"The king of dykes, than whom no sluice of mud Fleet Ditch became such a nuisance that it was partly filled up by Act of Parliament soon after these lines were written. The Londoners had then their reservoirs of filth, called laystalls, in various parts near the river; and the pestilent accumulations spread disease all over the city. The system of sewers was begun in 1756, and from that time to the present several hundreds of miles of sewers were constructed. But, alas, the Thames itself became "the king of dykes," and it was slowly discovered that the metropolis, healthy as it is, would never attain the sanitary state of which it is capable till the whole system of the outfall of the sewers was changed. The change, which is almost completed, has involved the expenditure of millions. It is satisfactory to know that in towns of smaller population, the work of purification is going on rapidly. Public opinion has gone so strongly in the direction of a thorough reformation, that the duty can no longer be neglected. Every thousand pounds of public capital so expended is an addition to one of the best accumulations of national wealth. Upon the most important subject of the health of towns, the author of "Knowledge is Power" asks the indulgence of his readers, in quoting from his own book "Passages of a Working Life." "There is probably no such striking example of the rapidity with which an entirely new code of laws has been received into the public mind, and successfully established in defiance of local and personal interests, as that exhibited by the Sanitary Legislation of the last twenty years. Statutes, however, would have been passed in vain, had not the facts and principles, upon which they were based, been driven into the popular understanding by men who, despite of vested interests and deep-rooted prejudices, were bent upon advancing the welfare of the greatest number, by attacking some of the causes of disease and destitution in their strongholds and privileged hiding-places. To cleanse the Augean stables of London and of four or five hundred provincial towns, was a labour that Hercules might have shrunk from; for Hercules did his work by strength of muscle, whilst the sanitary reformers applied themselves to their task with the power of reason and the experience of science. Wherever we go, the results are visible, except to those who have eyes and no eyes. In 1842, Mr. Chadwick published his Report on Interments. Horrible graveyards, revolting to the senses, were to be found in populous places that in the last generation were verdant fields, and in the narrow streets and courts of the city, where its hundred churches seemed to have little use beyond that of gathering in and around them the means of swift destruction to the living. Nearly all the old burial-places of the metropolis have now been closed. It is in the interest of the greatest number that they have been closed. For the enforcement and preservation of these general interests, eight statutes have been passed during the last twelve years, which give a power to Burial Boards to close existing grounds and form new ones, and to keep the the closed burial-grounds in proper order. It would have been impossible that this portion of our sanitary laws should have been worked out by the people themselves, at a large expense and often in opposition to personal feeling, had not the supreme principle of a great public good been paramount to all other considerations. "The carrying out of the Public Health Acts, in their various ramifications, has entirely depended upon the decisions of those who had to sustain the expense. The Local Boards of Health knew well that they must encounter very heavy expenses. The report of a surveyor was a preliminary step, for the consideration of a community whether it would resolutely encounter the addition of a considerable burden to the direct parochial rates, or go on under the old system of indirect taxation in the shape of lingering or acute disease, premature death, the destitution of families. Upon purely economical principles, the decision was right when a community decided that it was cheaper to encounter the direct taxation involved in an ample supply of pure water; in drainage; in paving and surface cleansing; in providing public baths and washhouses; and in establishing parks and pleasure grounds. "To the watering-places on every coast the idle and the busy resort in the pursuit of health. Than some of these twenty years ago, there were no fouler or more pestilential places. If these resorts of luxury were abandoned to ignorance and neglect, what would be the case with great ports, such as Bristol, Portsmouth, and Plymouth? But the evils in such communities were small, compared with the practices and miseries of a great mining and manufacturing population, such as that of Merthyr Tydfil. The fortunate dwellers in houses where there is a full and constant supply of water from public works scarcely know the value of this great blessing. Bad drainage was a common evil; but here the cottages of the thousands of workmen could only be supplied from the distant springs-not by machinery, not from conduits, but by the personal labour of the poor female drudges of every household. The following description by a clergyman of the district seems to carry us back to past ages of uncivilization: 666 "During winter there are from six to eight spouts, some half a mile, some a mile, distant from the houses, but in summer they are often reduced to three, the remainder being dried up. At these water-spouts ("pyshtylls," as they call it in Welsh) I have seen fifty, eighty, and as many as a hundred people waiting for their turn; the rule is that each should be supplied according to the time of arriving. The women have told me they have waited six, eight, and ten hours at a time, for their turn; and some then obliged to go away without any water at all. They have been known to wait up the whole of the night. In the case of women having a young family, they are left at home at these times to take care of themselves. Instances have occurred of children being burned to death while their mothers are waiting at the spouts. They have no other supply of water whatever fit to drink in summer time, and have no alternative but to wait.' Surely it was time that something should have been done for the happiness of the greatest number.” QUESTIONS UPON CHAPTER XV. 1. What was the increase of houses in the first sixty years of the present century? 2. What was the increase of the population? 3. Give an instance of the power of individual energy. 4. What are the indirect benefits of machinery? 5. Give an instance of the benefits of raising water by machinery ? 6. What are the evil effects of a scarcity of water? 7. What is the daily average of water supply to each house in London? 8. What are the natural impediments to the water supply in London ? 9. What were the first water-works in London ? 10. By what means only could the mechanical contrivances for the supply of water be brought to perfection? 11. What is the amount of water supplied by machinery in comparison with that which could be supplied by human labour? 12. What would have been the result if the supply of water to London by mechanical aid had been prevented? 13. Had the water carriers not been superseded by mechanical contrivances would the amount of labour engaged in the supply of water have been greater or less? 14. When was London first lighted by gas? 15. When was the system of sewers first begun ? CHAPTER XVI. Early intercourse with foreign nations-Progress of the cotton manufactureHand-spinning-Arkwright-Crompton-Power-loom-Cartwright-Especial benefits of machinery in this manufacture-Cotton manufacture. THERE was a time when the people of England were very inferior to those of the Low Countries, of France, and of Germany, in various productions of manufacturing industry. We first gave an impulse to our woollen trade, which for several centuries was the great staple of the country, by procuring foreign workmen to teach our people their craft. Before that period the nations on the Continent had a proverb against us. They said, "The stranger buys of the Englishman the skin of the fox for a groat, and sells him the tail again for a shilling." The proverb meant that we had not skill to convert the raw material into an article of use, and that we paid a large price for the labour and ingenuity which made our native material available to ourselves. But still our intercourse, such as it was then, with "the stranger" was better than no intercourse. We gave the rough and stinking fox's skin for a groat, and we got the nicely dressed tippet for a shilling. The next best thing to dressing the skin ourselves was to pay other people for dressing it. Without foreign communication we should not have got that article of clothing at all. All nations that have made any considerable advance in civilization have been commercial nations. The arts of life are very imperfectly understood in countries which have little communication with the rest of the world, and consequently the inhabitants are poor and wretched ;-their con |