rulers the question is decided. The decree has gone forth that if by any means it can be prevented, water-closets shall not be substituted for privies and ashpits. An attempt at prevention, by laying an extra rate on water-closets, was defeated by the decision of a Committee of the House of Commons so long since as 1858. The compulsory re-conversion of the comparatively few water-closets into privies, is now being attempted by an illegal tax for removing the dry ashes.

Such being the determination of the authorities, ought they not at least to endeavour to make the middens inoffensive? The modes of doing this, of to some extent converting them into dry closets, -have been urged upon the council again and again, but with the sole effect of causing them, in some new by-laws recently published, to order that in all new houses the ashpits shall be roofed over, and their contents kept dry. But these by-laws apply only to future constructions. The fifty thousand ashpits previously existing are to be left in their pristine condition of barbarism; no change is to be made in the mode of emptying them; the manufacture of manure at the nightsoil depôts is to go on unchecked, and the depôts are to remain within the city. And if the sources of atmospheric contamination are to remain, the impediments to the removal by currents of fresh air of the polluted atmosphere are also to continue. One of the new by-laws enacts that if any building erected since June, 1865, shall be declared on competent authority to be unfit for human habitation, it shall be shut up until rendered fit. None of the thousands of houses erected before that date, which are unfit for human habitation, are to be closed; nor are the confined courts in which they stand to be opened to the winds of heaven. The new by-laws will therefore have as much effect on the monster nuisance of Manchester as a teacupful of water on a raging conflagration.

VIII. THE ARTIZANS' AND LABOURERS' DWELLINGS BILL.*

ALL sections of the governing body of the state, with the exception of a few gentlemen who can hardly be said to belong to the present generation, are agreed upon the necessity of extending the elective franchise to a vast number of artizans and labourers from whom it has hitherto been withheld; and concurrently with this national

*“Artizans' and Labourers' Dwellings." A Bill to provide better Dwellings for Artizans and Labourers. Prepared and brought in by Mr. M'Cullagh Torrens, Mr. Kinnaird, and Mr. Locke. Ordered by the House of Commons to be printed, 12th February, 1867.

action, all possible means are being taken by the representatives of the people to prepare the future electors for their privileges, by raising their mental intelligence, as well as their physical condition.

Two phases of legislative activity present themselves prominently to the observer of social affairs; the one (hardly yet commenced) is compulsory education, and generally the extension of education amongst the masses; the other, compulsory obedience to social and sanitary laws.

When we say that there are thousands of electors living in houses, in which it is absolutely impossible that their bodies, much less their minds, can be maintained in healthy action, and that there are tens of thousands still unenfranchised who dwell in hovels compared with which the huts in some of M. du Chaillu's Ashango villages must be palaces, we are only re-stating facts which are revealed in every page of history; and to the man of science, the most hopeful feature in the present political crisis is that the privilege of electoral power cannot fail to be accompanied by a sense of pride which will stimulate its possessors to improve their own social condition; and in one respect there is an advantage in the work of Parliamentary Reform being undertaken by the Conservatives. It is they who have always sought to withhold the franchise from the masses, because they considered them unfitted to receive it; and therefore, unless they mean to belie their first principles, and to leave it in the power of their adversaries to taunt them with insincerity, and with a desire to keep the people in a state of vassalage, they must not only raise them in the political, but also in the social, scale.

Whatever may hitherto have been the opinions of men in regard to political enfranchisement-that is to say, whether they have thought the people should be improved before they were permitted to have a voice in the government of the country, or that they should be at once allowed to vote for such representatives as they presume to have their interests at heart in a superior degree to those in whose election they have had no voice-one thing is quite certain, namely, that their social condition should be improved, and that all political and religious denominations should join earnestly and disinterestedly in the noble work of social and intellectual enfranchisement.

We must, on this great question, utter no uncertain sound.

It is we who are answerable for the degraded condition of those fellow-citizens whom we pronounce to be unfitted for the elective franchise. It is vain for representative bodies, local or imperial, to say that the drunkenness, uncleanliness, or poverty of the people is their own fault, and they must be made to suffer the consequences. Such statements are simply admissions of ignorance, incapacity, and unfitness for office, on the part of those who make them; and the

sooner the aspirants for political power acknowledge the responsibilities and duties of their position, and follow up the admission by energetic action, the better will it be for the nation.

Mr. Torrens and his colleagues, who have introduced the Artizans' Dwellings Bill (an enactment which it is only right to say, is based upon the Liverpool Sanitary Amendment Act of 1864, framed by Mr. W. T. McGowen, formerly Liverpool Law Clerk, now Town Clerk of Bradford; Mr. Shuttleworth, Ex-Town Clerk; and Mr. James Newlands, the present Borough Engineer of Liverpool*), deserve well of the community; and there is no doubt that whatever may be the present decision of the House of Commons on the question of Parliamentary Reform, there will be no difference of opinion as to the desirability of carrying, as speedily as possible, this beneficent enactment.

The process by which the Bill proposes to improve the dwellings of the humbler classes is simple and efficacious, and the only influences which can militate against its usefulness are those which may arise where the members of Corporations are corrupt, and the officials afflicted with the same weakness, or with the desire to please and serve their patrons at any hazard. Every borough must have an officer of health; every officer of health must report to juries what houses, streets, or courts are unfit for human habitation, and how they should be dealt with; whether only structural alterations are necessary, or whether total demolition is the sole alternative. Upon such reports the jury must instruct the municipal authority to act. This they will do either by allowing the owner of the "presented" property to deal with it himself according to their instructions, or, should he be unwilling to do so, and should total demolition be necessary, they must then agree with him as to terms, and purchase the property out and out.

In addition to these powers, the Bill also authorizes loans of money at a low rate of interest by the Public Works Loan Commissioners to Corporations wishful to build dwellings for such families as are likely to be turned out by the operation of the Bill; so there will in future be no justification whatever for any local governing body, whether it be of the smallest village or of the largest overcrowded commercial or manufacturing centre, if such abominable nests and rookeries as now exist, should in future be found within its jurisdiction.

But although we have expressed the conviction that all political parties will unite in passing the Bill, we are not quite so certain that it will meet with no opposition on the part of those whom it is intended to benefit the most; and such of our

* Mr. Hugh Shimmin, of Liverpool, who had written some valuable articles on the state of the courts there, was a material witness in securing the passage of the Bill.

*

readers as remember what was stated in a former number of this Journal, namely, that the Corporation of Manchester, leagued with some neighbouring municipalities, obstructed the passage of the Sanitary Act of 1866, will not be surprised to hear that the boasted metropolis of the north is pursuing a similar course with regard to the present Bill.

The objection we hear raised to it in that quarter is that it will enhance the value of dilapidated tenements, and that landlords will neglect their property in order to compel the Corporation to purchase it. For the benefit of some of our landed gentlemen, who are not supposed to penetrate the municipal secrets of our large towns, we may explain that when a wealthy Corporation like that of Manchester raises such an objection to the expenditure of money in the way described, for ameliorating the condition of its working population, it has some grounds for so doing, inasmuch as landlords

aye, rich landlords-in large towns often do take advantage of "Improvement Acts" to sell their property to Corporations at an exorbitant price; but in this case the sinners are likely to be poor people who own a house or two in a court, and who possess little or no influence in municipal elections. The rapacity of such people must not be encouraged, even if the alternative be that Manchester (or some other larger town) shall remain what our uninitiated readers will find it to be if they will take the trouble to peruse the article on its present condition, in another portion of this Number.†

Shame on you, men of Manchester, who have amassed your fortunes by the sweat, not of your own brows, but by that of the hardy sons of toil to whom you would now deny even decent habitations! Would that the shade of Richard Cobden could rise, that he might point the finger of scorn at his successors who deny the fresh air of heaven to those upon whom he conferred the boon of cheap bread! We have little fear of the result of such opposition; it will recoil upon the opponents of the Bill, and it is but just to the citizens of Manchester to say that, as far as we have been able to ascertain, the municipal authorities do not in this, nor in any other sanitary obstructions, represent their true feelings and desires.

But the Bill is not without drawbacks, and one of these deserves attention. We think it gives too much power over the public moneys to an almost irresponsible public official, the Medical Officer of Health. We strongly recommend the addition, in committee, of a restrictive clause similar to the 49th clause of the Sanitary Act of 1866, which enables the Home Secretary to act upon the well-founded complaints of inhabitants, and we are not sure that it would not be better in the very first instance to divide the responsibility of making "The Public Health," Quarterly Journal of Science,' Oct. 1, 1866, p. 496, on the Sanitary Condition of Manchester.

† On "Manchester: its Sanitary and Social State, and its Corporate Rulers."

presentments, for, whatever may be the theory of the Bill, in practice the mode of its execution will rest entirely with one official, who, however honest he may be himself, may not always find it easy to resist the importunity of those upon whom his material interests are dependent.

These are, however, matters to be regulated in committee, and as regards the Bill itself, we can only repeat that its passage will be, in our opinion, an event of far greater importance than that still important one, the passing of a new Reform Bill.

The latter is a measure which will only be useful in so far as it enables the newly enfranchised to appoint as their representatives men who will feel a deep interest in, and will promote, their welfare; whilst the former will in a brief space of time raise masses of degraded beings, even then unenfranchised, from the status of mere animals living and following their instincts in localities hardly to be called houses, in which, if they were compelled to live, many of the lower animals would soon become etiolated and would miserably perish. There, at present, men and women live and die herded together without any acquaintance with the decencies of civilized life, seeking refuge from the tainted atmosphere of their wretched homes in the gorgeous gin palaces that stand invitingly open to receive them, and there their children are allowed to run riot, surrounded by every condition necessary to breed thieves, vagabonds, and prostitutes.

Will this be any longer tolerated in Britain? We hope not; we look for a brighter day, not far distant, when the wealthier classes of the community will, with one accord, acknowledge their obligation to provide habitable dwellings for their poorer citizens, and so give them an opportunity of acquiring the much-needed habits of modesty, sobriety, and cleanliness, and a sense of self-respect without which no one can be considered a member of a civilized community.