One of our ablest jourwals has an idea this week
that it is time to take precautionary steps against the Cholera, by drainage and other sanitary measures. " It is to be hoped," says the Horning Chronicle, " that we are not going to wait until cholera has again swept off its tens of thousands, but that, heeding the repeated warnings of reason and experience, we shall forthwith attack disease in its strongholds, whilst enriching the land by the applica- tion of those neglected treasures, which, when duly imwoved, will, in the words of Lord Shaftesbury, work a revolution in English agriculture." Why, the cholera is already at our door ! There is something almost as alarmingly morbid in these matter-of-course exhortations as in the cholera itself : they are symptoms of a fatal disease—in- difference simulating earnestness, and pouring out words without any heed about facts. The same weakness has caused much talk about our national defences, and no decisive action. It begets mis- trust in the real purpose and pith of public men. The constant cant of summoning to their duty men who never come, brings our whole system of representative machinery and "public opinion" into contempt, and might almost reconcile even the English mind to an autocratic machinery for getting things done.
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