the best excuse for its still more imperfect administration; and there may be some validity in this plea, so far as it is alleged in behalf of the local authorities. Those bodies, forming as they do a kind of administrative militia neither well drilled in their duties nor especially zealous in the service, may fairly claim to be forgiven if, when they find themselves called upon to fulfil a number of troublesome and not very popular functions, they plead the obscurity and cumbersomeness of the law which they have to administer, and the certainty that their best efforts will earn them neither the thanks nor the support of the central authority, as an excuse to their own consciences for some slackness in the performance of them. But the case is altogether altered when the same excuse is advanced for the laches of the Local Government Board. That is an organized department of the Imperial Government, not a mere body of amateurs; it draws upon the Imperial Exchequer, not upon scanty and jealously-watched local rates; its president and members are high State officials, subject to none of the local and personal influences which beset a vestryman or a rural guardian; above all, the Local Government Board is itself responsible for the condition of the law, no less than for its administration. And what an admission does the mere advancement of such an excuse imply as to the present and former condition of this department of Government! The Sanitary Act of 1875 repealed in whole or in part no less than two-and-twenty previous statutes, dealing with similar subject matter, all of them passed within the previous six-and-twenty years, and even then it left untouched a number of matters which should clearly have been included in any comprehensive measure. For instance, while assigning to the local Sanitary Authority the duty of providing against the spread of infectious diseases generally, it left the Vaccination Act untouched, by which the only really efficient means of dealing with small-pox, one of the most infectious of all diseases, is left in the hands of the Board of Guardians, a body having in many cases a distinct area of jurisdiction, and in most cases a distinct set of officers from those of the Sanitary Authority. In short, it is clearly shown that Parliament has been, for six-and-twenty years before 1875, constantly tinkering at Sanitary Laws, and that, at the end of that time, it has produced under the inspiration of the Local Government Board a code which is so obscure that no two authorities understand it alike, so full of blunders that no body can administer it, and so hopelessly inefficient that it would be useless if any body could do so. It is further to be observed that, whatever share of responsibility for the existing state of confusion in sanitary matters may fairly belong to previous Governments, there can be no doubt but that a vastly increased proportion belongs to the Local Government department of the existing administration.

Beyond all comparison the greatest advance which this country has made in sanitary legislation was the passing of the Public Health

Act of 1872 by the late Government. That that Act was imperfect and full of omissions no one doubts, least of all those who were most active in passing it; but it should be remembered that it was passed under circumstances of very considerable difficulty. It was passed towards the end of the last session but one of the late Parliamentat a time when Mr. Gladstone's great majority had become hopelessly mutinous, when it was becoming impossible to pass anything but by the permission of the Opposition, and when the near approach of a general election rendered members morbidly anxious to avoid offending any class of their constituents; and it was almost avowedly a transitional measure. But all these disadvantages notwithstanding, it did more, by rendering some sort of sanitary machinery universal throughout the country, to spread abroad a knowledge of the actual conditions and requirements of the rural districts, than any measure, or than than all the measures put together, which had ever gone before it. It was full of defects beyond all doubt, but it was full also of provisions conducive to valuable results, and one of the most valuable of these was, that within the next three years it brought out carefully matured opinions from a number of well-qualified persons, as to the sanitary requirements of the country, and as to the means by which those requirements could best be met. Persons who have studied those opinions-contained as they are in reports of officers of health, papers read before the Social Science Association or the Society of Medical Officers of Health, or at Poor-law Conferences, or contributed to various sanitary publications have been struck, as indeed they could not fail to be struck, by the unanimity which prevails among them, not only as to the actually existing defects, but also in regard to the most promising means of remedy.

In the midst of the state of things thus brought about, the present Government came into power. They brought with them a majority not indeed nominally so large as that which had been possessed by their predecessors, but large enough for all practical purposes, and compact and disciplined to a degree which has made the present the strongest Government which has existed for many years, and seems to promise it still a considerable lease of power. They came in also with an unusual degree of freedom from political excitement, amidst great anxiety on the part of all classes to exchange the sensational legislation of previous years for much-needed and much-neglected measures for the practical improvement of the people, and with the Premier's half jocular announcement, "Sanitas sanitatum, omnia sanitas," still unforgotten. They had none of the excuses which might have availed their predecessors. Clearly it was necessary to do something, to make some attempt to redeem their own pledges, and to satisfy the expectations of the country. Under these circumstances they hit upon a notable device. They proceeded to mash up the two-and-twenty existing statutes which had reduced all sanitary administration to a

hopeless chaos into a single code. To the sanitary reformers they represented this proceeding as merely a step in advance, but it was to enjoy the credit of being a great step, because it was to clear the ground and afford a firm footing for further progress. They disarmed the fears of the obstructives by the plea that really they were going to attempt nothing new-they did but intend to codify the existing law, to explain it, and make it intelligible without seriously enlarging its power or extending its scope. And then they proceeded, in utter disregard of all that had been learned from the successes and failures of earlier legislation, in complete contempt of the well-established opinions of all who had extensive experience to guide them, to confound in one huge mass of unintelligent, cumbersome, and imbecile legislation, not only the useful provisions of the previous Acts, but all their blunders and omissions as well-even to the very verbiage which had been found to puzzle the judges, and the very phrases which had been so interpreted as to defeat the whole object of the law. This was the achievement of the Government in 1875; and from that time to this, the stereotyped answer of the President of the Local Government Board to every deputation which has urged him to undertake new legislation, to every representation made to him of the inefficiency of the existing law, has been to the effect that really so great a step was made by the legislation of 1875, that we must rest and be thankful, and expect no more at present. Truly they are but the smallest of mercies for which we are thus to be thankful. Certainly the step was one which left us as deep as ever in the slough which we were in before. Thus has the Local Government Board, like Macbeth's witches,

"Kept the word of promise to the ear,
And broken it to the hope."

Seriously, it is time that public opinion was aroused in this matter, and in order to be so aroused it requires only to be adequately informed. If only a sufficiently large number of our countrymen can be got to understand the facts of the case, it is not conceivable that they will much longer endure that a department of Government should go on much longer constantly altering the law, but always failing to render it efficient; perpetually remodelling the administrative machinery, but always taking care that it shall not work; everlastingly multiplying officials, but never permitting them to do their work; perpetually increasing expenditure, but always providing that the nation shall not profit by it.

Any one who will take the trouble to search through the huge and dreary mass of literature which exists on this subject will find that he can arrive at only one conclusion, namely, that no administrative machinery so cumbersome, so extravagant, and so inefficient as is the anomalous kind of double government by which local affairs in England are mismanaged is to be found in any country more civilized than Turkey.

I have enlarged so far upon the question of sanitary law and administration because my immediate subject is inextricably mixed up with it, and it is, in fact, by means of it only that any shadow of authority is exercised over the condition of labourers' houses. How hopelessly insufficient this is I have already pointed out, and I must now say a few words only in conclusion in regard to possible remedies; but previously to so doing I feel it necessary to make one remark. There is very considerable danger in the recent attempts at legislation on these subjects lest the question of the condition of labourers' houses should come to be looked at too exclusively from a sanitary point of view. That it is very important in that respect I do not deny, but it is also a great moral question, and is probably far more important in its moral than even in its hygienic aspect. Evidence on this matter is needless, but were it necessary it exists in abundance, and perhaps the best examples of it are to be found in two documents to which I have already had occasion to refer-Mr. Fraser's evidence as Assistant-Commissioner on the employment of women and children in agriculture, and Dr. Wilson's pamphlet, already so often quoted. The distinction is one of some importance, for although health and morality may be somewhat closely connected, it is yet quite possible that domestic arrangements may be perfectly consistent with the maintenance of bodily health which are altogether intolerable in a moral point of view.

In considering the remedies to be applied to the state of things disclosed in the earlier part of this article the first proposition must be negative. I must first show, what is also no difficult task, why the various royal roads which have been proposed, and the especial panaceas which it is now heresy to disbelieve, will not answer the expectations of those who trust in them.

Mr. Cross's Artizans' and Labourers' Dwellings Act is the first measure which will occur to every one's mind in this connection. Of this measure I would not speak without respect. Mr. Cross, its author, is a Minister who is generally and most deservedly popular. No statesman of the day has risen more rapidly or more justly into a high place in the estimation of his countrymen, and certainly none, with the possible exception of Mr. Hardy, has, during the present generation, filled the difficult office of Home Secretary with so great general acceptance. Moreover, Mr. Cross enjoys the distinction of being the one member of the present administration who has shown any real regard for social improvement and the civilization of the lowest classes. How far his measure will really work for the good of the dwellers in large towns, it is as yet too soon to determine; but its action has not hitherto been extended to our rural population, and it is not difficult to predict that if it is so extended it will fail of its object. Mr. Cross himself, in some of his speeches on the subject, has told us two things. He has told us (1) that he does not expect that

the very lowest of the population, who will be turned out of their old unwholesome "rookeries" by the action of the Act, will be the persons who will occupy the new, decent, and wholesome houses which are to replace them. These will probably be filled by a better class of tenants coming from houses in other places, less good or higher-rented than the new ones; and the tenements thus vacated will in their turn be occupied by the ejected tenants, and be to them a vast improvement on their earlier places of abode. And he has also told us (2) that it will not do to give people houses at unremunerative rents-that to do so is to pauperize the classes you intend to benefit, as well as unduly to burden those who provide them. On the first of these statements I would only remark that the course of events which Mr. Cross predicts is clearly the most probable one, but that it will require careful supervision on the part of the authorities to prevent the ejected tenants of the "rookeries" from taking their wretched surroundings and their negligent habits with them, and so establishing new "rookeries" in the more decent localities to which they are removed. On the other point there is more to be said. The word "pauperize" has become a perfect bugbear to English ears, and rightly so, since pauperism has been and is the greatest curse of modern England. Still, the mere sound of this word should not be permitted to throw us into such a state of panic as paralyzes our reason, and blinds us to the importance of the facts around us. The question for us is, How did the existing state of things come about? and how can it be remedied? If, as Mr. Cross appears to mean, anything in shape of State aid, even though it be only temporary, towards improving the habitations of the poor, is to be looked upon as "pauperization," it seems to follow that the State is not to interfere otherwise than by an enabling Act, and, that the matter is to be relegated to the action of ordinary commercial laws, in order that it may in due time remedy itself. Such a proposition reminds us somewhat of the conduct of the famous physician of Laputa whom the Traveller left, after he had reduced a dog to an apparently lifeless condition, "endeavouring to recover the patient by the same operation." Non-interference by Government-relegation, that is, of the whole matter to the action of ordinary commercial laws-is exactly what has brought about the state of things above described; and the same course of action (or inaction) is to this day in many places continuing the process. It is not easy to see why we should expect it suddenly to reverse its hitherto constant effects. Pauperism or no pauperism, one thing is certain-viz., this, that if the houses of the poor are to be in any appreciable degree improved, as a class, it is only by some energetic action of Government that such a result can be brought about.* It is bad economy to set a whole team to draw a

See on this subject "Homes of the London Poor. By Octavia Hill," 1875, p. 172; where it is shown that private efforts, including those of Lady Burdett Coutts, Sir Sydney Waterlow, and the Peabody Trustees, have in thirty years housed only 26,000 persons,-"not a great deal more than half the number which is yearly added to the population of London."