as the ultimate increase in the height of the buildings has been proportionately greater than the increase in the width of the street, locomotion has become more difficult, our traffic has become more in need of police regulations, and it has become an acknowledged rule in the City that if you want to keep an appointment it is dangerous to take a cab, because one can thread one’s way with more certainty on foot.

And yet the overcrowding in London does not appear in official documents.

Thus the City of London, on an area of 668 acres, in 1871 had 9,415 inhabited houses, and 3,222 uninhabited, and a population just short of 76,000; whereas in 1881 the inhabited houses had fallen to 6,562, the uninhabited had risen to 4,770, and the population had fallen to 51,439. Some historian of the future may draw the conclusion that the decay of London set in acutely about the year 1871, unless he should perchance discover that within the same period the rateable value had risen from £2,500,000 to £3,500,000; that the day population had risen from 170,000 to 260,000, and that the number of persons entering the City daily for business had risen from 657,000 to 739,000. This population is one mainly of adult males, and since, if they get ill in the City they don’t die in it, the death-rate keeps down, and we like to think it is a wholesome place for a young man to work in.

The 50,000 people who have to live night and day on this square mile of ground have not a very cheerful time in this wealthy city, where nature has been most effectually obliterated by the brute force of the almighty dollar.

What chance have they of any fresh air with a radius of houses extending to five miles all round them?

At one time the Thames served as a recreation ground, but that was in the days before the tide rolled in charged with the excrements of 4,000,000 people, and when it was possible to fish and boat, and perhaps catch a salmon, without the danger of being sunk by some headlong steam-tug.

Until a few years ago there was a little green spot called Drapers’ Gardens, but now Drapers’ Gardens is occupied by Throgmorton Avenue, where dwell 322 different firms of stockbrokers and others, and the nearest recreation ground is St. James’s Park, three miles off.

I have lately seen a young man, aged 21, with signs of incipient consumption.

He is a fine young fellow, and three years ago entered one of the large City warehouses connected with the drapery trade, in the centre of the City.

At first he was employed mainly in the basement, where gas was burning all day.

During times of extra pressure he often worked from eight in the morning to past midnight, and when he retired to rest he had to share a bedroom with other men, the windows being shut.

I believe this is no uncommon case, and I commend it most heartily to the attention of the “Sweating Committee.

” Occasionally on a Saturday afternoon he got a game of football, his very slender resources being severely taxed to pay the railway fare to the spot where the games are contested.

What has occurred in the City has occurred elsewhere in London.

I need hardly say that the crowding of houses means loss of liberty, and increases competition--that competition is the cause of “sweating” and other miseries.

Having wilfully produced these evils, I for one do not believe that they are to be removed even by the best intentioned efforts of city missionaries, nor by young men’s Christian associations, nor even by music halls, though tea be the beverage and hymn tunes the melodies.

We have to bear in mind the fact that all writers on sanitary matters are agreed that of all dangers to health, overcrowding is the greatest, and that the death-rate rises in proportion to the density of population.

When, therefore, we allow building to go practically unchecked, and move the poor out of two-storeyed dwellings into six-storeyed barracks, we must remember the possible drawbacks of such a system.

The death-rate of Paris is higher than that of London (it was nearly 26 per 1,000 in 1881), but the density of population in Paris is twice that of London, being 117 to the acre, as against 50 in London.

Some parts of Paris are very much more crowded than any parts of London, and no parts of it have a density of population so slight as Fulham, Hampstead, Wandsworth, Woolwich, or Lewisham.

The effect of overcrowding on death-rate is seen very markedly in the city of New York, which has a population of 1,337,000, which has an almost unlimited water-supply, and the sewage of which is discharged direct into the sea.

According to the writer in the “Encyclopædia Britannica,” there is an excessive crowding of the inhabitants into tenement houses, and the houses are to a great extent without back entrances.

As a consequence, the death-rate was 26·47 in 1880, 31·08 in 1881, and 29·64 in 1882. In overcrowded places the danger is great when contagious disease makes its appearance.

The spread of such diseases as typhus, measles, and whooping-cough is very much favoured by overcrowding.

I have prepared a table, taken from the Registrar-General’s decennial abstract, which shows this fact very clearly with regard to London.

I

have arranged the various registration districts of London according to the density of population, and in another column I have given the death-rate per 100,000 from whooping-cough and measles, two diseases which are rarely treated in hospitals, and which are very prone to follow each other in epidemics, so that when we have not measles with us we have whooping-cough, and _vice versâ_.

ANNUAL DEATH-RATE PER 100,000 LIVING OF CHILDREN UNDER 5 YEARS OF AGE FROM WHOOPING-COUGH AND MEASLES DURING THE 10 YEARS 1871-80. Death-rate per District.

Persons to 100,000 from an acre.

Measles and Whooping-cough.

Westminster 250 1089 St. Giles 200 1152 Holborn 200 1229 Shoreditch 200 1099 Whitechapel 200 1020 St. George’s, E. 200 1327 Bethnal Green 166 1113 Mile End 143 982 St. Saviour’s, Southwark 143 1150 Stepney 125 1220 St. Olave, Southwark 111 1091 Marylebone 100 1145 Strand 100 987 City 100 963 Chelsea 91 856 St. George’s, Hanover Square 83 974 Pancras 83 1046 Islington 77 965 Kensington 66 992 Poplar 59 985 Lambeth 59 960 London as a whole 50 967 Hackney 40 698 Camberwell 35 879 Greenwich 35 778 Fulham 23 850 Hampstead 17 701 Wandsworth 15 701 Woolwich 12 794 Lewisham 6 546 County of Dorset 3 352 The above figures show the effects of overcrowding, on the mortality from two important diseases, very conclusively; and it is interesting to note how very far the mortality from these two diseases in Dorsetshire is below that of even the best parts of London.

Among other diseases which are very common in London are the tubercular and respiratory diseases.

Thus the mortality from scrofula, tabes mesenterica, phthisis, and hydrocephalus in London, during the ten years 1871-80, was (collectively) 349 per 100,000 (no correction being made for abnormal age distribution), as against 224 in Dorsetshire, and the death-rate from respiratory disease was 460, as against 315 in Dorsetshire.

During the fifteen years 1872-1886 I find that 34,254 in-patients have been treated in University College Hospital.

Of these, 3,798 were cases of respiratory disease, and 2,453 were cases of disease of bones and joints, a very large proportion of which, according to recent investigations, are tubercular.

Thus we have 6,251 cases of disease (or more than 18 per cent.

of the whole) in which tubercle plays an important part.

There were also 459 cases of enteric fever, 276 cases of diphtheria, and 1,020 cases of rheumatic fever.

These, taken together, amount to 1,755, or about 5 per cent.

of the whole.

Rheumatic fever is one of the common diseases of London, which attacks young adults, and very often cripples them for life.

It is a disease of great importance, and appears from the last report of the Registrar-General to have been on the increase since 1858. Besides the greater liability to premature death which is caused by overcrowding, there are other drawbacks which are scarcely less important.

One of these, with which we are well acquainted in London, is an increase in the dirtiness and smokiness of the air, which is mainly due to private fireplaces.

When huge piles of offices are run up in the City or elsewhere, we like to imagine that, because most of them are tenantless at night, they cause no inconvenience, forgetting that each office has its fireplace, which helps to foul the air, and that each office supplies its quota of sewage to help to foul the river.

The state of the air in London is such that the most beautiful of all arts, gardening, has become impracticable from the fact that comparatively few flowers or shrubs will flourish.

This absence of green plants entails a great loss of nascent oxygen or ozone, which gives to air its peculiar quality of freshness.

It is hardly conceivable that a high level of health can be maintained in a spot where vegetable life languishes, animal life and vegetable life being complementary to each other.

The overcrowding in London has, of late years, been mitigated by the conversion of old grave-yards into gardens, thanks to the society over which the Earl of Meath so ably presides.

If cremation as a means of disposing of the dead should become general, and spacious cemeteries be replaced by furnaces, it is clear that these spaces bequeathed us by the dead will not be available for “lungs” in the London of the future, and that cremation, unless it be counteracted by suitable legislation, is certain to intensify our state of overcrowding.

The moral side of overcrowding must not be forgotten, but it is not necessary to dwell upon it, as the Whitechapel horrors are still fresh in the memory, and the difficulty of detecting crime in a labyrinth of hiding-places has been demonstrated.

The first aim of a sanitary authority should be to prevent overcrowding, and its most important duty is to control building operations, a duty which is never performed because buildings help to pay the rates.

THE LOOSE END OF OUR SANITATION.

Another reason why it is not possible to regard the present sanitary condition of London with much complacency arises from the fact that our sanitarians have failed to “make both ends meet,” but have left a terrible loose end to their measures, which is a constant menace and an increasing danger.

This “loose end” consists of a daily allowance of 150,000,000 gallons of sewage, which our new councillors have inherited from the late Board, and which is the result of probably the greatest sanitary blunder ever committed in the history of the world.

The proper destination of organic refuse is the soil.

Nobody doubts this.

Why, therefore, in a moment of weakness, did we construct six millions’ worth of machinery to throw it in the water?

The great glory of London, time out of mind, has been the Thames, but now certainly our glory has departed.

Having adopted a method of sanitation which is based on an utterly wrong principle, the condition of the Thames must get progressively worse as long as that method is pursued.

Some persons talk of a sewage farm as a remedy, but at least 50,000 acres of land would be necessary, and, to say the least of it, that is not a cheerful outlook for the ratepayer in these days of agricultural depression.

At present we are spending £50,000 a year on chemical abominations to mix with the other abominations, but it is very hard to see how that can improve matters.

The chemicals will certainly not help the fishing industry, and if added in sufficient quantity they must absolutely destroy the very small manurial value possessed by the sewage or its sludge.

My own belief is that the sewage problem in its present form is insoluble.

To deal with and filter slop-water, as is done in Paris, is comparatively easy, but here in London the problem is of a wholly different kind, and my firm conviction is that our present system of “water-carriage” must lead us deeper and deeper into the mire.

Until the problem of “What to do with our sewage?

” is settled, clearly, we ought to do our best to stop the growth of the evil.

Our present system of sewers ought to be closed as far as permission to connect fresh houses is concerned.

As it is, the new Council, like the old Board, will have an uncertain quantity of sewage to deal with, for old houses are being everywhere pulled down, and houses of greatly increased capacity erected, and this of course means a proportionate increase in the sewage to be disposed of.

In the City there are but 50,000 inhabitants in the official sense, but there are by this time fully 300,000 daily workers and over 700,000 daily visitors to the City, so that, in spite of an official decrease in population, the increase of sewage from that particular spot must be enormous.

The same class of facts applies to other districts in the metropolis, so that the evil at the outfall is not only not improving, but is increasing daily.

It seems to me quite impossible to make any arrangement for adequately dealing with the sewage of a district, unless you are able to say beforehand what is the maximum quantity which will have to be dealt with.

There being no adequate control of building in London, and no relation between the cubic contents of a building and the area it occupies (witness Queen Anne’s Mansions, the huge pile with which we are threatened at Knightsbridge, and the equally large pile projected in the Strand, which is to be 135 feet high, according to the newspapers), it is evident that the volume of sewage to be dealt with may be doubled or trebled without any increase of the area drained by the sewers.

Under such conditions as these the sewage problem may well be insoluble.

The first and main duty of any sanitary authority should be to exercise a wise control over building.

If every house were compelled in the future to have a curtilage bearing a definite proportion to the cubic contents, there would be an end of these towers of Babel, which shut out from us the light and air of heaven; the price of building land would fall; it would be possible to make some calculations as to sewage; and the excessive overcrowding of a city would be prevented.

Without such a regulation great sewage schemes must in the end make the sanitary condition of a city worse rather than better.

What to do with our sewage is a very difficult problem--an insoluble problem, I believe, on the present lines.

At present the Metropolitan Board is shipping some of the solid matter to be dropped into the sea at the mouth of the Thames.

When the Thames Conservancy see this fine ship, “built in th’ eclipse, and rigged with curses dark,” bound on its mission of blocking the port of London, what can they think?

They think it worth while, apparently, to have a man fined for throwing a basket of rubbish over one of the bridges.

Again, the House of Commons passed a stringent Act to prevent the pollution of rivers, but when, a year or so since, their own sewage arrangements were at fault, they merely constructed an ingenious apparatus to thoroughly suck the sewage out of their own premises and pass it on more effectually than before to pollute the river on whose bank their stately palace stands.

What is the good of legislation without example?

If the House of Commons, at some sacrifice (more fancied than real) of personal convenience, had adopted measures in accordance with the spirit of their legislation, I believe we should have been within a measurable distance of seeing the Thames once more meriting the name of silvery.

A good example is better than any amount of legislation, and a good example set in high places is much needed in this matter, to which there is undoubtedly a moral side.

How to alter the present arrangements in London now the houses have been almost uniformly deprived of their curtilage is very difficult.

Under such circumstances “returning were as tedious as go o’er,” but I am myself inclined to think that the best solution of London’s sewage difficulty lies in the direction of cremation--certainly in the direction of decentralisation.

I believe also that at the outskirts much might be accomplished by an equitable adjustment of sanitary rates, and by encouraging householders to do for themselves what no public authority can do so satisfactorily for them.

But as I have dealt with this subject very fully in a paper on “The Shortcomings of Modern Sanitary Methods,” I shall say no more at present.

London gets more than half its water from the Thames, and this is another reason why the sanitary outlook is not satisfactory.

The system of water-carried sewage is now almost universal, the sewage ultimately taking its course along the track of the watershed.

Wherever water-carried sewage is in vogue the natural watercourses must get fouled, and the fouling will be in proportion to population.

The sewage may be deprived of its coarser ingredients by mechanical or chemical means, but it is not possible to believe that any of the methods of treating sewage at present in use render the effluent wholesome enough to drink without danger.

The increase of population in the valley of the Thames is therefore a distinct danger to London.

The following table gives the population for 1871 and 1881 of some registration districts situated in the Thames valley:-- 1871. 1881. Kingston 55,929 77,057 Richmond 26,145 33,633 Reading 33,340 43,494 Windsor 26,725 31,992 Staines 20,199 23,774 Uxbridge 25,538 27,550 Brentford 71,933 101,706 Eton 24,928 27,721 Wycombe 38,366 40,278 Henley 18,916 19,992 Oxford } 21,016 21,902 Headington } 22,756 28,723 --------- --------- 385,791 477,822 I am well aware that some of the districts in the above list are below the intake of the water companies, but the figures serve to show how rapid is the increase of population in the valley of the Thames, which is one of the most popular districts in the whole country.

This concentration of people along the banks of the river must have the effect of lessening the purity of the water which we drink.

Thus it is evident that what I have called the loose end of our sanitation is a growing expense and a growing danger.

Hygiene, to be a permanent benefit, should move along natural lines, and organic refuse ought to be committed to the soil as quickly as possible, when it would cease to be a danger, and would prove a source of profit.

If the evil effects of free trade are to be counteracted, it will be by returning the refuse of our towns free of cost to the impoverished agriculturist.

If we in England go on as we are going, and if our brethren in the Colonies follow our example, as they are doing, I believe our race must become extinct, and it will be a Chinaman rather than a New Zealander who will sit in contemplation on the ruins of London Bridge.

CHAPTER II.