The Registrar-General's return of deaths from cholera and diarrhoea is
on the whole favourable. The number declined in the week ending August 13 from 1,407 to 1,045, the decrease being principally among children. The Registrar - General strongly protests against relaxing any efforts to combat the disease, and recommends that the water companies should filter their supplies through animal charcoal, a much better suggestion than boiling, and one which ought to be permanently adopted. There is no better filter, but it will cost the water companies something, and as their enormous prices have made them rich beyond precedent, they will probably decline to incur the cost of preserving the public health. We are happy to say they have this year been taxed in 1,0001. a year each by the Legislature to keep the Thames pure above London. If the House of Commons will only extend that precedent, tax them their whole profit above 10 per cent. until every house in London is fully supplied with pure water, we shall soon be free from the dread of the cholera ; or suppose it compelled them to build the aqueduct from Wales, retaining their monopoly and their exceptional power of recover- ing their dues on that condition. A faint tinge of Jacobinism in the House of Commons would, in such matters, be very accept- able to the public.
